“Harriet Beecher Stowe,” by Susan Durant

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

Susan Durant

Marble

1853

Photogravure frontispiece to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Life and Letters (1898)

Stowe's daughter recorded the studio visit in her biography of her mother. See commentary below.

Image and commentary added by Jacqueline Banerjee. Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.

Used by kind permission of Terry Heller and the editors of the Sarah Orne Jewett Text Project.

Mrs Stowe's daughter wrote:

I well remember going with my mother for her sittings at the studio. The dim light, the marble dust and chippings covering the floor, the clink, clink of the chisels, and Miss Durant, tall, handsome, and animated before the mound of clay which day” by day grew into a resemblance to my mother, and the Baron de Triqueti coming and going with kindly smiling face and friendly words, and my gentle little mother smiling, happy, and unconscious as a child. It all comes back to me like a dream — those far away, pleasant, happy days.... The bust, after it was finished, was taken to London, where I saw it, and thought it very beautiful and an excellent likeness of my mother at forty-six, — her age when it was taken. [Fields 207]

Bibliography

Fields, Annie, ed. Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1898. Internet Archive. Contributed by Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. Web. 22 May 2016.

Last modified 22 May 2016