Joel Tanner Hart (1810-1877), Kentucky sculptor, and the Ideal Woman

The Ideal Woman in Victorian Kentucky

Joel Tanner Hart was Kentucky's popular neo-classical sculptor. He was born in Clark county in 1810 and died in Florence, Italy, in 1877. In 1884 his remains were brought to Kentucky, and a great ceremony was arranged by Fayette County women to honor him and to raise money to purchase his "life's dream" from Tiffany & Co. in New York. Hart's best known work in his lifetime was his neo-classical statues of Henry Clay; however, his "life's dream" was the group below. This work was known as The Triumph of Chastity, Woman's Victory, Beauty's Triumph, Woman's Triumph, and The Triumph of Womanhood during the decade or more that he was working on it. The final work in marble, finished posthumously by his friend George Saul shortly after 1877, came to be known as Woman Triumphant. Rosa Vertner Johnson, a Lexington poet, wrote the following poem to memorialize Hart and the object of the "Hart's Memorial Association".

[Written for the Lexington Observer.]
Hart's "Triumph of Chastity."
inscribed to Mrs. Wm. C.P. Breckinridge
[President of the H.M.A.]
by Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
Lexington, Ky, April 15th, 1884

An artist's hand hath carved a mystic story,
      Whose inspiration through the marble shines;
Its dumb, cold whiteness is transfused with glory
      Illuminating all the beauty lines.
A story! in the fair form of a woman --
      Let woman's heart its subtle truth evolve;
This marble problem -- yet with all so human,
     By genius left, for purity to solve.
A rare creation! as to form and fashion,
      A woman, by whose lofty pose is shown
The soul's high triumph over earthly passion,
      A fable! marvelously cut in stone.
With life's warm flushes through its pallor breaking
      To tint the cheek, and pulse the sculptured breast,
'Twould scarcely be more eloquent -- thus waking --
      Than in its perfect and eternal rest.
A thing of faultless beauty, through long ages
      It must forever stand, forever shine,
Its meaning graved on Purity's white pages,
      Worshiped forever in her cloistered shrine.
All honor to the genius thus achieving
      Such glorious triumph, with a master's hand,
This chaste ideal of his soul receiving
     Its impress from the women of his land.
He gave them homage without stint or measure;
      Upon the altar of his native home --
Be it their mission to enshrine this treasure,
      Fine as the sculptured gems of ancient Rome.
Within the milk-white quarries of Carrara,
      No purer, fairer marble ever shone;
No purer women live, and none are fairer
      Than those he has immortalized in stone.

Hart's work was destroyed in the fire of the Fayette County, Kentucky courthouse in 1897 -- the model was destroyed long before. Only the woman's right hand and a piece of the cording from Cupid's quiver was preserved, and today can be found lovingly encased by Dr. Thomas D. Clark's handmade wooden box for the University of Kentucky's Special Collections and Archives.

"Woman Triumphant"
marble, ca. 1877, destroyed

Another sculpture of the ideal woman by Hart (which also went through many names), he fondly called "my Ideal" in his letters to friends. He eventually named it after the title of a poem by John Milton, in which the male narrator calls on his muse:

Hail thou goddess, sage and holy
Hail, divinest melancholy
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight.

"Il Penseroso"
marble, ca. 1853
Margaret I. King Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington

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