Thomas Crawford 1813-1857

Estate of John Ward
James Lenox, New York (purchased from the above), March 1875
Gift to the present owner from the above, 1876

Baltimore, Maryland, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The White Marmorean Flock: Neoclassical White Marble Sculpture in America, May-September 1969

Henry T. Tuckerman, The Character Portraits of Washington, New York, 1859, p. 81 
Ernest Harms, "A Rediscovered Washington Portrait," Antiques, February 1953, p. 135
Antiques, January 1954
Ernest Harms, "The Real Features of George Washington," Art in America, December 1955, pp. 46-7
Thomas B. Brumbaugh, "The Evolution of Crawford's Washington," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1962, p. 13
Robert L. Gale, Thomas Crawford: American Sculptor, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1964, pp. 197, 215

The present portrait bust of George Washington by Thomas Crawford is one of three known versions; the other two are currently in the collections of the New York Historical Society and the Museum of Our National History, Lexington, Massachusetts.  According to The New York Public Library, it is based on the life portrait of Washington made by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon at Mount Vernon in 1785.  In 1859, Henry T. Tuckerman praised this particular version: “The latest and most triumphant attempt to embody and illustrate the features, form, and character of Washington in statuary, was made by the late American sculptor – Thomas Crawford.  How well he studied, and how adequately he reproduced the head of his illustrious subject, may be realized by a careful examination of the noble and expressive marble bust of Washington from his chisel, now in the possession of John Ward, Esq. of New York.” (The Character and Portraits of Washington, New York, p. 81).  Critic Ernest Harms adds, “There can be no doubt that, from the sources available to him, Thomas Crawford arrived at the highest degree of similarity to the features of George Washington which any artist has achieved” (“The Real Features of George Washington,” Art in America, 1955, p. 56). 

One of America’s foremost neoclassical sculptors, Crawford was born in New York City in 1813.  He began his career at the age of nineteen as an apprentice at the stone-cutting firm of Frazee and Launitz, the leading monument makers of the day.  Frazee was one of the first American artists to work successfully in the classical tradition and Launitz had studied under the well-known Danish sculptor Bertel Thorwaldsen.  After three years at the firm, Crawford, like many of his contemporaries, sought European training and he departed for Rome in May of 1835.  He arrived at the studio of Thorwaldsen with a letter of introduction from Launitz and soon thereafter became the Danish sculptor’s only American student.  Thorwaldsen’s studio was a popular destination for Americans touring Europe and as Crawford’s skill became increasingly apparent, he began to receive numerous commissions for portrait busts.  Throughout his career, Crawford also created allegorical works and large-scale public monuments, most notably The Progress of American Civilization (1853-63), now in the Senate Wing of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.