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Darwin Correspondence Project

2.17 Montford, statuette

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Horace Montford reproduced the design of his seated statue of Darwin at Shrewsbury (1897) as a small bronze statuette. He lent the ‘original cast’ of the statuette to the Darwin Centenary exhibition at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in the summer of 1909, and according to Freeman’s Darwin Companion, copies were also on sale in that year. One was acquired in unknown circumstances by the American Darwin enthusiast Charles Finney Cox. It was not among Cox’s loans to the Darwin exhibition in the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in spring 1909, so he may have acquired it subsequently, probably direct from the sculptor. After Cox’s death in 1912, the statuette passed with the rest of his collection of Darwiniana to the New York Botanical Garden, and it is on display in the Rare Books Room of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library there. It is signed on the back, ‘H. Montford’.  

  • physical location New York Botanical Garden 

  • accession or collection number not given 

  • copyright holder New York Botanical Garden 

  • originator of image Horace Montford 

  • date of creation between 1897 and 1909 

  • computer-readable date 1897-08-01 to 1909-04-30 

  • medium and material bronze statuette, on a modern base 

  • references and bibliography A.E. Shipley and J.C. Simpson (eds), Darwin Centenary: The Portraits, Prints and Writings of Charles Robert Darwin, exhibited at Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1909 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), pp. ii, 21, no. 109. Finding guide to the Charles Finney Cox papers in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden, series 13, ‘Artwork’. J. van Wyhe, ‘Iconography’, p. 116.  


 

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