Photographic studies for a bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes

Bartlett, Truman Howe, 1835-1923 · 1875

Sculptor Truman Howe Bartlett made these photographs and measurements of Holmes at the age of 75 with the intention of making a bust, but the project was abandoned as “the necessary sittings were irksome to the subject.” After Holmes’ death, the City of Boston commissioned a bust to be made, and Bartlett secured the work for one of his former students, Richard Edwin Brooks (1865-1919), and passed over to him the glass negatives of the photographs. The original bronze bust was sculpted in Paris by Brooks in 1896 and presented to the Boston Public Library; a copy was made for the Boston Medical Library and placed in Holmes Hall. Four photographs of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) used as a model for the bronze bust sculpture