Horatio Greenough
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Horatio Greenough (1805-1852) was an American sculptor. The son of David and Elizabeth Bender, he was born in Boston on September 6, 1805 into a home with ethics for honesty and emphasis on good education. Horatio sparked an interest in artistic and mechanical hobbies, showing his native skills and talents at a young age. Particularly attracted to chalk, around the age of 12 he made a chalk statue of William Penn, known as his earliest work of record. Horatio also experimented with clay, from which he learned from Solomon Willard. He also learned how to carve with marble under instruction from Alpheus Cary. Yet Horatio seemed to have a natural talent for art, his father wasn’t fond of the idea of this as a career for Horatio.
In 1821 Horatio enrolled at Harvard University, where he found a passion in works of antiquity and devoted much of his time to reading literature and works of art. With a plan to study abroad, he learned Italian and French, but also still studied anatomy and kept modeling sculptures. While attending Harvard he came across his first crucial influence. Washington Allston was more than a mentor, but a close friend who enlightened and inspired Horatio. He even molded a bust of Washington. Before graduating from Harvard, he sailed to Rome to study art where he met the painter Robert W. Weir, while living on Via Gregoriana.
These two became close friends and studied together the Renaissance and works of antiquity. Favorites of theirs were the Laocoon group of the Vatican structure galleries and the Apollo Belevedere. During Horatio’s time spent in Rome he created many busts, as well as a full-size statue of the Dead Abel, and a portrait of himself. He returned to Boston in May 1827 with Weir, after recovering an attack of malaria. He then modeled more busts such as Josiah Quincy, president of Harvard, Samuel Appleton and John Jacob Astor. Horatio’s recognition was still not seen, so in attempt to establish a successful reputation sought out to make a portrait of President John Quincy Adams. His plan worked as he really displayed a style of naturalism in this piece as he did in many other works.
His sculptures reflected truth and reality, but also ancient classical aesthetic ideals from which he learned from Washington Allston. Many of Horatio’s captured works were done in Florence, Italy where he spent most of his professional life. His sculpture The Rescue (1837-51) and his over life-size portrait of George Washington both received United States government commissions. Some of his other most famous and important sculptures include: James Fenimore Cooper ,1831, Castor and Pollux,1847, Marquis de Lafayette,1831-32. Along with sculpture masterpieces he created, there are numerous drawings he also created which are displayed at the Middlebury College Museum of Art's exhibition.
Although Horatio was full of energy and endeavorous, in December of 1852 he couldn’t fight a striking and sudden high fever. On December 18, after two weeks of this high fever he died at the age of 47 in Somerville, near Boston. Horatio worked hard to gain the recognition, yet still little is focused upon him. As one of America’s first sculptors to gain international fame, he is important in impacting others to follow their passion in art and those that began creating sculptures.
[edit] References
- Sylvia E. Crane (1972) White Silence
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