Lady of the Alamo
Texas sculptor Bruce Greene’s newest monument will be placed at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.
Many years ago, before Texas painter and sculptor Bruce Greene was even a member of the Cowboy Artists of America, he had completed a bronze piece of Susanna Dickinson, one of the few survivors of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. The work was just a tabletop-sized piece, maybe one-sixth life-size, but it left an impression on those who saw it, enough that the officials at the Alamo, decades later, have asked Greene to do another sculpture of Dickinson for the historic site in San Antonio, Texas.
The new work, the 89-inch tall The Lady of the Alamo, is now finished in clay and at the foundry for its bronze cast. Its next stop will be the Alamo, where it will join more than a dozen other sculptures, both old and new, on a new sculpture walk that will be part of the renovated Alamo site. The sculptures will tell stories about the Alamo and its most famous figures, from
Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett to Dickinson, who, with her 18-month-old baby Angelina, refused to leave the mission and were caught up in the battle.
“I just love her story. Her husband, Almaron Dickinson, was one of the men killed in the battle. He was in charge of an area not far from where she was hidden in the baptistery of the mission. She had been offered an opportunity leave, but she stayed with him,” Greene says from his Texas studio. “She even confirms one of the big stories from the Alamo. She saw Davy Crockett run into the church, [fall] on his knees, [make] peace with his maker and then [go] out to die. He was the last person she saw before the Alamo fell. It’s powerful, powerful stuff.”
The renovation project has no exact completion date, but once The Lady of the Alamo is casted and finished, likely in May, it will be taken to San Antonio, where it will be unveiled in a garden next to the mission. The work, of which there will be only one edition, features Dickinson holding her baby amid the debris of the battle, including a wagon wheel from a cannon, a sabre sticking out of the soil and a soldier’s hat.
“If you’re a sculptor in Texas there’s not a better place in the world to have a piece than at the Alamo,” Greene says of the opportunity to create a work for the historic site near and dear to many Texans. “It was a fun project and I’m just honored they would ask me to contribute at this sacred site.”