At the Paris Salon, he was awarded the first Gold Medal ever given to an American sculptor. Elected to the rank of Chevalier in the French Légion d'honneur in 1896 MacMonnies was awarded grand prize at the Paris Exposition of 1900. This was a decade of enormous productivity and personal satisfaction. A second career as a painter got a good public start in 1901, when he received an honorable mention at the Paris Salon for the first painting he entered. He was selected for the "Major General George B. McClellan" statue in Washington, D.C., which was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1906. He also won a silver medal in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.