Thomas Cole

Henry Kirke Brown

by 1850 · Marble · The American Wing

Thomas Cole (1801–1848) enjoyed the patronage of influential New Yorkers, including the merchant Jonathan Sturges, who owned this bust by 1850. After the painter’s untimely death, the city’s cultural elite moved quickly to eulogize him. This portrait, blending a highly realistic likeness with a conventional classicizing drape, was probably completed at that time. The striking resemblance to a daguerreotype of Cole by Mathew B. Brady, then on view at the photographer’s Broadway gallery, may be more than a coincidence. Brown would have looked to lifetime likenesses of Cole as an aid in modeling his own.

Artist

Henry Kirke Brown

Date

by 1850

Medium

Marble

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift in memory of Jonathan Sturges by his children, 1895