thumb|Powers and his autograph,

thumb|right|[[The Greek Slave]]

Hiram Powers (July 29, 1805 – June 27, 1873) was an American neoclassical sculptor. He was one of the first 19th-century American artists to gain an international reputation, largely based on his famous marble sculpture The Greek Slave.

Early life and studies

Powers was born to a farmer on July 29, 1805 in Woodstock, Vermont. When he was 14 years old, his family moved to Ohio, about six miles from Cincinnati, where Powers attended school for about a year At age 17, Powers became an assistant to Luman Watson, Cincinnati's early wooden clockmaker, who owned a clock and organ factory. Using his skill in modeling figures, Powers mastered the construction of the instruments and became the first mechanic in the factory. After studying thoroughly the art of modeling and casting, he moved to Washington, D.C. at the end of 1834.

Powers' most discerning and important private client was Prince Anatole Demidoff, who owned marble full-figure versions of both the Greek Slave and the Fisher Boy and also commissioned from Powers a portrait bust of his wife, the niece of Napoleon and the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. The statues and busts Powers carved for Demidoff were exceptional in the quality and purity of the marble employed.

Powers became a teacher at the Florence Accademia. One of his sons was the sculptor Preston Powers.

Hiram Powers died on June 27, 1873, and is buried, as were three of his children, at the Cimitero Protestante di Porta a' Pinti, Florence (English Cemetery, Florence).

Spiritual descendants of Hiram Powers in Europe included the notorious Futurist designer 'Thayaht,' pseudonym of Ernesto Michahelles and his brother, the notorious neo-metaphysical artist RAM, pseudonym of Ruggero Alfredo Michahelles who was awarded the "Prix Paul Guillaume" in Paris in 1937.

Collections

In 2007 the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio presented the first major exhibition devoted to his work, "Hiram Powers: Genius in Marble". This is the same place of the first solo exhibition of Powers' work in Cincinnati in 1842, when Nicholas Longworth opened his private residence to allow the public to view Power's newest sculpture.

Collections holding works by Hiram Powers include the Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Amon Carter Museum (Texas), the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Art Gallery of the University of Rochester (New York), the Art Institute of Chicago (Illinois), the Berkshire Museum (Massachusetts), the Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama), the Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York City), the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Virginia), the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College (Florida), High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA) Dallas Museum of Art (Texas), Detroit Institute of Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Glencairn Museum (Pennsylvania), the Greenville County Museum of Art (South Carolina), Harvard University Art Museums, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, New York), the McMullen Museum of Art (Massachusetts), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Miami University, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), the Morse Museum of American Art, (Florida), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Newark Museum (New Jersey), the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Portland Museum of Art (Maine), Raby Castle (County Durham, England), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), the United States Senate Art Collection, the University of Cincinnati Galleries (Ohio), the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Vermont State House Fine Arts Collection (Montpelier, Vermont), the White House Collection, (Washington), the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Connecticut), Huddersfield Art Gallery (UK) and Edward Lee McClain High School (Greenfield, Ohio).

References

Further reading

  • David Wilson (2013). Hiram Powers' 'Demidoff' Fisher Boy, London.
  • Art and the empire city: New York, 1825-1861, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Powers (see index)
  • Artcyclopedia: list of sites featuring Powers' work