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Daphne, 1854
Marble
26 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 10 1/2"
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis
Gift of Wayman Crow, Sr., 1880
WU 579

Harriet Hosmer’s first original work completed in Rome was her idealizing bust Daphne, based on the classical myth of the nymph’s transformation into a laurel tree. In the story told by Ovid, Daphne, the beautiful daughter of the river-god Peneus, catches the eye of Apollo who falls desperately in love with her. Daphne, however, rejects his advances, and flees from him in fear. Apollo pursues his beloved in a chase, but she manages to escape him when she reaches the river and pleads to her father to disguise her appearance:

And then she saw the river, swift Peneus,
And called; ‘Help, father, help! If mystic power
Dwells in your waters, change me and destroy
My baleful beauty that has pleased too well.’
Scarce had she made her prayer when through her limbs
A dragging languor spread, her tender bosom
Was wrapped in thin smooth bark, her slender arms
Were changed to branches and her hair to leaves;
Her feet but now so swift were anchored fast
In numb stiff roots, her face and head became
The crown of a green tree; all that remained
Of Daphne was her shining loveliness.i


Hosmer wrote about her conception of Daphne in a letter to her patron and friend Wayman Crow. She explained, “Her name is Daphne, and she is represented as just sinking away into the laurel leaves.”ii By capturing the moment of Daphne’s physical metamorphosis, Hosmer had chosen to show the character in her transformation from helpless victim to empowered sovereign. Unlike the terrified nymph described by Ovid, with, “…fluttering dress blown back,/ Her hair behind her streaming as she ran;”iii Hosmer created a composed character with ordered hair and a tranquil gaze. This depiction of Daphne is characteristic of Hosmer’s female victims, all of whom she showed as possessing a dual quality of innocent helplessness and calm power.iv Her choice of female mythological subjects was common in her early career as well. These subjects allowed her ground for offering her own interpretation of familiar characters whose attributes symbolized different aspects of the complex female psyche.v Daphne’s character may have also appealed to Hosmer on a more personal level. Hosmer embraced the independence and free-spiritedness embodied by the mythological nymph. She refused to conform to the cultural norm of marriage and lived most of her life as a self-sufficient, vanguard, expatriate artist in Rome.vi


i Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A.D. Melville; intro. and notes, E.J. Kenney (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 17.
ii Harriet Hosmer, Letters and Memories, ed. Cornelia Carr (New York: Moffat Yard and Company, 1912), 26.
iii Ovid, 16.
iv Joy S. Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1990), 148.
v Laura R. Prieto, At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press, 2001), 65.
vi Dolly Sherwood, Harriet Hosmer, American Sculptor, 1830-1908 (Columbia & London: University of Missouri Press, 1991).


Jodi Kovach
MA 2003