A detailed account of the life and career of Hiram Powers (1805-73), the first American-born sculptor to win international fame. Drawing mainly on his correspondence, volume one focuses on the artist's life; and volume two consists of a catalogue of his work and contains more than 225 illustrations. Corrects numerous errors of fact that have been perpetuated about Powers.

Hiram Powers balanced the persona of an American Lysippus--an untutored, unsophisticated genius--with the private identity as a calculating businessman, to become the most successful sculptor of the mid-nineteenth century. His busts became the physical expression of Powers' dual identity, balancing narrative sentimentality with artistry, and prurience with purity. Together, Hiram Powers and his ideal busts represent a force of artistic popularity that had not been seen in the United States. To see how Hiram Powers worked within that understanding of his own society, this paper closely examines three of his ideal busts, Ginevra, The Greek Slave, and Proserpine and investigates how Powers' understanding of his customers, the desirability of his work, and the marketability of his own image led to his financial as well as his artistic success. By presenting himself as an untainted, quintessentially American artist, while simultaneously presenting art which conformed to the highest traditional standards of European art, Powers positioned himself between the unspoken cravings of his American audience and the art world. While Powers' ideal female busts, especially Ginevra, Proserpine, and The Greek Slave were not American subjects, Powers' audience, because they were viewing the works with a previous knowledge of their genesis, read them as being inherently American and modern.