Ida McClelland Stout (1881-1927) was an American sculptor best known for her figurative work Charitas, created for the Chicago Daily News Fresh-Air Sanitarium. Born in Ohio and raised in Decatur, Illinois, she later moved to Chicago with her sister Lillian, where the two worked at a music school. A trip to Berlin in 1911 sparked her interest in the arts; while Lillian studied music, Ida learned book-binding and consulted a German sculptor who encouraged her to pursue sculpture.
Upon returning to the U.S., Stout enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1913, where she studied under the renowned sculptor Albin Polasek and earned acclaim for her tireless dedication and artistic talent. She won multiple awards, including the John Quincy Adams Scholarship Prize in 1919 and 1920, which allowed her to study in Europe. Her work often emphasized dignity and permanence, qualities recognized in her prize-winning sun dial sculpture.
In 1922, Stout’s career reached a pinnacle when she won a major competition to design a fountain for the Daily News Sanitarium. Her winning piece, Charitas, depicted a nurturing maternal figure and reflected the ideals of the facility, which served undernourished and ill children in Chicago. In 1927, while on another study scholarship trip in Europe, Ida contracted a type of malaria known as Roman Fever, and she died quite suddenly. Stout’s brief but impactful career left a lasting legacy in American sculpture.
