Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

Bust of Diogenes (3rd century B.C. - The Vatican Museum, Rome.)
https://www.conservapedia.com/Diogenes

 

Fridolina, what a great find. That bust explains the fringe in the cameo

 

I'm still mulling this over. The garment Diogenes is wearing under his classical drapery looks like an anachronism to me, which makes me question their dating of the bust. You could tell me it was Renaissance & I'd have no trouble believing it.

Tried, & failed, to get some better photos of bald guy.



I don't know how he got so damaged, but someone rescued & rehabbed him with an industrial strength mount that is quite heavy. He's a man's man. I still think the striations at the shoulder look like fringe rather than like pleats/tucks, although the Diogenes bust does make an argument for these.

 

I agree with you. I too don’t think the bust is from the 3rd century B.C.
Originally I thought the 3rd century B.C. was stating the time when Diogenes lived but now, after checking it, I know it’s not right either. He lived in the 4th century B.C. I’m also doubting the identity of the bust because Diogenes was famous for hardly wearing any clothes.
So, at the end we are left just with a “fringe”

 

As promised, here is one of the anonymous gentlemen cameos. It is carved by Peter Stephenson in 1848.


As you can see, the gentleman was well loved, as the definition on the top of his head is worn down.

Stephenson called Boston his home in his adult years, his address being listed as 5 1/2 Tremont Row in the 1848 edition of The Boston Directory.

Born in Yorkshire, England in 1823, Stephenson emigrated with his family to America at the age of 4. Following the death of his father in 1835, Stephenson moved to Buffalo NY to live with his brother, who taught him the jewelry and watchmaking trade. He started cutting cameos in 1839 at the age of 16, and continued to do so for the remainder of his life. Aspiring to be a sculptor, he moved to Boston in 1843 where he continued to cut cameos while learning more of sculpting. By 1845, he had amassed enough money from his cameo business that he set sail for Italy and fulfilled his dream of studying antique sculpture.

He returned to Boston in 1847 and struggled to make it as a sculptor, as the current taste was towards European, not American, artists. He died of mental illness in 1861.

 

Here is some other info I found about Peter Stephenson, in an 1863 book entitled "The Employment of Women" by Virginia Penny. Very interesting!

 

Bronwen, here is another gent for your files. The sitter was Nathan Webb.

 

Stephenson did have limited success as a sculptor. His best known work is "The Wounded Indian", completed in 1850, that now resides at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA. The sculpture has an interesting history. If you would like to read about it, check out this link:

https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...b27d4bd66e1365b19/1455630352491/March2016.pdf

 

Do you think it's eroded? Or did Stephenson just get down to where he had too little of the white layer left to give it much definition.

Impressive amount of info you have on him. Died of mental illness. Yeah, they make me crazy too.

 

No, there is plenty of creamy shell layer. I think the person who wore the cameo rubbed it a lot on the top of the head. It it hard to photograph, but the man had a part in his hair and it is worn away quite a bit.

 

Another of his cameos is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:

 

I found him at the American Antiquarian Society site so I would not have to take a screen shot of a screen shot, but the photo is still too blurry.

 

If you read the article about The Wounded Indian, I can see why he might have been struggling with mental illness. From all that I have read about him, he really wanted to be a sculptor, but he never got the success or recognition he desired.

Here is a quote I found:

Because of a shortage of materials and lack of appreciation among Americans for idealized sculpture, Stephenson and other American sculptors in the pre-Civil War period struggled to earn a living. He wrote in 1853: ‘I do not complain; the way to make up for hard luck is to work the more industriously. I have never received a lesson from any one, nor a cent of money that the sweat of my brow did not earn. I have cut between six and seven hundred cameo likenesses, about two thousand fancy designs, and several busts and statues. (2)

(2) Peter Stephenson possibly to Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, January 1853, quoted in Lee, Familiar Sketches of Sculpture and Sculptors, 2 vols. (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Co., 1854), 2: 193. For additional information on Stephenson, see The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564-1860, s.v. ‘Stephenson, Peter.’

 

One of the things I like about my bald guy is the bumps in his skull. So sounds like what you say. The Mrs. wore regularly & tended to finger it.

 

That's where I found the Nathan Webb photo, too.

 

'[W]arm tones of the cameo evident on hair and cheek.' Think it just looks dirty, with maybe a tinge of the next orange layer.

 

I meant I went back to your source to see if the picture would be better, but it's not what you would call museum quality there either. I'll pin Mr. Williams.

 

If he made that many cameos & signed them all so clearly, it is surprising they do not turn up on the market more frequently.

Wonder what 'fancy designs' were? Also cameos, in addition to 'likenesses'? Or some other beast. Decoration in some way?

That he thinks his art production should be rewarded because he has worked so hard at it is already a little wacky.

 

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. I have seen very few over the years. If he had signed them all, there should be several thousands around. I only found 2 more by searching the internet.

One was listed on eBay a few weeks ago and the listing was removed. The listing said it was Patrick Henry, although I don't know how the seller knew that. It is numbered 476 and dated 1848, so made just before mine.


The second one was on Pinterest dated 1844, but it didn't show the back:




My guess is "fancy designs" describe mythological cameos, female busts, flowers, etc., the typical cameo offerings. I interpreted the term "cameo likenesses" as cameo portraits of real people.

I estimated that Stephenson carved approximately 50 cameo portraits annually - the Moses Williams cameo is #336 dated 1845 and mine is #498 dated Feb 1 1848. Also in 1853 he states he had done 600-700 cameo portraits, so if he started in 1839, that also works out to roughly 50 portraits a year. Then add on the fancy ones (2000+), and this guy carved at a very fast rate. And that's in addition to the busts and statues he sculpted.

I would love to locate his book were he listed his subjects. he must have kept a list because each one is numbered.

 

Your guy 498 just became the latest pin to the Victorian gentlemen board. I feel I am documenting both 19th century men's fashions in hair & neck wear and signed work in the likenesses business.