Figural
ERASTUS DOW PALMER (1817–1904)
Resignation, 1855
Marble, 25 7/8 in. high
Plaster model executed in 1854; present marble replica executed 1855
RECORDED: cf. L. J. Bigelow, “Palmer, the American Sculptor,” Continental Monthly V (1864), p. 261 // cf. Alfred Woltmann, “Ein amerikanischer Bildhauer,” Recensionen and Mittheilungen über Bildende Kunst (Vienna: 1865), p. 299 // cf. Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867), p. 357–58 // cf. New York Observer, September 28, 1882, p. 309 // cf. “Albany’s Collection of Palmer’s Sculpture,” Albany Argus, July 3, 1910, p. 9 // Albany Institute of History and Art 1918 Inventory (1918), p. 78 no. 15 // cf. Lorado Taft, The History of American Sculpture (1903; revised edition, 1924; reprint 1969), p. 135 // cf. Wayne Craven, Sculpture in America (1968), p. 159 // cf. J. Carson Webster, Erastus D. Palmer (1983), pp. 51, 67, 94–96 passim, 168–70, 171 pl. 44 illus.; present marble pp. 168 version B, 169 no. 3 // Tammis Kane Groft and Mary A. MacKay, eds., Albany Institute of History & Art: 200 Years of Collecting (1999), pp. 114–115
EXHIBITED: (possibly) Albany, New York, 1858, Albany Exhibition of Paintings and Marbles at Ransom’s Iron Store, p. 1 no. 3
EX COLL.: the artist, until 1904; by descent to his son, Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932), 1904–07; by gift to The Albany Institute of History & Art, in memory of Mary Jane Seamans Palmer, 1907–2002
About Resignation, art critic Heny T. Tuckerman wrote:
The first order of art is as a sacred temple, into which we would reverently enter in an exalted mood; the other appeals so directly to the heart, as well as the imagination, that our instinctive desire is, to make of its works our household gods. Of this latter kind are the ideal busts of “Resignation” and “Spring”; rife, the one with womanly, and the other with maiden traits. There is superinduced upon, or rather interfused with these, in the first instance, an expression of subdued happiness, divine trust, and latent hope—which is the Christian idea of resignation—a holy consciousness that all is well, a spiritual insight which charms the heart that we can yet see has bowed to sorrow; and this feeling kindles features in themselves so pure and lovely, yet so human and so feminine, that consummate beauty seems to overflow with the sentiment of the patriarch—“It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, pp. 357–58).
