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Death Mask of Hiram Powers
1873
Thomas Ball
Born: Charlestown, Massachusetts 1819
Died: Montclair, New Jersey 1911
Joel Tanner Hart
Born: Winchester, Kentucky 1810
Died: Florence, Italy 1877
plaster
9 3/8 x 6 1/2 x 9 3/8 in. (23.8 x 16.6 x 23.8 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Museum purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson
1968.155.176
Smithsonian American Art Museum
3rd Floor, Luce Foundation Center
“But now those eyes so wonderful are closed,
Those cunning fingers all to sleep composed;
And I am here to guard his sacred dust,
While he, made perfect, walketh with the just.” Thomas Ball, “To Hiram Powers”
Hiram Powers was a gifted American sculptor who spent much of his life in Italy. His most famous work, Greek Slave, was the first fully nude life-size female sculpture put on public exhibition in the United States. Thomas Ball came to know Powers in Florence and the two developed a close friendship; the artist even had his villa built next to Powers’s home. Ball was deeply affected by the loss of his friend, whose death was due in part to silicosis, a lung condition he acquired from years of inhaling marble particles. He and Joel Tanner Hart, another American sculptor living in Italy, commemorated Powers’s life in poetry and by molding a death mask directly from his face. This tradition had become very popular by the nineteenth century. The artist carefully preserved his friend’s naturally calm expression, suggesting that he met death peacefully.
Keywords
Portrait male - Powers, Hiram
Portrait male - Powers, Hiram - head
State of being - death
sculpture
plaster
About Thomas Ball
Born: Charlestown, Massachusetts 1819 Died: Montclair, New Jersey 1911
About Joel Tanner Hart
Born: Winchester, Kentucky 1810 Died: Florence, Italy 1877
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