A Rare Signed Alexander Galt Sculptural Bust

(Virginia, 1827-1863)

A Bacchante, wearing a grapevine wreath, circa 1860, marble, signed with conjoined last name "GALT", carved marble, 23-3/4 x 16-1/2 x 8-3/4 in.

Note: Alexander Galt Jr. was born in Norfolk, Virginia on January 26, 1827. The son of a postmaster and one of an even ten children, Galt's artistic ability and interest in sculpture manifested early in his life, the young artist carving pieces of chalk and the marbles he'd use to play games with his school friends. Apprenticed to a Norfolk artist, one M. Schisano, he would graduate from chalk to alabaster and then to shell, carving cameos to be worn as jewelry by Norfolk’s most fashionable. As at the time, American sculptors were hard-pressed to find any objects of study that weren't memorials in graveyards and cemeteries, or waxwork reproductions, so to further his education Galt traveled to Italy, fulfilling a long-held boyhood dream by studying the works masters in the galleries and academies of Florence.

This trip abroad proved formative, meeting en route both other American artists, and President James K. Polk, and once there, studying with both his own countrymen and up-and-coming Italian artists. It was this crop of American artists that helped, over the course of a century, entrench the American style as an acceptable presence within the broader Western body of sculpture. Two of the pieces Galt executed during this time abroad was Virginia, an allegory of his home state, and Bacchante, a classical subject perhaps chosen as a result of his education. Galt would return home and use family contacts to secure commissions, and the subsequent years proved both creatively fruitful and financially successful. Once more he returned to Florence, where he would fulfill a $10,000 commission (just under $380,000 today) for the Virginia General Assembly to carve a life size marble statue of Thomas Jefferson, which is currently housed in the University of Virginia.

Galt would return to the states on the eve of the Civil War, during which he remained loyal to his state and served as a member of the staff of Virginia governor John Letcher, though he never let his passion for sculpture subside and planned to return his attention to the field more fully once the war concluded. Tragically, however, when visiting the camp of General Stonewall Jackson to make studies for a sculpture of the man, he contracted smallpox and died shortly after in Richmond in 1863. He was 36 years old. Although his career ended prematurely, and he likely never reached the pinnacle of his craft, his work went on to inspire other American sculptors, including three notable fellow Virginians: Moses Jacob Ezekiel, William Couper, and Edward Virginius Valentine.

For another example of this bust see the one held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, given by William Corcoran in 1873 (https://www.nga.gov/artworks/176663-bacchante) .