Beethoven, 1860
Bronze
18 7/8 x 11 1/8 x 12 in
Biography
William Wetmore Story was born in 1819 in Boston, Massachusetts to US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story and his wife. William Story began to follow in his father’s path and studied at Harvard University and went on to start a career as a lawyer. He wrote several important books on law when his father died in 1845.
Justice Joseph Story’s death began to shift his son’s focus from law to sculpting. William Story was an amateur sculptor, but upon the death of his father when a memorial statue of Justice Joseph Story was planned he requested and received the commission. He decided to move to Italy and lived in Rome from 1848 to 1849 in order to begin work on the memorial sculpture. Before the work was finished William Story returned to Boston in 1855 where he practiced law again for a short time before returning to Italy in 1856, where he remained for the rest of his life. Story’s return to Italy also coincided with his decision to give up practicing law and become a full-time sculptor. Story completed the memorial sculpture of his father in 1853 and it is currently in the Cambridge Mount auburn Cemetery.
Story and his wife lived in an apartment in the Palazzo Barberini and his studio was a recommended stop for any Americans on the Great Tour of Europe. While they lived in Italy their friends included Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Makepeace Thackeray.
Story’s sculptures were influenced by his literary interests and interest in classical subjects. A series of heroic women from antiquity including, Cleopatra, The Libyan Sibyl, and Medea were well received during his lifetime and models of these sculptures eventually found their way into museum collections.
William Story died in Vallombrosa, Italy in 1895. His sculpture’s are in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions including:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
