New photography by Ed Pollard captured with a digital camera-2008.

The Willing Captive

Artist Chauncey Bradley Ives (American, 1810 - 1894)

CultureAmerican

Datemodeled ca. 1862-68, carved 1871

MediumMarble

DimensionsOverall: 73 x 64 3/8 x 27 5/8 in. (185.4 x 163.5 x 70.2 cm)

InscribedInscribed on the base, at right:; C. B. IVES; FECIT; ROMÆ 1871

Credit LineGift of James H. Ricau and museum purchase

Object number86.480

On View

Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 211

Label TextChauncey Bradley Ives American, 1810—1894 The Willing Captive, modeled ca. 1862-68, carved 1871 Marble This imposing multi-figure composition was modeled in Rome where Chauncey Bradley Ives had maintained a studio since 1844. The subject presents an amalgam of colonial-era stories of conflict and exchange between settlers and Native Americans. Here, the young girl on the right must choose between her Euro-American mother kneeling on the left and her Native American husband. Though the sculpture appeals heavily to romantic sentiment typical of the Victorian period, the semi-nude figures demonstrate Ives’s thorough study of classical statuary and embrace of neoclassical style. Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase 86.480 ProvenancePeter C. Cornell, Brooklyn, N.Y.; ...; West African missionaries, Pearl River, N.J.; James H. Ricau, Piermont, N.Y., by ca. 1983; Gift of James H. Ricau and Chrysler Museum of Art Purchase, 1986. Exhibition History"The Ricau Collection," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., February 26 - April 23, 1989. Published ReferencesHenry T. Tuckerman, _Book of the Artists_ (New York: J. F. Carr, 1867), 583. "New Statue for Newark: Dr. J. Ackerman Coles's Generous Gift to the City," _Sentinel of Freedom_ (September 10, 1895), 8. William Todd, "Chauncey Bradley Ives, Sculptor," _Publications of the Hamden Historical Society_ (1938), 55. William H. Gerdts, "The Marble Savage," _Art in America_ 62 (July 1974): 68. Joy S. Kasson, _Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 98-100. ISBN: 0300045964 H. 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), 107-109, no. 22. ISBN: 1555951317 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 78-79, no. 43. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6