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Howard Roberts (sculptor) (April 8, 1843 – April 19, 1900) was an American sculptor based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time of the 1876 Centennial Exposition, he was "considered the most accomplished American sculptor."〔Matthew Baigell, ''Dictionary of American Art'', (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 304.〕 But his output was small, his reputation was soon surpassed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and others, and he is now all but forgotten. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the U.S. Capitol. ==Biography== Born into a well-to-do Philadelphia family, Roberts studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under sculptor Joseph A. Bailly. He was an exact contemporary of fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins, and both entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1866, and studied under sculptor Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. Eakins did not consider Roberts a friend, calling him "a rich disagreeable young man from Philadelphia, one who has without any apparent reason seen fit to be my enemy."〔TE to Benjamin Eakins, 13 Oct. 1866, ''The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins'', William Innes Homer, ed. (Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 40.〕 Still, Eakins may have sketched him,〔David Sellin identifies Roberts as the likely subject of an 1867 life study by Eakins. Sellin, p. 21, fig. 16.〕 and Roberts brokered a reconciliation between Eakins and Mary Cassatt.〔Women were not admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts, but Cassatt studied privately with Gérôme, Eakins's principal teacher.〕 Roberts continued his studies under sculptor Charles Gumery, before returning to Philadelphia in 1869. Architect Frank Furness, whose firm won the 1871 design competition for PAFA's new building, sought advice from the two wonder boys from Paris, Roberts and Eakins, when designing its painting and sculpture studios.〔Earl Shinn, "Fine Arts: The Pennsylvania Academy", ''The Nation'' (), vol. 22 (May 4, 1876), pp. 297-98, as quoted in Sellin, p. 37.〕 Roberts's first major work was a marble statuette of ''Hester Prynne'' (1869–72), the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel ''The Scarlet Letter''. He returned to Paris in 1873, taking with him his life-sized plaster model of ''Hypathia'' (heroine of Charles Kingsley's novel of the same name) to be cut in marble. In addition, he began a new work, completing in marble ''La Premiere Pose'' (1873–76),〔(''La Premiere Pose'' ), from Flickr.〕 and brought it back to Philadelphia to be exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. He was awarded a gold medal for the statue. As the critic William J. Clark described it: ''In the United States Department there was no piece of sculpture which was marked by such high technical qualities as the ''Premiere Pose'' of Howard Roberts. ... The subject is a young woman preparing to pose undraped, for the first time, in a painter's studio, and the sculptor has indicated his own appreciation of the fact that the situation has both a comic and a tragic side, by the grotesque comic and tragic masks which he has added as decorations to the uprights of the back of the chair. ... The workmanship, however, is so fine throughout that it would be an almost endless task to attempt a detailed analysis of it.''〔William J. Clark, ''Philadelphia Evening Telegraph'', February 21, 1876, as quoted in Sellin, pp. 30-31.〕 Roberts helped turn American tastes away from Italianate Neo-Classicism to French Beaux-Arts realism. He was the unanimous choice in an 1877-78 national design competition for a statue to represent Pennsylvania in the U.S. Capitol. Rather than creating a heroic formal work, he modeled a young Robert Fulton dressed in casual clothes, deep in thought, contemplating the possibilities of the steamboat model he holds in his lap:
This exactly paralleled what Thomas Eakins was doing in his paintings of William Rush and His Model — portraying the artistic/intellectual process of the sculptor/inventor, rather than celebrating the finished work. The Fulton statue was installed in Statuary Hall in 1883. Roberts carved numerous portrait busts and statuettes, but no other major sculptures are known. He closed his Philadelphia studio in 1894, and returned to Paris, where he died in 1900. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Howard Roberts (sculptor)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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