The New Student's Reference Work/Hart, Joel T.

Hart, Joel T., an American sculptor, was born in Kentucky in 1810. He had very little education, but learned to read by the light of a woodfire, and read everything he could get hold of. While working as a stonecutter in Lexington, Ky., he began modeling busts in clay, and succeeded in making fine likenesses. One of Cassius M. Clay brought him his first order for a bust in marble, and soon after the Ladies' Clay Association of Virginia ordered a marble statue of Henry Clay, which is now in the capitol of Richmond, Va. The colossal bronze statue of Clay at New Orleans and the statue of Woman Triumphant in the courthouse at Louisville, Ky., are his work. He went to Florence, Italy, in 1849, and died there on March 1, 1877. See Book of the Artists by Tuckerman.