The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born at Berlin, 1764. Died there, 1850. Aged 86.] The son of a poor tailor. He evinced, at an early age, a great love for the fine arts, but he was one of many children, and there was small hope of gratifying fine-art tastes in the needy household. Fortune brought the youngster in contact with a sculptor, who taught him drawing, and from that moment his destiny was fixed. Whilst receiving instruction, he ran off with a girl to whom he was attached, married her at Vienna, and with the consent and at the expense of his stepfather, proceeded to Rome. There for two years he laboured hard as a sculptor, in the Vatican and in the Capitol. In 1788, he had already advanced far enough to be appointed Court Sculptor at Berlin. In 1822, he was made Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in the same city. His works, numerous and of a high order, are found in Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. He was one of the first who opposed to the insipid and conventional idealism of the eighteenth century, a vigorous and truthful representation of nature, heightened by noble intellectuality. This is especially visible in his portrait statues. He was a worthy precursor of Rauch, who is one of his most famous followers. To his eldest son, Rudolph Schadow, also a distinguished sculptor, belong the specimens of modern sculpture which appear under the name of Schadow in this collection. The second son, Wilhelm Schadow, is one of the most celebrated painters in Germany, and President of the Academy at Düsseldorf. Both have a greater name as artists than the father. [By Rauch, 1811. Plaster. The original is in the studio of Rauch.]