Philip Kearny (Brown)

Philip Kearny is an 1888 bronze sculpture of Philip Kearny by Henry Kirke Brown, installed in the United States Capitol, in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. It is one of two statues donated by the state of New Jersey.[1]

Philip Kearny
ArtistHenry Kirke Brown
SubjectPhilip Kearny

Description and history

The statue portrays Kearny dressed in the uniform of a Civil War general, holding a sword in his right hand. His coat draped over his left shoulder covers the fact that his left arn had been amputated following the Battle of Churubusco.[2]

Kearny, described by William Walter Phelps while accepting the statue into the collection on August 21, 1888, called Kearny "the perfect soldier . . .brave as a lion, tender as a woman."[3]

Although the statue entered the Hall in 1888 it is dated "1873" on the base.[4]

There are at least three other casting of the statue. one was done in 1901 and is located in Kearny Park, Muskegon, Michigan.[5] Another was dedicated in 1880 in Trenton, New Jersey and then relocated several times, finally to Military Park in Newark, New Jersey. The Archives of American Art traced the some what complicated history of the statue. "In March 1868, the New Jersey legislature approved funding for a bronze portrait of Major General Philip Kearny to be placed in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. The cast was finished in 1873, but on its way to Washington, the statue was diverted to the State House in Trenton where it ended up in an obscure hallway. In 1880, the mistake was discovered and concerned citizens of Newark petitioned to relocate the sculpture to its original destination in Statuary Hall, and if not there, then to a suitable location in Newark where Kearney was born and raised. The petition was successful and in 1880, the statue was installed to Newark's Military Park on a Quincy granite base designed by Henry Kirke Brown and architect Paul G. Botticher to resemble an embankment in a war fortification."[6] In that same year the statue accepted into the Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. The statue had somehow become two.

In 1993, the Newark statue was knocked of its base and in the process of restoring it a cast was taken and another version of the work was created, this one placed in Kearny, New Jersey, a town named after the general and dedicated on September 10, 1993.[7][8]

A bill to replace the statue with one of suffragist Alice Paul passed the state Senate on February 10, 2020.[9]

References
  1. Architect of the Capitol Under the Direction of the Joint Committee on the Library, Compilation of Works of Art and Other Objects in the United States Capitol, United States Government Printing Office, Washington 1965 p. 211
  2. Viles, Philip H., National Statuary Hall: Guidebook for a Walking Tour, Published by Philip H. Viles, Tulsa, OK, 1997 p. 101
  3. Murdock, Myrtle Chaney, National Statuary Hall in the Nation’s Capitol, Monumental Press, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1955 pp. 56–57
  4. Brown, Henry Kirke (1 March 1873). "Philip Kearny" – via siris-artinventories.si.edu Library Catalog.
  5. Brown, Henry Kirke (1 March 1873). "Kearny Monument" – via siris-artinventories.si.edu Library Catalog.
  6. Brown, Henry Kirke (1 March 1873). "Philip Kearny" – via siris-artinventories.si.edu Library Catalog.
  7. Mead, Larkin Goldsmith (1 March 1967). "Ethan Allen" – via siris-artinventories.si.edu Library Catalog.
  8. Unknown; Brown, Henry Kirke. "Philip Kearny" – via siris-artinventories.si.edu Library Catalog.
  9. D'Auria, Peter (2020-02-10). "Bill to replace Kearny statue at U.S. Capitol passes N.J. Senate, angering residents". NJ.com. Retrieved 2020-02-13.
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