Few realize today the extraordinary level of enthusiasm with which Americans pursued ownership of sculpture during the last half of the nineteenth century. The reasons for the popularity of parlor sculpture were many and varied, but essentially sprang from the desire of the wealthy and the newly vested middle class for art as an expression of their taste and sophistication. Tastemaker Clarence Cook succinctly stated this impulse when he noted that “there is hardly anything that better rewards [the] trouble [of acquiring it] than a fine cast of a really noble or lovely piece of sculpture.”1
