Background
Thomas Crawford was born on March 22, 1813 in New York City, New York, United States of Irish parents. Even when very young, he showed delight in beauty.
Thomas Crawford was born on March 22, 1813 in New York City, New York, United States of Irish parents. Even when very young, he showed delight in beauty.
He gazed tiptoe into print-shop windows, he tinted engravings, he sketched, he drew, sometimes neglecting his routine school lessons, but not the drawing lessons to which his parents sent him. He studied art in the evening classes of the National Academy of Design.
At the age of fourteen, he went to work with a wood-carver; his evenings he spent in his room, modeling in clay. At nineteen, he placed himself as apprentice in the studios of Frazee & Launitz, leading monument-makers of the city. Here his sensitive carvings of marble flowers and his intelligent service in monumental design won approval. He worked also on marble busts, including that of Chief Justice Marshall.
Meanwhile he gained some knowledge of architecture from poring over books. He began collecting casts, among them a copy of Thorwaldsen's "Triumph of Alexander. " When Launitz disregarded his plea for higher wages, he quietly went back to work in the wood-carver's shop, where Launitz sought him out, inviting him to return, and granting his request. Launitz became his true friend, encouraged him to go to Rome for study, and gave him letters to two residents there, Dr. Paul Ruga and Thorwaldsen.
In May 1835, at the age of twenty-two, he set sail for Leghorn in a small merchantman, and in the following September he presented his letter to Thorwaldsen. The famous sculptor received him kindly, giving him the freedom of his studios, and setting him at work on a clay copy of an antique. Naturally the sensitive carver of marble flowers was feeble in his grasp of the ensemble. With the utmost patience Thorwaldsen explained the need of studying mass before detail. A lasting friendship resulted. "These few words of instruction, " wrote Crawford, years later, "gave me more insight into my art and were of more service to me than all else put together that I have ever seen and heard. "
In Rome, the young man devoted himself heart and soul to his studies, working with even too much eagerness day and night. His vigorous health suffered. "I am alone, " he had written from Leghorn to his sister; "I am venturing much. " And almost alone as well as unknown he at first remained. He modeled and drew from the nude; he spared time to visit collections, studios, museums. By the purchase of books, casts, and other tools of trade as needful to him as breath, he made serious inroads into his funds, denying himself physical comforts. In ten weeks (1837) he modeled seventeen busts for marble, "at a laborer's wage, " he wrote to his sister; and the same year he copied in marble a Demosthenes in the Vatican. His solitary lamp burned nightly in his little studio in the Via del Orto di Napoli. He began to attract consideration. One day Mr. Greene, American consul at Rome, got a tremulous note, "Come and see me. " He found Crawford prostrate and delirious from fever, and at once obtained for him through Dr. Ruga the best medical aid and nursing, probably saving his life thereby. Interest was aroused; numerous minor commissions came. Before the end of 1839, Crawford completed two bas-reliefs, the "Centaurs, " the "Hercules and Diana, " for Prince Demidoff of St. Petersburg; a group, "Lead Us into Life Everlasting, " for Mr. Tiffany of Baltimore; also portrait busts of Mr. Greene, of Commodore Hull, of Sir Charles Vaughan, of Kenyon, the English poet, of Charles Sumner, the American statesman. Crawford was then engaged on his "Orpheus, " his first group of genuine importance. Sumner, full of faith in the sculptor's genius, created interest in Boston for this work, and pushed a subscription to carry it out in marble. Returning to Rome after a studious visit to the art-treasures of Florence, and oppressed by misgivings as to the fate of the "Orpheus, " Crawford found awaiting him Sumner's draft. The next mail brought other orders. From that moment, his anxieties as to bread and shelter were over. Prosperity, no less than adversity, stimulated his mind. An astonishing productiveness ensued. In the Piazza Barberini he fitted up a suite of studios, soon to be peopled with a host of forms created by him, and carved in marble by Italian workmen under his direction. "I regret, " he writes to his sister in 1842, "that I have not a hundred hands to keep pace with the workings of the mind. " From that remark may be deduced a valid criticism of Crawford's sculpture. He constantly undertook a greater volume of work than he could direct; nay more, he accepted commissions which were beyond his artistic powers. He did not know this, nor did most of his contemporaries. His friends held his genius to be different from that of others, because of his rapid mental processes and his poetic vision.
This once-famous group, bought in 1840 by the Boston Athen'um, has for modern eyes the characteristic aspect of work done when Thorwaldsen ruled the world of sculpture, and Houdon's sturdy realism was out of fashion. With his marble cloak at his back, with his lyre under his arm, and with Cerberus at his feet, Orpheus strides peering throught Hades. The hero's anatomy is slicked rather than understood; unintentionally, Cerberus is thrice grotesque. Yet in the whole work Crawford is as always an eager, aspiring artist, full of lofty thought. Hawthorne, not as a rule sympathetic toward this sculptor, called it his best production, a view often shared by later critics; and without doubt the group was a stimulus to American art. In quick succession came other idealistic conceptions, generally mythological, allegorical, or anecdotical, but not always sculptural.
Crawford read avidly and widely, with a special liking for the classics in translation, and his approach to his work was from the literary side. To be seen at New York, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art are his "Dancing Girl" (1844), his "Dying Indian Maiden" (1848), and his "Flora" (1853), all in marble. The Corcoran Gallery has his "Peri, " a winged figure, life size. In 1843, a head of "Vesta, " extolled for purity of expression, was a sensation of the season in Crawford's studio, then much frequented by interesting visitors.
Already famous, he carried back to Rome, thereafter his permanent residence, American commissions as well as an American bride. Crawford, who spoke Italian well, had many Italian friends. When the Revolution of 1848 broke out, he joined the Civil Guard as officer, notwithstanding his American citizenship. In 1849, having returned to his country for business reasons, he read by mere chance a newspaper item announcing a competition to obtain for the city of Richmond, Virginia a design for a grandiose equestrian monument to Washington. For years he had thought of this theme. In his room in the Via del Orto di Napoli he had made sketches of it, and now, aided by his prodigious memory, he swiftly struck off a model which won the prize. Ingenuity rather than imagination characterizes this work, with its outposts of allegory framing a central equestrian group of Washington precariously set above a six-nosed plinth bearing statues of six great Virginians. Among these, the "Patrick Henry" and the "Thomas Jefferson, " modeled by Crawford himself, are by far the most interesting. The four other statues, the "Marshall, " "Mason, " "Nelson, " and "Lewis, " were made by Randolph Rogers, who after Crawford's death completed the monument. Hawthorne admits that this Richmond work "will produce a moral effect through its images of illustrious men. " Taken as a single part of a pretentious whole, Crawford's "Patrick Henry" deserves praise from others besides the moralist. In the pose, in the use of the cloak, and above all in the eloquent head, an artist's inspiration is manifest. This is true also of Crawford's "James Otis, " at Mount Auburn, Cambridge, an authentic sculptural conception finely expressed, and of his massive harmony-haunted bronze "Beethoven, " long dominating the old Music Hall in Boston, and by many considered his most poetic work. On winning the Richmond competition, the sculptor hurried back to Rome, there to spend the next six years (1850 - 56) in joyous unremitting labor. He had accepted from the United States Government the invitation to compete for sculptural decorations proposed for the Capitol, and as a result, he had received the award of the most extensive commissions of that period. The works thus entrusted to him were the marble pediment and the bronze doors for the Senate wing, and the bronze "Armed Liberty" capping the dome. Charles E. Fairman states that the only pieces which were executed under the sculptor's personal supervision are the marble figures of "History" and "Justice" over the Senate doors. On the Capitol grounds, Italian workmen carved in Massachusetts marble Crawford's huge pedimental group with its busy unrelated figures planted at each side of the central subject "America, " an America amply draped, secure in her laurel wreaths, eagle, and sun-rays. The theme is "The Past and Present of America. " The sculptor has treated it with a literal pioneer simplicity. He is the modeling story-teller, celebrating the vanquished Indian, the sturdy woodman, the hunter with his spoil, the soldier, the merchant, the mechanic, the teacher, the schoolboy. Many of the figures have power; that of the Indian received great praise both here and abroad. The bronze doors, unfinished at Crawford's death in 1857, were completed years later by Rinehart, and cast at Chicopee, Massachussets They capture attention by their stories, not by their sculpture. The colossal "Armed Liberty, " cast in bronze by Clark Mills (1860), and hoisted atop the dome to the booming of cannon and the hurrahs of the multitude, is a successful creation, simple, solidly based, and cleaving the sky in a good silhouette. Crawford's letters to Secretary of War Jefferson Davis during the progress of the Capitol models reveal Crawford's clear mind, urbane temper, and grasp of practical details.
The spring of 1856 found him once more on native soil, arranging business matters relative to these and other works. In the fall he returned to Rome. On the voyage one eye troubled him and in Rome a marked protrusion of the eyeball rapidly increased. Absorbed in the supervision of his studios, he paid scant attention to medical advice. Finally an explorative operation, afterward unjustly criticized, discovered a malignant growth behind the orbit of the eye; it "encroached on the sources of life itself. " Crawford was sent to Paris for treatment and his wife was summoned. Many months of suffering patiently borne ended in his death in London. The news reached the United States by the same ship that brought his bronze equestrian Washington, cast in Munich for the Richmond monument.
Crawford was tall, handsome, bright-eyed; his portrait medallion shows a head of classic type, with a wholly genuine look of dedication to purpose. He lived his ardent life of forty-four years unassailed by doubts which were afterward to appear on the horizon, doubts as to the value and stability of an American art based largely on imitation of classic forms. Had longer life been granted him, his sensitive temper might have responded valiantly to newer ideals.
Quotes from others about the person
"We know that he was a native of Ireland, and emigrated with his parents at an early age (about seven years) from Ballyshanen, in the county of Donegal, and the writer of this was well acquainted with his father in the city of New York thirty years ago. Give old Ireland her due. " (Albany Knickerbocker)
"His 'Orpheus', an expression of heroic manhood inspired by Genius, had secured to him noble and permanent friendships. " (Thomas Hicks)
In 1843 he became engaged to Louisa Cutler Ward, sister of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and daughter of Samuel Ward, the New York connoisseur and in 1844 he returned to his native city for a marriage which brought happiness to both.
