Truman Howe Bartlett

(1835 - 1923)

Sculptor of the Bust of Oliver Ames, Jr.

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The following text is compiled by Richard Hill.

A Little Known episode in the life of Truman Howe Bartlett (1835-1923) Lincoln Authority and Sculptor Dr. Kenneth Bernard from a paper read at Unity Church, November15, 1980

While listening to the music upstairs in Unity Church this morning you may have noticed the white marble bust of Oliver Ames at the front, left. There is no name or initial nor any date on the bust. However, the brief sketch of the history of the church by Mary Ames Frothingham (History of Unity Church 1875-1935) contains this statement: “The bust of Oliver Ames, benefactor of the church was made by the American sculptor, Truman Howe Bartlett.” Then, if you chance to go to the Ames Free Library you will find another bust of Oliver Ames on which you may read, “Oliver Ames Jr. Made by T-B No. Easton Dec. 75.” Further, if you stop at the little park on the left on Main Street as you go from the church to the library, you will see another Ames bust on the back of which is inscribed “Oliver Ames 1779-1863) By T-B No. Easton 76.” On the granite pedestal below the bust one reads, “Oliver Ames 1779-1863 to N. Easton 1803.” And on the rear of the pedestal it is stated, ”Memorial erected by his granddaughter Sarah Emily Witherell 1918.”

Thus there are three Ames busts in North Easton fashioned in the 1870’s by Truman H. Bartlett (T-B, his logo, as would be said today, on two of them). Now it so happened that Truman H. Bartlett was a well known sculptor about 100 years ago - he had a long and active life - born during the time of Andrew Jackson and lived through the Harding-Cooldige era! He had studios in New Haven, Hartford, New York, Boston, Paris, and here in North Easton. For twenty years he was an instructor in drawing (modeling) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bartlett was apparently somewhat eccentric, flamboyant, and very strong minded. One gets the impression that he shook things up in artistic circles in Boston, probably because of his strong views on the relationship of character and greatness and physical structure and especially facial characteristics (physiognomy was a favorite word with him). One MIT student referred to Bartlett’s “vivid and reputedly difficult personality” and a contemporary referred to him as “a magnificent old goat and a man of God.” Bartlett was 82 at the time. He was also very generous and always willing to give help and advice to any who called upon him.

Bartlett probably did not endear himself to others in artistic circles by his remark that “I would never have a son of mine get his art education in this country.” True to his word, he had his son (aged nine years) and his wife established in Paris where they lived thereafter. This was in 1874. The son became even more famous than his father, highly respected in both France and America.

More to the point, however, while Bartlett’s claim to fame as a sculptor was limited, he did become a recognized authority on Abraham Lincoln. His statuette of Lincoln (39 inches), the plaster copy of which is at Brown University, and a bronze of which is in the Louis A. Warren Library and Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, seems to have been his main achievement in Lincoln sculpture and Bartlett himself did not have a very high opinion of it, saying: “The statuette makes no pretense whatever as a piece of sculpture or as a likeness of Lincoln. At the time when it was made I knew nothing about either sculpture or Lincoln’s true physiognomy.”

Bartlett then began a serious study of Lincoln’s physical make up, his bodily structure, movements, expressions, habitual stance. He started with a minute examination of the Volk mask, literally measuring every quarter inch of it. Each angle, each curve, each plane had meaning Bartlett discovered and all added up to a unique greatness. When he showed the mask to a bronze founder in Paris, the latter said, “What a beautiful face! Why, it is more beautiful and has more character than that of the Aboe Lanennais, and we think that is the handsomest in France! What an extraordinary construction and what fine form it has!”

A sculptor who tried to model the face in clay exclaimed, “I can do nothing with that head and I doubt if anyone in these times can. The more I studied it the more difficulties I found. The subtle character of its form is beyond belief. There is no face like it.” All of this fortified Bartlett’s belief that such a face reflected the subtlety, the gracefulness, the gentleness and the strength of character within. Then Bartlett studied photographs of the man, and these too revealed to him an extraordinary human being. In the photograph taken by Alexander Gardner on November 15, 1863 he thought the face “impressively proportioned,” adding, “no such eyes were ever seen in mortal head and no such setting was ever given to any other eyes.”

The well known photograph taken the same day, of Lincoln seated at a table on which lay a copy of Edward Everett’s speech to be delivered at Gettysburg that week amazed him when he first saw it in 1874. He said, “It struck me as the most original, easy, dignified and impressive representation of a man in a sitting position I had ever seen.” French sculptors (Framlet, Rodin, Aube) were astonished at Lincoln’s imposing presence. Their reactions were clearly evident in their remarks: “It is a now man; he has tremendous character.” “Everything about this picture is surprisingly suggestive and admirable...no monarch ever sat with more natural grace and beauty...” “...It ranks with the best portraits in any art and it is absolutely unique...”