Portrait of Richard Saltonstall Greenough's "Bust of a Young Girl", High Museum, 2012
2012dec_IMG_2355
Though this piece, sculpted in Rome in 1879, is most frequently given as Bust of a Young Woman, sometimes "Bust of a Woman", the Boston Athenaeum gives it as Shakespeare's "Juliet", the subject influenced by the era's popularity of illustrated Shakespeare plays, and displaying, however with "considerable skill", an "unabashed compliance with the contemporary taste for sentimental parlor pieces". That is akin to damning with faint praise, but is true and often to be felt when one stands before such works, which is a problem with sculpture that was popular during the mid to late 19th century, the Victorian era, post Civil War in America, and the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art notes that his style was "typical of the decline of Neo-classical details in post-Civil War American Art".
Born 1819 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Richard was the younger brother of Harvard-educated sculptor Horatio Greenough. Both studied abroad, Richard landing in Rome when he was about eighteen and thereafter splitting his time between America and Italy. When one reads of such circumstances they are often dissociated from the wherewithal so the public is left to first assume talent alone ferrying one into good ports, and if one thinks about it a little more one might assume family money. Wikipedia doesn't explore any background of wealth but a few minutes of research yields they were sons of a David Greenough, a Bostonian real estate dealer and builder, and though the public wouldn't normally associate a Massachusetts family with the Caribbean, David Greenough's father, Thomas, was part owner of a sugar plantation in Antigua. Whenever and however the landed, merchant, sea-faring family divested themselves of their interest in slavery, I don't know, nor do I know how Richard felt about one of the sources of the family's wealth--he may have hated it, he may have simply found it only convenient--if one wonders about merit it's sometimes educational to look at the background of the art that made it into the public eye, which was popular, and came to be considered culturally significant enough to take up real estate in museums.
The sculpture is one that is easily overlooked. I can imagine it sitting on a console in some family mansion's entry hall and children daily passing it by for years giving it less notice than the demanding hands of a clock. But some eccentricity reveals itself when examined closely. While the High Museum's photo record of the sculpture presents a serene face free of ambiguity, and the Boston Athenaeum's "sentimental parlor pieces" slam is on point, the shadow and light in which I caught the full face of the bust molds a more difficult expression, almost languid, touched with a hint of wry dreaminess. If the bust was intended to be of Juliet, rather than that name only assigned after-the-fact by Greenough and having nothing to do with her conception ("I think I'll sell her as Juliet"), it's a rather peculiar depiction of a young woman thinking of her Romeo, both of whom would soon be dead. The portrayal hints at no implicit tragedy. Juliet is less enraptured by her lover than bemused. And she must be Juliet for if she is not then the statue is only some girl dressed up for no reason in a period costume and veil other than to perhaps be evocative of the pre-Raphaelite movement.
We know nothing of the model whose face became that of Juliet.
The bust at the High was a gift of the West Foundation in honor of Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum from 1963 thru 1991, and Michael E. Shapiro, director at the High Museum from 2000 to 2015.
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