Horatio Stone (December 25, 1808 – August 25, 1875), was an American sculptor, medical doctor, and writer. He is best remembered for his three statues in the U.S. Capitol.
Life and career Born in Jackson, New York, he was the eldest of the six children of Reuben and Nancy Fairchild Stone. In New York City, Stone attended the Columbian Academy of Painting under Archibald Robertson, and the American Academy of the Fine Arts under John Trumbull. At Trumbull's urging, Stone entered medical school for further study of human anatomy.G. W. Samson, Elements of Art Criticism: A Hand-Book for Amateurs and Artists (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1867), p. 366. He completed his medical training, and practiced as a physician from 1841 to 1847, prior to becoming a sculptor. His first major sculpture was a relief, The Three Marys at the Tomb, for his mother's grave.
Stone opened a sculpture studio in New York City in 1847, and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1848. During this time he executed portraits of Washington patrons, which were "good likenesses, but lacked any spark of life."Craven, Wayne, Sculpture in America, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1968. In celebration of the French Revolution of 1848 and the establishment of the French Second Republic, Stone wrote "Hymn of Liberty," a collection of thirty poems. Composer George Henry Curtis (1821–1895)The Grove Dictionary of American Music set these to music as the oratorio Eleutheria, which premiered in New York City in April 1849.George Henry Curtis, "George Frederick Bristow," Music: A Monthly Magazine, Chicago, vol. 3, no. 3 (March 1893), pp. 550-551.
Landscape design Showman P. T. Barnum purchased land in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to develop as Mountain Grove Cemetery (1849). Working with the cemetery's superintendent, Stone surveyed and designed its grounds.Ernest Stevens Leland, "Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport," Park and Cemetery and Landscape Gardening, Chicago, vol. 30, no. 10 (December 1920), p. 260. Stone laid out the initial design for Pittsfield Cemetery (1850), in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.J. E. A. Smith, The Poet Among the Hills: Oliver Wendell Holmes in Berkshire (Pittsfield, MA: George Blatchford, 1895), pp. 136-137. Subsequent design work was done by the Olmsted Brothers, and others. Stone later wrote about the importance of placing works of art in cemeteries: Such places furnish almost the only facilities, to a rural people, for seeing the higher illustrative works of art. By exercising our ability for superior expenditure in a direction that will increase the number of such works, we shall at the same time elevate their sentiments and advance our own. In every structure, whether of great or small cost, let the spirit of design and the soul of sentiment manifest themselves, and then our cemeteries will be visited, not for the recreation of the drive only, but for the divine lessons they inculcate, and the sacred aspirations they inspire.Horatio Stone, "Development—Commemorative Art," America's Advancement (New York: Virtue & Vorston, 1875), p. 19-4.
Arts advocate Stone was co-founder of the Washington Art Association in 1856, and served as president until its dissolution in 1861.Leila Mechlin, "Art Life in Washington," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Volume 24 (Washington, D.C.: W .F. Roberts Press, 1922), p. 173. In response to the association's advocacy, President James Buchanan created a National Arts Commission in 1859, a panel of experts to advise Congress on selecting artwork for federal buildings.The National Endowment for the Arts: A Brief Chronicle of Federal Support for the Arts, 1965-2000 (NEA, 2000), p. 6. Congress refused to provide funding for the commission, and it was disbanded after less than two years. Sculptor Henry Kirke Brown praised the efforts of his fellow commission member: "This Stone has been for the last eight years a sort of martyr to the cause of art in Washington, through poverty, neglect and scorn he has urged increasing the claim of American artists to the consideration and patronage of the government." Stone was also instrumental in the 1860 founding of the National Gallery of Art.
Civil War Stone worked as a contract surgeon during the Civil War, 1862-1865, initially at the military hospital set up in the United States Patent Office, in Washington, D.C. There he treated wounded from the Second Battle of Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.The Galaxy: An Illustrated Magazine of Entertaining Reading, New York, vol. 4, no. 8 (December 1867), p. 922. Poet Walt Whitman was a volunteer nurse: In the Patent Office Hospital, Dr. Stone,– (Horatio Stone the sculptor—in his ward, some 150 men—he has been surgeon here several months—has had successive changes of soldiers in [his] charge—some bad wounds, of course—amputation, sometimes rapidly followed by death, &c.—others from fevers, &c. &c.)—he told me last evening that he had not in memory one single case of a man's meeting the approach of death, whether sudden or slow, with fear or trembling—but always of these young men meeting their death with steady composure, and often with curious readiness—Walt Whitman to Ralph Waldo Emerson, January 17, 1863. The Walt Whitman Archive , University of Virginia.
U.S. Capitol Statues
Congress awarded Stone three statue commissions for the U.S. Capitol: John Hancock, Alexander Hamilton, and Edward Dickinson Baker. An 1870 Report to Congress praised his first two works: On the 18th day of August, 1865, Congress appropriated $20,000 for works of art to decorate the Capitol, to be expended under the Joint Committee of the Library; and in July, 1866, appropriated a further sum of $5,000 for a similar purpose, to be expended under the direction of the same committee. With these appropriations the following works of art were purchased: … No. 25, A statue of Hancock, by Dr. Horatio Stone, an American, $5,500. No. 26, Statue of Hamilton, by Dr. Horatio Stone, American, $10,000. …
Mr. Stone's statues of Hancock and Hamilton are the only works of any real value purchased out of the appropriation referred to above. His Hamilton is remarkably fine; and it is worthy of notice here that these works, costing so little in comparison with others purchased by the government, should be so much more valuable for their artistic merit. It is also to the credit of Mr. Stone that he filled his contract promptly, according to the agreement, and has not called on Congress for extra compensation.Commissioner of Education, "Art in the District of Columbia," in U.S. House of Representatives, House Documents, 1869-'70. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1870), p. 762.
Senator Edward Dickinson Baker of Oregon was the only sitting U.S. lawmaker to die in the Civl War.Edward Dickinson Baker from Architect of the Capitol. He had served alongside Abraham Lincoln in the Illinois legislature, and also in the U.S. Congress. (Lincoln named his son Eddie for him.) Baker served as a colonel in the 1846-1848 Mexican-American War and, after losing re-election to Congress, opened a law office in San Francisco in 1852. A vacancy opened in one of Oregon's U.S. Senate seats in 1859. At the urging of a group of Oregon Republicans, Baker moved to Portland in February 1860, and the state legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate in October. At the onset of the Civil War, he was offered a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers for the Union Army, but declined the honor.Blair, Harry and Tarshis, Rebecca. Colonel Edward D. Baker: Lincoln’s Constant Ally. Preferring to be in the fight, he resumed his rank as colonel, and recruited and led the "California Regiment." This was composed of volunteers, mostly from Philadelphia and New York City, who were funded by and fought in the place of potential recruits from the West Coast. Baker was killed early in the war, in the October 21, 1861 Battle of Ball's Bluff.Charles Edward Lester, "The Night of the Battle of Ball's Bluff," The Light and Dark of the Rebellion (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1863), pp. 127-134.
Stone was moved by the death of such a brave and dynamic man, and within months modeled a maquette for a statue of him. It depicted him in modern dress, but wrapped in a cloak that evoked a Roman toga. Stone conceived the statue as the crowning figure for a triumphal arch in Baker's memory, to be erected in Lone Mountain Cemetery, opposite San Francisco. It was never built.
More than a decade after Baker's death, Congress appropriated $10,000 for a statue, and awarded the commission to Stone in 1873. The plaster of Stone's Baker statue was not greeted with the unanimous acclaim of his Hamilton statue: [N]earer and dearer to the hearts of today must be the image of "the noblest Roman of them all." It is a statue of Baker, also executed by Horatio Stone, in Rome, in 1863 . Hamilton stands forth in heroic size, while the statue of Baker is under that of life, and barely suggests the grand proportions of the man. Yet the dignity and grandeur of his mien are here, as he stands wrapped in his cloak, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his noble face lifted as if he saw the future—his future—and awaited it undaunted and with a joyful heart.Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in The National Capital (Hartford, CT: A. D. Worthington & Co., 1874), p. 92. Stone died at Carrara, Italy, in August 1875. Italian carvers posthumously completed his Baker statue, and it was installed in the U.S. Capitol in 1876.
Federal vases
To memorialize the preservation of the American Republic following the Civil War,Boston Art Club, The Federal Vases: Presented to the Boston Art Club, 1887 (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1888). in 1870 Congress appropriated $10,000 for the creation of a work of art for the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Stone proposed a set of three heroic-sized bronze vases, decorated with vignettes from American history. He was awarded the commission, and modeled the vases in Italy. Stone returned to the United States in 1871, and his plaster models were cast in bronze by the Robert Wood Foundry in Philadelphia. Soon after this, it was discovered that Stone had failed to return his signed contract for the commission, and the money appropriated by Congress had reverted to the U.S. Treasury. He turned to art patron John Chipman Hoadley, who paid Stone's expenses, and the pair of smaller vases were installed (on loan) in the newly-built House of Representatives Chamber. Ownership of the three vases reverted to Hoadley after Stone's 1875 death, and they may have been among the bronze vases by Stone posthumously exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.James D. McCabe, The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition (Philadelphia: The National Publishing Company, 1876), p. 523.
"The largest of the vases, which is about five feet in height, represents the two great events in the history of the republic—its inauguration in 1789, with numerous historical figures of that period; and the preservation of the republic at the termination of the great rebellion—by representations of the great names connected with the events of that time."American Machinist, vol. 10, no. 28 (July 9, 1887), p. 5.
Following Hoadley's 1886 death, members of the Boston Art Club purchased the three federal vases through subscription, and presented them to that institution in 1887. The pair of smaller vases, Philosophy and Invention, were sold to a private buyer in 1939. The larger Republic vase was also sold, and is now in the collection of Pomona College's Benton Museum of Art, in Claremont, California.
The Philosophy and Invention vases were auctioned at Christie's New York in January 2012, and realized $62,500 (plus buyer's premium).Christie's, "Lot 311: A Pair of Cast Bronze Vases," Important American Furniture and Folk Art, Auction 2533 (New York: Christie's, January 19, 2012. They are currently on long-term loan to the U.S. Capitol.