Sculpture
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"Lotus Eater” and “Sandalphon”
Artist/Creator: Emma Stebbins
Holding Institution: The Heckscher Museum of Art
Stebbins’s marble sculptures "Lotus Eater", a bust of a bare chested young man wearing a wreath on his head; and "Sandalphon", a full-length figure of a robed angel were created in the mid-1860s while living in Rome with her romantic partner, renowned actress Charlotte Cushman. Stebbins was a lesbian artist who has the distinction of being the first woman to receive a public art commission in New York City.
“Lotus Eater” and “Sandalphon” are rare sculptures by one of New York’s most important artists. Renowned during her lifetime, Stebbins created one of the most recognizable public sculptures in the world: Central Park’s “Bethesda Fountain.” Nevertheless, her work has yet to be the subject of a museum exhibition, and fewer than a dozen of her marble sculptures are preserved in public collections. “Lotus Eater” and “Sandalphon” speak to the history of neoclassicism, transatlantic art making, and the role of women in the nineteenth-century. The methodologies of queer studies hold the promise of understanding how these works relate to Stebbins’s personal identity and to nineteenth-century concepts of gender and sexuality more broadly.
Stebbins grew up and trained as an artist in New York City before relocating to Rome in 1857 and becoming a professional sculptor. Her first known marble work was a full-length version of “Lotus Eater,” now presumed lost. It and the bust version of “Lotus Eater” reference an 1832 poem by Alfred Tennyson that was based on an episode of Homer’s Odyssey, in which travelers who ate the lotus plant lost interest in returning home. Art historian Elizabeth Milroy links the subject matter to Stebbins’s “feelings of self-exile” as an expatriate. Cushman, the artist’s partner, connected the “Lotus Eater” to Antinous, the same-sex lover of the ancient Roman emperor Hadrian.
Based on an 1858 poem about a male archangel by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Stebbins’s creation of a female Sandalphon is contemporaneous with her designs for the Bethesda Fountain.
Stebbins’s nineteenth-century sculptures are a testament to her life and work and are artifacts of their time. They also resonate with the achievements of women and members of the LGBTQIA community today, as well as with the challenges they face. Sharing the sculptures with audiences will foster opportunities for critical thinking about gender and sexuality, as well as greater knowledge about LGBTQIA history and women’s history.
Reverend Campbell
Artist/Creator: attrib. Thomas Brooks
Holding Institution: Fenimore Art Museum & The Farmers' Museum
A 19th century American wood and metal life-sized standing figure depicting Reverend Campbell, an African American man in a long double breasted coat with a high standing collared shirt and thin bow tie. He is wearing a top hat and holding a briefcase and umbrella. The figure stands upon a square wooden plinth, painted dark green and is attributed to Thomas V. Brooks.
Thomas V. Brooks was born in New York. In 1840, he began an eight-year apprenticeship with John L. Cromwell (1805-1873), who at the time was working at 419 Water Street. Brooks began carving ship figures but soon switched to tobacconist figures, which he made in a wide variety. After his apprenticeship, Brooks partnered briefly with Thomas Millard but was on his own by 1853 when he moved to 258 South Street. He worked steadily filling orders and by 1870, his shop was the most productive in New York; it is estimated that his shop made about two hundred figures a year.
The richly polychromed, imposing statue of Reverend Campbell stood outside of the home of Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Pinkerton commissioned it “in honor” of the Black minister who cared for formerly enslaved peoples living on the property awaiting their freedom papers after emancipation. Pinkerton, inspired by porters wearing long red coats and tall hats at a Chicago hotel, purchased the outfit to give the preacher, insisting it was worn by all preachers in Chicago. At the time, Pinkerton’s joke was a fitting slight for a Black man who assumed the role of minister.
In the early twentieth century, the sculpture assumed a different role, recognized as an outstanding work of folk art and woodcarving by Thomas Brooks. As attitudes about race and personal dignity changed, the object’s meaning changed again, offering insight into the attitudes of the past, and encouraging open discussions of identity.
After its conservation treatment is completed, “Reverend Campbell” will be put on display in our American folk art gallery. The subjects of the artwork in our folk art gallery are typically white, so “Reverend Campbell” will help to broaden the public’s view of the nineteenth century to include free, empowered people of African descent.