CC0 · no rights reserved
Solomon Sturgis
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Solomon Sturges was a successful grain merchant in Chicago. During the Civil War, he organized and financed a large group of Union volunteers called the Sturges Rifles. The sitter’s son, Benjamin Sturges, commissioned this portrait in 1862. As Solomon Sturges was unable to travel to Italy, Hiram Powers worked from photographs and measurements provided by the son. Unfortunately, crossing the Atlantic from Florence to the United States was complicated by the war, and the marble sculpture reached America only a week before Sturges’s death.
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionSubjects
Credit lineSolomon Sturgis. modeled 1862. Hiram Powers, born Woodstock, VT 1805-died Florence, Italy 1873. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase in memory of Ralph Cross Johnson. CC0.
