American · Contemporary figurative sculpture
Benjamin Victor
b. 16 January 1979, Taft, California
Benjamin Victor (born 1979) is an American figurative sculptor based in Boise, Idaho, and the youngest artist ever to have a statue in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall, where four of his bronzes now stand.
2 works in the collection
Works by Benjamin Victor
Benjamin Matthew Victor is an American sculptor, born in Taft, California, in 1979, who lives and works in Boise, Idaho. He is known for realistic bronze figures and is the only living artist with several statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection of the U.S. Capitol.
Life in brief
Victor first tried sculpture as a student at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. While still a student he won the commission for Nevada's statue of Sarah Winnemucca, the Northern Paiute writer and advocate; it was installed in the Capitol in 2005, when he was 26, making him the youngest artist represented in Statuary Hall. He went on to make Iowa's Norman Borlaug (2014), Nebraska's Chief Standing Bear (2019) and Arkansas's Daisy Bates (2024).
Style
Victor works in a traditional figurative manner: full-scale clay models, close attention to anatomy and drapery, and cast bronze for the finished work. His monuments are researched portraits; his studio figures, by contrast, explore narrative and sensuality.
Zuleikha and Bathsheba
Two studio works represent him in our catalogue. Zuleikha is a life-size clay model for a bronze: a young woman in clinging, sliding drapery leans on a draped pedestal and looks back over her shoulder. Her name is the one given in Islamic and Persian tradition to Potiphar's wife, who tried to seduce Joseph in Genesis 39. Look at the drapery at her hip, where the cloth is pulled tight in one direction and pooled in the other, to see how carefully the model is staged.
Bathsheba shows the biblical woman whom King David saw bathing, just out of the bath with wet cloth clinging to her and a towel gripped in her hand. Both subjects belong to a long tradition of biblical women in art; compare Eglon van der Neer's Judith.
Where to see his work
His four bronzes stand in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and other public monuments are found across the American West.
Questions & answers
Who is Benjamin Victor?
Benjamin Victor is an American figurative sculptor born in 1979 in Taft, California, and based in Boise, Idaho. He is the youngest artist ever represented in the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall and has four statues there.
Which statues has Benjamin Victor made for Statuary Hall?
His statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection are Sarah Winnemucca for Nevada (2005), Norman Borlaug for Iowa (2014), Chief Standing Bear for Nebraska (2019) and Daisy Bates for Arkansas (2024).
Who is Zuleikha in Benjamin Victor's sculpture?
Zuleikha is the name Islamic and Persian tradition gives to the wife of Potiphar, who in Genesis 39 tried to seduce Joseph and then accused him falsely. Victor's life-size clay model shows her in clinging drapery, leaning on a pedestal.