Horatio Greenough

Horatio Greenough , 1805-52, American sculptor and writer, b. Boston, grad. Harvard, 1824, and studied in Italy under Thorvaldsen. A protégé of Washington Allston, he was a man of ideas in advance of his time. His colossal statue of Washington, commissioned for the Capitol, was too heavy for the floor and was set up on the grounds; it was later placed in the Smithsonian Institution. The Rescue is on the east stairway of the Capitol. Greenough is admired now for his writings, in which he heralded the modern concept of functionalism in architecture.

Bibliography: See his Travels, Observations, and Experiences of a Yankee Stonecutter (1852); his letters (ed. by N. Wright, 1972); his collected writings, Form and Function (1958).

Greenough, Horatio (1805–52), Boston born sculptor, set the vogue for study in Italy. In his life there (1828–51) he was influenced toward classical forms and sentimental attitudes. His huge, half‐nude statue of Washington as an Olympian god was the first monumental marble by an American. It was too heavy for its place under the Capitol dome, and it was scorned by the public. His reputation as a sculptor is now slight but he is praised for his functional concept of art, set forth in Aesthetics in Washington (1851) and other writings.

Greenough, Horatio (1805–52). American Neoclassical sculptor who spent the greater part of his working life in Italy (1825–6, 1828–51). He is sometimes described as the first professional American sculptor and his major work, the colossal marble figure of George Washington (1833–41), was the first important state commission given to an American sculptor. It was originally placed in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, but is now in the National Museum of American History. The seated figure is based on Phidias' celebrated statue of Zeus at Olympia, but the head follows Houdon's portrait of Washington—an uneasy mixture of idealism and naturalism. Greenough's work is in general rather uninspiring, and the essays he wrote on art in the final decade of his life are considered more interesting; his views on architecture have been claimed as precursors of modern functionalism. His brother, Richard Saltonstall Greenough (1819–1904), was also a sculptor, best known for his statue of Benjamin Franklin (1855) outside Boston City Hall.