Photograph by Ed Pollard, Hasselblad H4D50 - 2014.

Mary Howitt

Artist Margaret Foley (American, 1827 - 1877)

Date1875

MediumCarrara marble

Dimensions2 x 23 in. (5.1 x 58.4 cm)

ClassificationsAmerican art

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Object number2013.11

Collections

American Art before 1945

On View

On view

DescriptionThis is a circular marble plaque, 23 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep, with a relief portrait carved on the recto. The portrait shows an elderly woman facing left. She wears a lace shawl over the back half of her head, extending down over her shoulders and clasped at her neck with a round brooch. The lace shawl is decorated with a pattern of vines, leaves, and flowers, with circular holes drilled throughout to give its surface a complex texture, a mixture of low and high relief. The center of the medallion is carved out to form a well roughly 1 inch deep, containing the portrait relief, within an outer frame border roughly 1 7/8 inches wide. The background area between the figure and border is smooth and flat. Along the lower rim of the frame, a raised carved banner/ribbon bears in raised letters the name of the sitter “MARY HOWITT.” Between the border and sitter’s neck, the artist’s name and date are incised: “MARGARET FOLEY. SC. ROMA 1875.” On the face of the brooch is carved “ROMA.” The verso is flat, with metal brackets and wires affixed as a hanging apparatus. The brackets extend just around the outer edge of the frame to secure the marble. In the upper center region of the verso is a lightened discolored region where a label was once attached. This paper label, torn and with some areas missing, now accompanies the object in a separate envelope. On it appears handwritten in brown ink: “Likening of / “Mary Howitt” / Property of Artist / F. M. Foley / Price in value of gold / $500 / 53 Margutta Rome.”
Label TextMargaret Foley American, 1827–1877 Mary Howitt, 1875 Marble An abundance of detail brings visual energy to Margaret Foley’s medallion portrait of her friend, the English poet Mary Howitt (1799–1888). Self-taught in the art of carving, Foley received high praise for the sensitivity of her relief sculptures, and she exhibited this plaque in the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Its complicated workmanship, particularly in the lace shawl, demonstrates a shift in sculptural taste away from the smooth lines of Neoclassicism in favor of complexity and pattern. Like other talented American women, Foley moved to Italy for greater professional and social freedom. Here she included the word ROMA both in the signature and on the sitter’s necklace. Museum purchase 2013.11