(b Jamaica Plain, MA, 27 April 1819; d Rome, 4 April 1904). Brother of (1) Horatio Greenough. He studied with Horatio in Florence in 1837. After making portrait busts in Boston (1838-48), he settled in Rome. The marble life-size bust of Cornelia Van Rensselaer (1849; New York, NY Hist. Soc.) typifies his tempering of the Neo-classical with a Victorian love of surface patterning and details of dress. The under life-size Shepherd Boy with an Eagle (1853; Boston, MA, Athenaeum) amalgamates 'high art' with genre; exhibited at the Salon in 1853, it was one of the earliest bronzes cast in America and heralded the American vogue for bronze statuettes. Boston's first major commission to an American brought the sculptor's career to its climax: Benjamin Franklin (bronze, over life-size, 1855; Boston, MA, Old City Hall) won acclaim for its commonsense quality, witty expression and realistic detail. His style, alternating between Victorian fussiness and the new realism, was typical of the decline of Neo-classical ideals in post-Civil War American art. Richard Saltonstall Greenough was one of the first American sculptors to live in Paris (1856-75), he was the first to exhibit at the Salon and he was in the vanguard of the expatriates' shift of focus to that city.
Part of the Greenough family
See the Abbreviations for further details.
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