Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Philosophy (bust of figure on front facade of New York Public Library)
Paul Wayland Bartlett (born New Haven, CT 1865-died Paris, France 1925)
modeled ca. 1915
- Medium
- bronze
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 20 3/8 x 26 5/8 x 11 1/2 in. (51.6 x 67.5 x 29.3 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Armistead Peter III
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), 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 Smithsonian Institution
About this work
The full-length statues Philosophy and Poetry stand above the grand entrance of the New York Public Library. Paul Wayland Bartlett modeled six heroic figures for this commission---History and Philosophy, Romance and Religion, Poetry and Drama---to symbolize the different fields of knowledge represented in the library. These tall sculptures, designed to sit on a one-foot-wide shelf far above ground level, were carved in high relief to exaggerate the features of the figures.
