Thomas Waldo Story Furniture

19th century classical sculpture of Hermes by American sculptor Thomas Waldo Story. Signed "Waldo Story Rome" and dated 1886. Slightly larger than life size. Thomas Waldo Story: The son of sculptor and writer-poet William Wetmore Story, Thomas Story became a sculptor in Neo-Classical style of figure and commemorative sculpture. Among his sculpture for which he is noted is a statue of Sir William Vernon Harcourt in the House of Commons in London; the bronze door at the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City; and a community drinking fountain in Hopedale, Massachusetts, commissioned by General William F. Draper, Ambassador to Italy with ties to Hopedale. Thomas Story, born in Rome, was from a distinguished family, which included a paternal grandfather, Joseph Story, who was a judge of the United States Supreme Court. From the time of his birth, Thomas Story lived a privileged existence surrounded by material splendor and intellectual, talented and aristocratic persons. During his childhood with his parents, his father, William Wetmore Story, and his mother, Emelyn, from a prominent Cambridge, Massachusetts family named Eldredge, lived in Rome, from the 1850s, where they leased the Barberini Palace , one of the more famous historical structures in Rome, built by Pope Urban VIII in 1660. The family also spent time in Florence and summer months in Sienna with their good friend and poet, Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With the Brownings according to Robert in his poetry, the families shared the sadness of death of children, as the Brownings had lost a young daughter and the Storys had lost a son, Joseph Story, born in 1847 and died in 1853, two years before the birth of Thomas. During Thomas' growing up years, the Wetmore home at the Palace became a center for Americans visiting Rome as well as English aristocrats such as the Marlboroughs of Blenheim and Astors at Cliveden. Visiting were Americans of intellectual literary and artistic circles such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, Thomas Crawford...