Machinist's Apprentice
Emma Stebbins (American, 1815–1882)
c. 1859
- Medium
- Marble
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 74.9 × 29.9 × 22.9 cm (29 1/2 × 11 3/4 × 9 in.)
- Culture
- Rome
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Purchased with funds provided by the Antiquarian Society
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Emma Stebbins’s subject here is a modern one: an industrial worker and his young apprentice. Having studied Classical art, Stebbins applied its vocabulary and material to new ends. The harmonious, balanced forms depict contemporary men engaged in skilled pursuits that wed intellect and physical labor. Like many 19th-century American artists, Stebbins, born in New York, sought greater opportunity abroad, connecting with a community of female sculptors in Rome in the late 1850s. Denied access to life drawing classes in the United States, she learned to model the human form from the art around her in Europe and from a receptive circle of artists.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
