William Wetmore Story
William Wetmore Story
1819 - 1895
American sculptor and writer. Son of a justice of the US Supreme Court, he was educated at Harvard and practised law in Boston, where he also earned recognition as an art critic, poet and literary editor. He was part of an élite circle that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Allston and James Russell Lowell.
When his father died in 1845, a memorial statue was planned in his honour. Somewhat unexpectedly, Story was commissioned to design it, with the proviso that he first be permitted several years study abroad to acquire technical proficiency in sculptural modelling, a hobby in which he had already displayed natural ability. The resulting marble portrait of Joseph Story (1854; Cambridge, MA, Harvard U., Portrait Col.) was enthusiastically received when it was installed in Mount Auburn Cemetery, encouraging both Story’s artistic ambitions and his desire for further European adventure. He settled in Rome in 1856 and worked assiduously at his new profession, drawing around him an urbane, affluent group of international friends who proved an invaluable source of commissions.
Story’s work in the ideal mode, which he preferred to portraiture, first attracted critical notice at the London International Exhibition of 1862, at which his meditative figures of the Libyan Sibyl (1861; New York, Met.) and Cleopatra (1858; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.) excited the public’s imagination. Thereafter his studio produced a series of acclaimed compositions, most depicting mythological or biblical characters in melancholic attitudes, arrayed with archaeologically correct props. Characteristic of these over life-size works in marble are his studies of Medea Contemplating the Murder of her Children (1864; version, 1868; New York, Met.), Saul, When the Evil Spirits Were upon him (version, 1882; San Francisco, CA, de Young Mem. Mus.) and Sappho (1863; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). Story’s choice of dramatic themes and the probing psychological approach he employed in his mature oeuvre were strongly influenced by the theories of his friend Robert Browning.
Although Story’s artistic reputation plummeted after his death, he secured some posthumous celebrity through the two-volume biography that Henry James produced at the request of the sculptor’s family. Story had three children who pursued artistic careers: Waldo (1855–1915), sculptor of the Fountain of Love (1894–6; Cliveden, Bucks, NT); Julian Russell (1857–1919), a painter; and Edith Marion (1844–1907), the Marchesa Peruzzi de’ Medici, a writer. [Jan Seidler Ramirez. "Story, William Wetmore." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 11, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T081657.]
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French, 1864 - 1901
