GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The son of US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, William Wetmore Story became one of the leading artists of an expatriate colony of American sculptors in Rome during the second half of the 19th century. He specialized in portraits of legendarily troubled women who lived lives of political intrigue and psychological and sexual drama, such as Semiramis (1999.117.A-B), the doomed Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the notorious Greek Medea, who murdered her own children.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston, Story earned undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard in 1838 and 1840, respectively. He did not begin to sculpt professionally until 1845 when he was selected to create a sculpture for a monument to his father (in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston). Like most aspirant sculptors of his day, he traveled to Rome for training and to establish a workshop in which Italian sculptors would assist with later commissions. There he and his family took apartments in the Palazzo Barberini, becoming the social headquarters of the expatriate arts community in Rome. Frequent visitors included sculptor Harriet Hosmer (The Sleeping Faun, after 1865, Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Story spent close to two decades sculpting brooding female subjects fraught with internal tension and emotional turmoil. His fascination with tales of intrigue, deception, and tragedy guided his choice of subjects. The power of his sculptures rests in his ability to probe the psychological depths of his characters and give visual form to those troubled souls.
Adapted from
Eleanor Jones Harvey, DMA Acquisition Proposal (1999.117.A-B), April 1999.
NOTES
I have cataloged the photo of WWS in Piction and am removing the %UMO pending and %pictionJP tags.
This note has been routed and revised. I am removing the routed tag and adding the completed tag. The GDoc has been moved to Queta's folders for review. EAS, 3/8/2017
Geography - Nationality
Salem (Massachusetts)
Boston (Massachusetts)
Geography - Other
Vallombrosa (Italy)
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
Photographic Portrait of William Wetmore Story.
Source: The Brady-Handy Collection from the Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 14, 2016.
265936168: UMO * Review
Image cataloged in Piction 2/27/2017.
Using as the primary CC illustration.
265936168: Image
WEB RESOURCES
American Neoclassical Sculptors Abroad~Read Thayer Tolles's October 2004 essay on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
- Artistically inclined from youth, he dabbled in drawing and sculpting, and developed into a prolific and respected writer and poet. He was a gifted amateur playwright, and a respected critic of art, music, theater, history, and philology. His close friends included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, and later, Henry James.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne described Story's first full-scale figure, Cleopatra (1858, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), in his book The Marble Faun, published simultaneously in Boston and London in 1860. This book quickly became an indispensable guide for Grand Tourists, and Hawthorne's description of Cleopatra resulted in much increased foot-traffic to Story's Roman studio. In 1862, Pope Pius IX requested Story's Cleopatra and Libyan Sibyl (1860, Metropolitan Museum of Art) to be included in the Roman pavilion of the International Exhibition in London.
- The Palazzo Barberini is a Baroque palace originally created for Pope Urban VIII. Three important Italian architects (Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini) oversaw construction between 1627 and 1633. Today it houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.
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apply to constituents where id equals 3392
Apply to objects where constituent_id equals 3392
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General Description
The son of US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, William Wetmore Story became one of the leading artists of an expatriate colony of American sculptors in Rome during the second half of the 19th century. He specialized in portraits of legendarily troubled women who lived lives of political intrigue and psychological and sexual drama, such as Semiramis (1999.117.A-B), the doomed Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the notorious Greek Medea, who murdered her own children.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston, Story earned undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard in 1838 and 1840, respectively. He did not begin to sculpt professionally until 1845 when he was selected to create a sculpture for a monument to his father (in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Boston). Like most aspirant sculptors of his day, he traveled to Rome for training and to establish a workshop in which Italian sculptors would assist with later commissions. There he and his family took apartments in the Palazzo Barberini, becoming the social headquarters of the expatriate arts community in Rome. Frequent visitors included sculptor Harriet Hosmer (The Sleeping Faun, after 1865, Boston Museum of Fine Arts) and poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Story spent close to two decades sculpting brooding female subjects fraught with internal tension and emotional turmoil. His fascination with tales of intrigue, deception, and tragedy guided his choice of subjects. The power of his sculptures rests in his ability to probe the psychological depths of his characters and give visual form to those troubled souls.
Adapted from
Eleanor Jones Harvey, DMA Acquisition Proposal (1999.117.A-B), April 1999.
Fun Facts
- Artistically inclined from youth, he dabbled in drawing and sculpting, and developed into a prolific and respected writer and poet. He was a gifted amateur playwright, and a respected critic of art, music, theater, history, and philology. His close friends included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, and later, Henry James.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne described Story's first full-scale figure, Cleopatra (1858, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), in his book The Marble Faun, published simultaneously in Boston and London in 1860. This book quickly became an indispensable guide for Grand Tourists, and Hawthorne's description of Cleopatra resulted in much increased foot-traffic to Story's Roman studio. In 1862, Pope Pius IX requested Story's Cleopatra and Libyan Sibyl (1860, Metropolitan Museum of Art) to be included in the Roman pavilion of the International Exhibition in London.
- The Palazzo Barberini is a Baroque palace originally created for Pope Urban VIII. Three important Italian architects (Carlo Maderno, Francesco Borromini, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini) oversaw construction between 1627 and 1633. Today it houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.
Archival Resources
Web Resources
American Neoclassical Sculptors Abroad~Read Thayer Tolles's October 2004 essay on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art).
Notes
I have cataloged the photo of WWS in Piction and am removing the %UMO pending and %pictionJP tags.
This note has been routed and revised. I am removing the routed tag and adding the completed tag. The GDoc has been moved to Queta's folders for review. EAS, 3/8/2017
Geography - Nationality
Salem (Massachusetts)
Boston (Massachusetts)
Geography - Other
Vallombrosa (Italy)
rules
Apply To
Constituents
id
Equals
3392
source file
artists_and_designers-0279.xml.nores