biography of William Henry RINEHART (1825-1874)

Birth place: near Union Bridge, MD

Death place: Rome, Italy

Addresses: Rome, Italy, permanently from 1858

Profession: Sculptor

Studied: apprenticed to a Baltimore firm of stonecutters, c.1846; Maryland Inst. Mechanic Arts, Baltimore, 1851; Florence & Rome Italy, 1855-57

Exhibited: NAD, 1866

Work: Peabody Inst., Baltimore; MMA; Corcoran Gal.Art; outdoor works: doors for the House of Rep. wing, Capitol building, Wash., DC; many statues in Baltimore cemeteries and parks.

Comments: Neoclassical sculptor whose earliest works included a genre piece The Smokers" (for which he won a prize in 1851 at the Md. Inst. of Mechanic Arts) and portrait busts. After studying two years in Italy he returned to Baltimore briefly in 1857 but was back in Italy in 1858. He settled in Rome, remaining there until his death, although he visited the U.S. briefly in 1866 and 1872. A measure of the high esteem in which Rinehart was held can be seen in his selection to complete and execute Thomas Crawford's designs for the bronze doors on the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, DC. (Crawford had died in 1857). Rinehart completed the doors for the Senate wing in 1863-65 (these were cast in 1868); and in 1866 he completed the models for the House of Representatives doors, using Crawford's iconographic program but executing the panels in his own style (these were not cast until 1905). Rinehart was especially praised for his ideal and classical figures, such as his "Clytie" (1872, Peabody Institute), the reliefs "Morning" and "Evening" (1858, Peabody Institute), and "Latona and Her Daughters" (1874, MMA). He produced over twenty versions of his popular "Sleeping Children" between 1861 and 1874 (Corcoran Gallery and elsewhere).

Sources: G&W; William S. Rusk, William Henry Rinehart (Baltimore, 1939); DAB; Gardner, Yankee Stonecutters; Taft, History of American Sculpture; "New Rinehart Letters," Maryland Historical Magazine, XXXI, 225-42. More recently, see Baigell, Dictionary; Craven, Sculpture in America, 288-95."