Richard Morris Hunt

Karl Theodore Bitter

1891, cast 1892 · Bronze · The American Wing

Bitter and the architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) collaborated on the execution of some of the most lavishly decorated American buildings of the early 1890s. After the completion of the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island, owner William K. Vanderbilt commissioned Bitter to carve marble relief portraits of Hunt and Jules Hardouin-Mansart who had designed Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles, a nod to the great French tradition in which Hunt worked. This cast was produced in bronze in 1892, presumably from the original plaster model (1891; Art Institute of Chicago) and descended in the Hunt family.

Artist

Karl Theodore Bitter

Date

1891, cast 1892

Medium

Bronze

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Erving Wolf Foundation, in memory of Diane R. Wolf, 1978