Thomas Jefferson (Primary Title)
Moses Jacob Ezekiel, American, 1844 - 1917, active in Rome (Artist)
In the 1890s, the European fashion for high-end residential bronze d’art arrived in the United States. American sculptors like Ezekiel and Augustus Saint-Gaudens – whose Puritan is on view nearby – responded by working with foundries on both sides of the Atlantic to cast parlor-scaled versions of their larger monuments. This beautifully crafted statuette is a reduction of Ezekiel’s full-scale bronze of Thomas Jefferson, which stands before the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
After studying art in Berlin, the Richmond-born Ezekiel established residency in Rome. One of the century’s last great neoclassical sculptors, he won multiple international awards. Still, as his memoirs reveal, Ezekiel’s identification with Virginia endured. As a youth during the Civil War, he fought alongside his fellow Virginia Military Institute cadets at the Battle of New Market. Moreover, for this Jewish artist, Thomas Jefferson figured as a lifelong hero primarily for his staunch advocacy of religious freedom.
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