Florence Freeman

West on the Walls: The 1807 Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by Wendy Bellion, Lea C. Stephenson, and James Kelleher, with Allan McLeod and Kristen Nassif Practicing Art History: Techniques of the Art Historical Observer by Elizabeth Mansfield, with Zhuomin Zhang, Jia Li, John Russell, George S. Young, Catherine Adams, and James Z. Wang The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary: Art and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century by Matthew Rampley, Markian Prokopovych, and Nóra Veszprémi Reviewed by Samuel D. Albert Restless Enterprise: The Art and Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex by Katherine Manthorne Reviewed by Julia K. Dabbs Horatio Greenough and the Form Majestic: The Biography of the Nation’s First Washington Monument by Harry Rand Reviewed by Julia A. Sienkewicz Citation: Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, “Finding Florence Freeman,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 21, no. 1 (Spring 2022), . This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License Fig. 1, Florence Freeman, Sandalphon , before 1870. Marble. National Park Service, Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, Cambridge. Courtesy of National Park Service, Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. Fig. 2, Florence Freeman, Putto and Lamb , ca. 1870s. Marble. Location unknown. Artwork in the public domain; image available from www.liveauctioneers.com . Fig. 3, Florence Freeman, Yule Log Chimneypiece , 1876. Marble. Private Collection, Boston. Photograph by the author. The very fact that Freeman’s known sculpture—a bust, a statuette, and now this chimneypiece—represents such diverse types of objects speaks to her efforts to capture clients in a competitive market and her awareness of the popularity of such domestic ornament among the art-inclined travelers to Rome. The Hemenway chimneypiece is especially interesting in this context. By the late nineteenth century, although stoves were increasingly used to warm parlors and other chambers, concerns about poor air quality and the utilitarian appearance of those stoves kept the better-ventilated and oftentimes visually compelling hearth a focal point in many homes.‍[[12]]( Indeed, it is no coincidence that a popular weekly in the United States addressing household concerns was entitled Hearth and Home (1868–75). With the popularity of Victorian aesthetics, ornamented chimneypieces in marble or other material, purchased at home or abroad, added to the overall décor, even if efforts had to be made to keep them free of dirt from smoke and ash.‍[[13]]( In addition to appealing to late nineteenth-century taste, marble chimneypieces also recalled those seen in Renaissance palaces, which were cited in contemporary guidebooks and served as models for Anglo-American homeowners.‍[[14]]( Even artists who had a wide range of both public and private commissions had no qualms creating chimneypieces, with perhaps the most impressive being the monumental example that Augustus Saint-Gaudens—who lived in Italy for an extended period himself—made for the New York home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II in the early 1880s.‍[[15]]( Mary Hemenway and her husband, the merchant Augustus, were part of Boston’s elite circles, and their home was the setting for a multitude of social events, so Freeman’s chimneypiece, though much less ostentatious than that of Saint-Gaudens, would have been admired by many. Fig. 4, Detail of Florence Freeman, Yule Log Chimneypiece , 1876. Marble. Private Collection, Boston. Photograph by the author. It was certainly the focus of Hemenway’s chamber. The hearth, now and perhaps originally, is lined with sheets of stamped metal with a floral pattern to trap the heat and reflect the light from the flames. But few would have noticed that feature; the bright white marble of the chimneypiece, which measures approximately 51 1/2 inches high and 71 1/2 inches wide, was much more compelling. It is constructed of five low-rel