Matchett Herring Coe
American artist

Matchett Herring Coe (1907–1999) was an American sculptor active in Texas.
Coe was born in Loeb (now Lumberton), Texas and lived in the Beaumont area most of his life. He graduated from Lamar College, attended Cranbrook Educational Community and served with the Seabees on Guadalcanal during World War II, but was active as a sculptor before the war. His works have been featured at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C.
Several of his best known works include his 1936 commissioned sculpture of Confederate hero Richard W. Dowling at Sabine Pass, Texas for the Texas Centennial. Coe also created the 1961 statue of the Texas Confederate Veteran featured at the Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi.
Work
friezes and other work at Jefferson County Court House, Beaumont, Texas, 1931
reliefs of workers and business people, First National Bank Building (Beaumont, Texas), 1937
architectural sculpture for the Houston City Hall (with Raoul Josset), 1939-1939
his cenotaph commemorating school children killed in an explosion at New London, Texas, 1939
reliefs on the Fondren Library at Rice University
work at Lamar University
Entrance pylons, work on the Reptile House, and other work at the Houston Zoo, including a Cobra sculpture outside the entrance of the Reptile house.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Matchett Herring Coe” as american artist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6786264. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1907, 1999, 1936 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matchett Herring Coe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.