Spiritual Currents and Manifest Destiny in the Art of Hiram Powers - Critical Essay

(33.) Hiram Powers, quoted in Bellows, June 26, 1869, 402.

(34.) Powers's religious orientation early in life is suggested by his remark that his mother was a Universalist and his father did not talk about the subject; see Bellows, Aug. 7, 1869, 595.

(35.) Bellows, Sept. 11, 1869, 107. Mention of the relationship between disembodied hands in seances and Powers's sculpture of body parts is made in Reynolds, Hiram Powers (as in n. 5), 122.

(36.) Powers did plan to do a statue of Swedenborg for the New Jerusalem Church; see Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1867), 292.

(37.) The spiritualist content of Harriet Hosmer's Puck (1856, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) did not preclude a more conventional, Shakespearean reading of this piece; see Charles Colbert, "Harriet Hosmer and Spiritualism," American Art 10 (Fall 1996): 35-39. Powers made several statues of Eve (for example, Eve Tempted, first version, 1839-42, marble, 1873, National Museum of American Art), which could be viewed as expressions of traditional Christian faith or as illustrations of Swedenborg's precepts on Genesis. There is no explicit iconographic detail that links them with the latter to the exclusion of the former. For the temptations of Eve, see Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcane Caclestia (London: Swedenborg Society, 1967), vol 1,146-50.

(38.) Hiram Powers, quoted in Charles Edwards Lester, The Artist, the Merchant, and the Statesman. of the Age of the Medici. and of Our Own Times (NewYork: Paine and Burgess, 1845), vol. 1, 88.

(39.) Hiram Powers to Rev. Philip Slaughter, Apr. 21, 1852, in Wunder, vol. 2, 146.

(40.) Hiram Powers, quoted in Lester (as in n. 38), vol. 1, 89.

(41.) Tuckerman (as in n. 36), 286.

(42.) For more on the expression of religious sentiments in Cole's art, see Alan Wallach, "Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire," in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, by William H. Truettner, Alan Wallach, at al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 99.

(43.) Hiram Powers to jeb Cook, Aug. 12, 1850, AAA, 1134/1395.

(44.) For an account of the circumstances surrounding the death of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, see Wunder, vol. 1, 200-203.

(45.) Hiram Powers to "Dear Cousin" [John P. Richardson], Apr. 4, 1858, AAA, 1139/731. For the loss of Powers's Calhoun, see Wunder, vol. 1, 200-203.

(46.) Hiram Powers to "My Dear Friend," Apr. 5, 1855, AAA, 1137/836.

(47.) Discussions of the tour of the Greek Slave will be found in Samuel A. Robertson and William H, Gerdts, "The Greek Slave," Museum 17 (Winter-Spring 1965): 5-19; Linda Hyman, "The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers: High Art as Popular Culture," Art Journal 36 (Spring 1976): 216-33; Wunder, vol. 1, 207-74; and Colbert, 282-315.

(48.) Hiram Powers to Thomas Powers, Dee. 31, 1849, AAA, 1134/1723-29. See also Reynolds, "'Unveiled Soul'" (as in n. 5), 412; and Wunder, vol. 1, 208. Wunder also relates this account to Powers's statue of Eve; see Wunder, vol. 1, 181.