Background
William was born on February 12, 1819 in Salem, Massachussets, United States. He was the second son and sixth child of Joseph Story and Sarah Waldo (Wetmore) Story.
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(Excerpt from Excursions in Art and Letters The noble and...)
Excerpt from Excursions in Art and Letters The noble and majestic statues of the sculptured gods of ancient Greece were overthrown and buried in the ground, their glowing and pictured figures were swept from the walls of temples and dwellings, and in their stead only a crouching, timid race of bloodless saints were seen, not glad to be men, and fearful of God. Humanity dared no longer to stand erect, but groveled in superstitious fear, and lashed its flesh in penance, and was ashamed and afraid of all its natural instincts. How then was it possible for Art to live? Beauty, happiness, life, and joy were but a snare and a temptation, and Religion and Art, which can never be divorced. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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William was born on February 12, 1819 in Salem, Massachussets, United States. He was the second son and sixth child of Joseph Story and Sarah Waldo (Wetmore) Story.
When Story was ten years old, the family moved from Salem to Cambridge, where he was prepared for college by William Wells. In 1838 he received the degree of A. B. and in 1840 the degree of LL. B. from Harvard.
The genius for friendship and for concentrated work in varied lines which marked his entire life was exerting itself at this time as he began the practice of law, first with the firm of Hillard and Sumner, and later with his brother-in-law, George Ticknor Curtis. He was a leading member of the "Brothers and Sisters, " and a little later of the group which met at the home of George Ripley for the discussion of literary and esthetic problems.
Moreover, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard in 1844, while the Boston Miscellany and Lowell's short-lived Pioneer carried poems and essays by him. Among his legal publications were two textbooks which long maintained their place as standards, A Treatise on the Law of Contracts Not under Seal (1844) and A Treatise on the Law of Sales of Personal Property (1847), and several volumes of reports. His Poems appeared in 1847, followed by a second volume with the same title, dedicated to Lowell, in 1856.
He also served as commissioner in bankruptcy, and commissioner for the United States courts in Massachusetts, Maine, and Pennsylvania, and reporter for the United States circuit court for the district of Massachusetts.
Due in part to such incessant labor, he suffered a severe attack of brain and typhoid fever, from which he had hardly recovered when his distinguished father died in 1845 and the turning point of his career occurred.
On the death of Judge Story the trustees of Mount Auburn Cemetery proposed the erection in the chapel of a marble statue of their late colleague, to be paid for by public subscriptions, and nominated young Story as sculptor. To equip himself for this commission he left for Italy in the fall of 1847, with his wife, Emelyn Eldredge of Boston, whom he had married on October 31, 1843, and his two small children.
On his return to America his sketch was accepted. During the eight months of his stay he prepared for the press the Life and Letters of Joseph Story (2 vols. , 1851), followed later by an edition of The Miscellaneous Writings of Joseph Story (1852).
Back in Italy, he completed the statue of his father. Another year in America followed, devoted to both his vocation and his avocation. But he finally gave in to the claims of sculpture and, settling in Rome (1856), devoted his chief efforts to that art.
The choice of Washington Allston under analogous stress, leading to stagnation in Cambridge, that of Lowell, leading to the Court of St. James's as ambassador, and that of the younger Henry James, Story's sensitive biographer, leading eventually to British citizenship, provide alluring contrasts and, along with Story's nostalgia for European culture, help to clarify a significant phase of American adolescence. The winter he spent listening to law lectures in Germany during his years of wavering, subsequent seasons in England and visits to France, and, much later, life in the Engadine, varied by occasional visits to America, suggest the breadth of background against which the sculptor moved. But in 1856 the burden of proof was still on Story.
Of his portrait figures, the seated "George Peabody" in London, in bronze, of which a replica was erected in Baltimore, and the dignified statues of John Marshall and Joseph Henry in Washington are the most adequate, while his last work, the stone for the grave of his wife in Rome, provides one of the few instances of that intensity, the lack of which in many other works causes them to miss immortality.
Sumner, near the close of the Civil War, urged Story to become the sculptor of free America. When one recalls the Farragut and Sherman and Shaw and Lincoln of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one realizes how fruitless was the request. Story's interest in sculpture, rather than his sculpture, is of importance.
A collection of essays gathered from the Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere, Roba di Roma, appeared in 1862 and long remained the outstanding appreciation of the spirit of contemporary Italy.
Mrs. Story's death in 1894 marked the end of his active career. He lived only until the following year, dying at the home of his daughter, Madame Edith Story Peruzzi.
William Wetmore Story was an America's outstanding representative of the arts. He was the creator of such famous works as "Salome" (1870), "Jerusalem in her Desolation" (1873) and "Alcestis" (1874) "Sibyl" and "Cleopatra, " the most successful of the ideal figures. Several of his plays, usually prepared for private theatricals, reached the public in printed form, and a treatise on The Proportions of the Human Figure were extremely popular. Besides, he received decorations from the governments of Italy and France.
(Excerpt from Excursions in Art and Letters The noble and...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
As a sculptor Story sought to give internal validity to his figures. He chose subjects of dramatic interest and, in so far as his smooth surfaces and careful accessories permitted, he expressed their inherent passion. Yet his approach to his conceptions was fundamentally an intellectual one, and he perhaps never learned to sacrifice what he knew about the subject to the demands of plastic creation.
Quotations: "My mother, " he later recalled, "thought me mad and urged me to pursue my legal career, in which everything was open to me, rather than take such a leap in the dark. But I had chosen, and I came back to Italy, where I have lived nearly ever since".
He had a wife, Emelyn Story. The two surviving sons continued their father's devotion to the arts, Thomas Waldo in sculpture and Julian Russell in painting.
