Douglas Tilden

Douglas Tilden (May 1, 1861 to August 5, 1935) was a world-famous deaf sculptor who went to the California School for the Deaf in Berkeley, California (now in Fremont, California). Tilden became deaf after a severe bout of scarlet fever. After graduating from the CA School for the Deaf, he went on to attend UC Berkeley, but then left to study art in Paris. Once in Paris, Tilden studied under Paul Chopin, another deaf sculptor. He made many statues that sit in San Francisco, Berkeley, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

He has many artworks to his credits:

* Football Players, which stands as one of the first permanent artwork on the University of California, Berkeley campus.
* Bear Hunt, a statue of a bear protecting her cub and wrestling with two Native Americans, and is featured in the California School for the Deaf in Fremont.
* Mechanics Monument, which may be seen in San Francisco. It served as an inspiration for the city to rebuild itself.

The Tired Boxer by Douglas Tilden 1892 Bronze

Many detect a certain homoeroticism in his works because they feature young athletic men who are often unclothed. In the Football Players, many people have noted that the scene of two young football players, one is injured and resting on the shoulder of another, and the other is tenderly bandaging the wounds, shows the intimate male bonding in sports as of interdependence between the players. The gay and lesbian community has adopted the statue as representing the best ideal of the visible queer community on campus.

Bear Hunt

Tilden is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License