BY WILLIAM WENTMORE STORY (1819-1895), ROME, DATED 1876

Details

AN AMERICAN MARBLE FIGURE OF MEDEA
BY WILLIAM WENTMORE STORY (1819-1895), ROME, DATED 1876
The base inscribed 'MEDEA', on a moulded marble plinth, the reverse with with 'WWS' monogram over 'ROMA 1876'
46 ¾ in. (118.7 cm.) high, the figure; 58 ½ in. (148.5 cm.) high, overall

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Lot Essay

The present lot is a reduction of the marble by William Wetmore Story shown at the Philadelphia Centenary Exhibition of 1876. Representing Medea – the mythological figure who murders her children to spite her absconding husband – this figure is known in several editions including a slightly larger marble dated 1868 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (94.81-d) and another in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1984.202). Story was an American sculptor who fell deeply in love with European sculpture during his travels to Rome, and eventually moved to the Eternal City, where he and his family lived in grand style in the Palazzo Barberini. He exhibited regularly at International fairs of the period, and the present group is illustrated in the Catalogue of the 1876 , Masterpieces of the International Exhibition, 1876, pp. 214-218.

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