Lot Essay
William Wetmore Story did not take up sculpture seriously until 1846. In that year, his father died, and his son - a serious amateur artist who painted and modelled every day - was encouraged to design his memorial at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Story agreed to do so on the condition that he could travel to Europe to see the best examples of the medium. He fell deeply in love with Europe and with sculpture, and for the next ten years he alternated between periods in the United States as a lawyer and intervals in Italy as a sculptor. Finally in 1856 he abandoned law entirely and became an artist full time. He and his family moved to Rome and lived in grand style in the Palazzo Barberini.
As an artist, Story specialized in two genres. He was a successful portraitist, sculpting busts and monuments of many distinguished literary and political figures, such as Josiah Quincy, Edward Everett and Ezra Cornell. But even more distinctive were his sculptures of biblical, mythic and historical personages, such as Cleopatra (1869, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Alcestis (1874, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford). He was particularly accomplished in the depiction of female heroines from history and the Bible. Henry James, who wrote a biography on Story, commented on this aspect of his work: "Deep and lively, in Story, was the sense of the grace of women, at its finest; which never took on, with him, moreover, the least hint of affectation or of 'manner'" (H. James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends, Boston, 1903, vol. II, p. 169).
The present sculpture, Jerusalem Desolate, was characterized by James as 'grandly tragic' and 'impressive' (ibid., pp. 169 and 298), and said to be typical of his work in top private collections ('ornaments of ample habitations' in James's grandiloquent phrase). In designing this sculpture, Story turned to some of the greatest artists of the past for guidance. The pose and proportions of the figure are explicitly Michelangelesque - it looks like one of the Sybils on the Sistine Ceiling and (in its pose) even something like the Moses. Story also emulated his favorite modern sculptor, Canova, whose statue of Napoleon's mother is another vital source. A third important model for Story was the Capitoline Agripinna, a work that influenced several of his statues of seated figures. He made the first version of this sculpture in 1873 for exhibition in London; that work is now in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The present work is the second version that he sculpted in 1879.
As an artist, Story specialized in two genres. He was a successful portraitist, sculpting busts and monuments of many distinguished literary and political figures, such as Josiah Quincy, Edward Everett and Ezra Cornell. But even more distinctive were his sculptures of biblical, mythic and historical personages, such as Cleopatra (1869, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Alcestis (1874, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford). He was particularly accomplished in the depiction of female heroines from history and the Bible. Henry James, who wrote a biography on Story, commented on this aspect of his work: "Deep and lively, in Story, was the sense of the grace of women, at its finest; which never took on, with him, moreover, the least hint of affectation or of 'manner'" (H. James, William Wetmore Story and His Friends, Boston, 1903, vol. II, p. 169).
The present sculpture, Jerusalem Desolate, was characterized by James as 'grandly tragic' and 'impressive' (ibid., pp. 169 and 298), and said to be typical of his work in top private collections ('ornaments of ample habitations' in James's grandiloquent phrase). In designing this sculpture, Story turned to some of the greatest artists of the past for guidance. The pose and proportions of the figure are explicitly Michelangelesque - it looks like one of the Sybils on the Sistine Ceiling and (in its pose) even something like the Moses. Story also emulated his favorite modern sculptor, Canova, whose statue of Napoleon's mother is another vital source. A third important model for Story was the Capitoline Agripinna, a work that influenced several of his statues of seated figures. He made the first version of this sculpture in 1873 for exhibition in London; that work is now in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The present work is the second version that he sculpted in 1879.