‘The Sacrifice’ (La Douleur est la Mére de la Beauté—Pain is the Mother of Beauty) was the first major sculpture by Malvina Hoffman after the war. It was commissioned by Martha Bacon, the wife of Robert Bacon (Class of 1880), the former ambassador to France, who had served on General Pershing’s staff; he died in 1919. The sculpture, in Caen stone, was completed in 1923 and exhibited at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine until installed in the Memorial Church of Harvard University in 1932.
(Photo Teresa Chrzanowski Flisiuk)
Sacrifice 