Paris Presenting the Golden Apple to Venus
Artist
Thomas Crawford
(American, 1814 - 1857)
CultureAmerican
Date1837
MediumMarble
DimensionsOverall: 57 1/2 x 22 1/8 x 18 in. (146.1 x 56.2 x 45.7 cm)
InscribedSigned and dated on the strut: ;
T. Crawford Fect.;
Rome, 1837
Credit LineGift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase
Object number86.463
On View
Chrysler Museum of Art, Gallery 208
Label TextThomas Crawford American, 1814–1857 Paris Presenting the Golden Apple to Venus, modeled and carved 1837 Marble This young man is about to make a tragic mistake. Serving as the judge in a momentous beauty contest, the Trojan prince Paris rejects two worthy contestants—the queen of the gods Juno and the goddess of wisdom Minerva—to proclaim the love goddess Venus the winner. His choice set forth events that would lead to the Trojan War. Thomas Crawford presents Paris as a callow youth about to offer the golden apple of victory to Venus, foolishly unaware that his choice will unleash a world of suffering and death. Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum purchase 86.463 ProvenanceMeredith Calhoun, New Orleans, by 1839; ...; private collection, Pasadena, California, by late 1950s; [Pennington Museum Treasures, Los Angeles, by 1976]; James H. Ricau, Piermont, N.Y., by 1977; Gift of James H. Ricau and Chrysler Museum Purchase, 1986. Exhibition History"A Collection without Walls: Problems in Connoisseurship," Fine Arts Gallery, California State University, Northridge, Calif., October 7 - November 3, 1976; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Calif., 1977-1978. (Exh. cat. no. 13) "The Ricau Collection," The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Va., February 26 - April 23, 1989. "Reopening of the Joan P. Brock Galleries," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., Opening in March of 2008. Published ReferencesGeorge Washington Greene, "Letters From Modern Rome. No. One, To Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oct. 1, 1839," _Knickerbocker_ 15 (June 1840): 489-490. Thomas Crawford, "Mr. Crawford's Works," _Literary World_ (March 2, 1850): 207. Thomas Crawford, "Mr. Crawford's Works," _Boston Evening Transcript_ (February 13, 1850): 4. Thomas Hicks, "Thomas Crawford; His Career, Character And Works. A Eulogy...," Read Before The Century Club in New York, on Tuesday Evening, January 26, 1858 (New York: 1858; reprinted 1865), 31. "Sketchings. The Eulogy of Thomas Crawford," _Crayon_ 5 (March 1858): 87. "The Artists of America. Thomas Crawford," _Crayon_ 7 (February 1860): 47. "Notable Examples of American Art in the Collection of Mrs. H[icks] L[ord]," _Curio_ 1 (November 1887): 100. Robert Gale, _Thomas Crawford: American Sculptor_ (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), 198, no. 62. Sylvania E. Crane, _White Silence: Greenough, Powers and Crawford: American Sculptors in Nineteenth-Century Italy_ (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1972), 284, 454. ISBN: 0870241990 _A Collection without Walls: Problems in Connoisseurship_, exh. cat., Fine Arts Gallery, California State University, Northridge, Calif., 1976, 11-12. "Pennington Museum Treasures," _Apollo_ 104 (September 1976): 41. Lauretta Dimmick, "Thomas Crawford's 'Orpheus': The American 'Apollo Belvedere'," _The American Art Journal_ 19, no. 4 (1987): 47-48. Lauretta Dimmick, edited by Irma B. Jaffe, "Veiled Memories, or, Thomas Crawford in Rome," _Italian Presence in American Art, 1760-1860_ (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), 178-179, 182, fig. 104. ISBN: 0823212491 Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 95, no. 73. ISBN: 0-940744-59-7, 0-940744-62-7 H. Nichols B. Clark, _A Marble Quarry: The James H. Ricau Collection of Sculpture at the Chrysler Museum of Art_, exh. cat., Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., 1997, 147-150, no. 35. ISBN: 1-55595-131-7 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), 55, no. 27. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6
