Young America
Artist
Joseph Mozier
(American, 1812-1890)
CultureAmerican
Datemodeled ca. 1857, carved 1868
MediumMarble
DimensionsOverall: 39 3/8 x 14 3/8 x 20 1/4 in. (100 x 36.5 x 51.4 cm)
Credit LineGift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase
Object number86.491
Not on view
DescriptionMarble seated figure of a young boy seated on a barrel.Label TextJoseph Mozier American (1812-1870) Young America, modeled ca. 1857, carved 1868 Marble Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase 86.491 In nineteenth-century America, education was widely identified as a crucial component of democracy, and among the most popular, and morally instructive, childhood genre images was that of a young boy or girl at school or at study. Consider Joseph Mozier's Young America, which shows a little boy getting ready to work on his penmanship, a discipline central to the nineteenth-century educational process. Seated on a barrel, the boy sharpens his writing quill with a pocketknife, while his inkwell sits at his feet. The book poised between his legs is probably his writing journal. Mozier's sculpture responded to America's conviction that its children represented the young nation's future and that education played a critical role in molding them into productive, moral adults. A critic of the day noted that Mozier captured "exactly the quiet thoughtfulness with which a schoolboy mends a pen, with his 'line of copy' in his memory while he thus prepares to write it." Exhibition History"The Ricau Collection," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., February 26 - April 23, 1989. "Behind the Seen: The Chrysler's Hidden Museum," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., October 21, 2005 - February 19, 2006. "Reopening of the Joan P. Brock Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Opening in March of 2008. "Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 21, 2014 - January 18, 2015. Published ReferencesH. Nichols B. Clark, _A Marble Quarry: The James H. Ricau Collection of Sculpture at The Chrysler Museum of Art_ (New York: Hudson Hills Press, Inc., 1997).
