William Wetmore Story
William Wetmore Story (1819-1895) was a notable American sculptor and writer, best recognized for his significant contributions to sculpture during the late 19th century. Born in Salem, Massachusetts, he initially pursued a career in law after graduating from Harvard College. However, a shift occurred when he traveled to Italy to create a tomb sculpture for his father, where he became deeply embedded in the expatriate community of artists and writers. His social circle included prominent figures such as Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and James Russell Lowell.
Though he began writing poetry in the 1840s, it was his time in Italy that helped him develop a more distinctive literary voice, producing poetry, essays, and notable works such as "Roba di Roma," which offered keen insights into expatriate life. Story's engagement with the American Civil War is exemplified in his letters to the London Daily News, later compiled in "The American Question." His artistic and literary endeavors were influenced by the romantic aesthetic of the American Renaissance, despite his ambivalence toward American identity. Story's sculptures, including the famed "Cleopatra," remain respected in the art world today. He passed away in 1895, leaving behind a legacy intertwined with both literary and sculptural accomplishments.
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Subject Terms
William Wetmore Story
Fine Artist
- Born: February 19, 1819
- Birthplace: Salem, Massachusetts
- Died: October 7, 1895
- Place of death: Vallombrosa, Italy
Biography
Prolific American sculptor and writer William Wetmore Story produced a large corpus of poetry, essays, and novels during his lifetime, as well as many significant works of sculpture, for which he is best remembered. As part of the American expatriate community in Italy during the latter part of the nineteenth century, his social circle included luminaries such as Margaret Fuller, James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and William Cullen Bryant. Story and his wife were particularly close to Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who were their neighbors in Rome and who significantly influenced and patronized Story’s writing.
The son of an eminent New England jurist, Story was born in 1819 in Salem, Massachusetts, and grew up in Cambridge. He attended Harvard College, receiving a law degree in 1840, after which he began practicing and writing about law. When he was commissioned to sculpt a statue for his father’s tomb in 1845, Story travelled to Italy, meeting the group of expatriate artists and writers who would befriend him over several subsequent visits to the Continent, where he eventually settled permanently in 1856. By 1862, Story had received significant public recognition as a sculptor; his piece Cleopatra is described in detail in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Marble Faun.
Although Story dabbled in poetry during the 1840’s, his work from that period was uninspired, and the influence of his European compatriots was indispensable in shaping his literary voice. His decision to relocate to Italy and abandon his successful law practice in Boston was not an easy one. Henry James’s 1903 biography of Story quotes at length from his letters regarding the emotional difficulty of choosing between his artistic aspirations and his stable professional career.
The poetry and essays Story eventually produced in Italy are admirable; he demonstrated mastery of a wide range of poetic forms and was an incisive observer both of the expatriate life— which he described in detail in the very popular “Roba di Roma” series of essays—and of politics at home. In 1861, he penned a letter series for the London Daily News attempting to motivate British sentiment in support of the Union cause in the American Civil War. Republished in 1862 as The American Question, these letters mark the most significant of his four major nonfiction works, the other four of which are essays on art criticism and theory.
In all of his writing, Story deployed the romantic aesthetic that motivated many artists of the day and characterized the dominant literary movement in America before the Civil War, which was known as the American Renaissance and associated with writers including both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Because Story was not particularly concerned either in sculpture or in his writing with American identity, he is not generally considered a significant part of that movement. Nonetheless, his travel essays in particular were influential in breaking up American provincialism toward the end of the nineteenth century, and his sculptures are widely respected to this day. Both Hawthorne, who considered him a great personal friend, and Henry James were supporters of his work and wrote biographies of him.
Story died at his daughter’s home in Vallombrosa in 1895, the year after losing his wife of many years, and was buried beside her in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.