Carved Stone Heads

Artist/Maker: Unknown

Created: no date

Origin/Purchase: Anglo- or African-American

Materials: probably sandstone

Dimensions: (1): 17.8 × 16.5 × 16.5 (7 × 6 1/2 × 6 1/2 in.); (2): 18.4 × 15.2 (7 1/4 × 6 in.)

Location: Entrance Hall

Provenance: (1): Thomas Jefferson; by purchase to Captain Stockton; acquired by Colonel Wertenbaker of Charlottesville; by gift to the Valentine Museum prior to 1892; (2): Thomas Jefferson; by purchase to Captain Stockton; by descent to John N.C. Stockton; "picked up" by Dr. William C. Dabney; by gift to the Smithsonian Institution in 1875

Historical Notes: These two heads, which Jefferson believed were made by Native Americans, were part of his eclectic collection of art and artifacts in the Entrance Hall. When a visitor to Monticello wrote to Jefferson in 1821 asking the origin of "some curious, I believe, hindu figures in your collection of natl and artt curiosities," Jefferson replied that the figures could not be "Hindoo," but "must be Indian of our own continent as I possess no others."[1]

Jefferson's grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, remembered that one of these heads (now in the Smithsonian) sat on a stand in the Entrance Hall, and that it had been sent to his grandfather from "the West."[2] According to tradition, both heads were sold at the Dispersal Sale in 1827 to Captain Stockton of Albemarle County.

Jefferson displayed at least four "Indian" sculptures in the Entrance Hall. The most remarkable were a pair of bust-length statues of a man and woman, carved in hard stone (now unlocated). Morgan Brown, a lieutenant during the Revolutionary War, sent the statues to Jefferson from Palmyra, Tennessee, in 1799.

They were found on a high bluff on the north side of Cumberland river standing side by side faceing to the East, the tops of their heads about six inches under the surface of the earth; there ware two large mounds a little to the West of them and a quantity of human bones under and near them.[3]

Jefferson displayed the statues on brackets in the Entrance Hall on either side of the busts of Voltaire and Turgot.[4] The busts may have remained at Monticello and been sold with the house to James Barclay in 1831.[5]

- Text from Stein, Worlds, 410

References

  1. ^ Louis Hue Girardin to Jefferson, August 12, 1821, Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society (transcription available at Founders Online); Jefferson to Girardin, August 17, 1821, Thomas Jefferson Letters, American Philosophical Society (transcription available at Founders Online).
  2. ^ As quoted by Dr. William C. Dabney to Dr. S.F. Baird, April 29, 1895, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History.
  3. ^ Morgan Brown to Jefferson, October 1, 1799, in PTJ, 31:195-96. Transcription available at Founders Online.
  4. ^ Catalogue.
  5. ^ A memoir of the Barclay family's time at Monticello notes that "a valuable and highly prized collection of heathen images was given Dr. Plummer of the Presbyterian Board of Missions, and were removed to the rooms of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston." Anna Mary Moon, "Sketches of the Moon and Barclay Families including the Harris, Moorman, Johnson, Appling Families," unpublished manuscript, [1939]. Efforts to locate objects from this collection have been fruitless.

ADDRESS:
931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway
Charlottesville, VA 22902
GENERAL INFORMATION:
(434) 984-9800