It was the last of the great Expositions, and it commemorated the opening of the Pan-American Canal. The plan involved a large and elaborate scheme of temporary architecture, fountains, gardens, and sculpture which extolled American historical, scientific, and technological progress. There were pavilions dedicated to new technologies and sculptural groups that allegorized everything from energy, to the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest.

In fact, the Exposition should be understood not only as an enormously ambitious attempt to exhibit the advanced art of the time, but also as a subtle form of political theatre, a vast stage upon which was propagated a unique myth of American history. Part of this myth consisted of the famous and much romanticized figures of the remote past. Along with the "Cortez" of Charles Nichaus, Rumsey's "Pizarro" flanked the Tower of Jewels, a structure fronting the Courtyard of the Universe. A sculptural ensemble heroizing the legendary conquerors of America must have been particularly charged at a moment when the nation felt itself to be on the threshold of a new historical period.

As a temporary sculpture, it is likely that the colossal. nineteen-foot-high Pizarro for the Exposition was executed by trained workmen under the direction of a master sculptor rather than the artist himself - the normal procedure in such undertakings. It is to the model, therefore, that we must turn for an idea of the artist's intentions.

In the "Pizarro" Rumsey reconciled two competing demands. The first was for a generally harmonious composition such as would have been expected in an equestrian portrait. The second was for historical accuracy ó truthfulness to the record regarding Pizarro's actual appearance. Fremiet, like other historical realists of the Beaux-Arts tradition, insisted on the visual accuracy of historical imagery and his former pupil was to do the same.

Details of the armor in the model are drawn from careful study of Pizarro's armor, presented in Madrid. In his research Rumsey also discovered that the preferred horse of the conquistadors was a short, stocky, strong pony completely unlike the more slimly proportioned and elegant thoroughbreds which had been his previous models. me proportion of horse to rider in the Pizarro is, therefore, quite different from that of the more idealized equestrian statues of the period.

Rumsey's solution to the scheme of the statue and the interrelation of horse and rider seems to have been quite novel. In one of the rare documents of Rumsey's career, a short essay written by his assistant Edmondo Quattrocchi, the model is described as:

Since the work was to have an architectural setting, it required an appropriate treatment of decorative data. As Quattrocchi described the model:

"Color," as used here, was a term that both sculptors and architects employed to describe the distribution of light and shade over a surface. The use of detail to give a sense of scale to a composition was one of the rules of Beaux-Arts style and was followed by sculptors and architects alike.

Rumsey's statue was well-received and he was awarded a bronze medal. A number of different versions were made later, among them the unique statue in bronze at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.