A Song to Nature ^*

Location: Entrance to Schenley Park, Pittsburgh, PA, on the grounds of the Frick Fine Arts Building, University of Pittsburgh

Dedication: 1918

Sculptor: Victor David Brenner

Architect: H. Van Buren Magonigle

Materials: bronze and granite

Height: figures 15 ft, basin 15 ft

A Song to Nature ... is a memorial to Mary Schenley, who in 1889, through the efforts of Edward Bigelow, director of parks [for the City of Pittsburgh], donated the land for the park named in her honor. ... The figure of Pan in A Song to Nature represents the yearly regeneration of all plant life. The singer standing on the rocks above Pan is “Pan’s pipe, the compensation which nature gives to those in sympathy with her.” ... The inscription at the lower basin reads: “A Song to Nature, Pan the Earth God Answers to The Harmony and Magic Tones Sung to the Lyre by Sweet Harmony.”

A Song to Nature was Brenner’s first large sculpture in the round. ... Before this commission, Brenner had attained a considerable reputation as a sculptor of medals, coins, and small portraits in bas-relief, one of the most famous being a bronze portrait plaque of Abraham Lincoln presented to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth. At Roosevelt’s urging, this design was adopted for the newly minted U.S. penny, on which it still appears.

* excerpted from Discovering Pittsburgh’s Sculpture, V. Gay, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1983.