William Henry Rinehart (American, 1825-1874)
Leander, modeled c. 1859, carved c. 1870
Marble, 42-3/4 x 16-5/8 x 15-1/4 inches
Gift of James H. Ricau and Museum Purchase

The American neoclassical movement lasted roughly fifty years, from 1825 to 1875, and among the finest sculptors who were active during its creative apogee was William Henry Rinehart.

Like so many of his expatriate American colleagues (see objects 86.463, 86.480, 86.481), Rinehart centered his career in Rome, where he eventually settled in 1858. An inveterate traveler, he left Italy often for trips to Paris and London and visits home to the United States. A native of Maryland, he made many of these trips at the behest of American patrons like the Baltimore art collector William T. Walters. Rinehart had already attracted the attention of Walters and other businessmen while an apprentice in the Baltimore stonecutting firm of Baughman & Bevan. They encouraged his first trips to Italy, in 1855 and 1858, and helped to build his moneyed clientele of American industrialists, bankers, and railroad tycoons.

American neoclassical sculptors produced a remarkable number of pendant works, though few of these pairs remain together today. Rinehart created his marble, half-life-size pendants of Hero and Leander over several years. He began work on both around 1859, soon after he settled in Rome, perfecting their designs with the traditional preliminary steps of clay sketch and plaster model. However, while Leander was first executed in marble in 1860, Hero was not translated into that medium until 1866. Rinehart's idealized images of male and female beauty garnered much praise. Hero, in particular, proved popular among collectors; at least nine replicas were produced. Far fewer versions of Leander can be traced, and today pendant groupings of the two works are exceedingly rare. The only other known set besides the Chrysler's is in the Newark Museum (New Jersey).

Rinehart's pendants were inspired by the tragic love story of Hero and Leander, recounted in Ovid's Heroides and other classical literary sources. Hero, a beautiful priestess of Aphrodite, resided on the west side of the Hellespont; her lover, Leander, on the east. Each evening Leander would swim across the Hellespont to be with his beloved. One stormy night the light that guided him failed, and Leander lost his way and drowned. Overcome with grief, Hero threw herself into the sea and met the same fate. The story was illustrated often by artists of the period, particularly after Lord Byron's celebrated swim of the Hellespont in 1810 in imitation of the mythic Leander. Rinehart's works show Leander disrobing in preparation for his evening swim, and Hero, her beacon lamp beside her, anxiously awaiting her lover on the opposite shore. Waves "lap" at the bases of both sculptures.

Nineteenth-century American audiences were generally conservative regarding nudity in sculpture. They tended to favor the unclothed female body, which they felt more successfully reflected the classical notion of beauty. Sculptors, therefore, produced relatively few male nudes, and Rinehart's Leander is one of the finest examples of this rare genre. Inspired by the renowned antique marble Hermes Belvedere (Vatican Museums, Rome) and by Michelangelo's even more famous marble David (Accademia, Florence), Leander has been described by William Gerdts as "probably the most beautiful male nude in all of American Neoclassicism.

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