Allen George Newman (1875-1940) was an accomplished American sculptor renowned for the many monumental public works he created across the United States during the first decades of the twentieth century. Newman studied under John Quincy Adams Ward from 1897 to 1901, apprenticing with the celebrated American sculptor whose Beaux-Arts practice had shaped generations of American public sculpture. This distinguished mentorship placed Newman within the mainstream of American academic sculpture at its most confident moment, and gave him the technical grounding and compositional sensibility that would inform his mature commissions.

Newman established a successful career as a sculptor of public monuments, memorials, and architectural sculpture, working in the elevated Beaux-Arts idiom that defined so much of American civic art during the years surrounding the First World War. His numerous public commissions can be found in cities across the United States and include some of the most beloved civic sculptures of their era. Among his major works are the Triumph of Peace in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia, the monument to General Philip Sheridan in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his statue of the English navigator Henry Hudson overlooking Spuyten Duyvil in New York.

Newman also produced architectural sculpture for major American buildings, including the allegorical figures Day and Night on the facade of the Harriman National Bank Building in New York, works that demonstrate his ability to integrate figural sculpture into the classical architectural vocabulary of the period. His public commissions typically feature the idealized proportions, dignified compositional structure, and refined finish that were the hallmarks of American Beaux-Arts sculpture at its most polished.

Newman was elected to important American sculptural organizations, including the National Sculpture Society, and his work brought him steady recognition throughout his active career. His sculptures remain visible today in the American cities where his commissions were installed, where they continue to serve as beloved landmarks of the civic ambitions of early twentieth-century America.