I want to apologize for having given Bill Maurer's suggestion (2/22) about
the "Nude George Washington" short shrift.  Only today I finally tried the
URL he suggested and realized the reason for the confusion.  The image shown
there is indeed of a bust of Washington by Hiram Powers, but it's not the
sculpture I and others had in mind.  The item Bill M. described is a 32" bust
portrait of Washington in the apparent guise of a Roman senator, and indeed
he isn't nude.  The orginal remark, from Greg Koos, about a statue "by
Powers(?)" of Washington "half nude posed as Zeus", it was clear to me,
referred to the monumental, much larger-than-life Greenough statue of a
seated Washington as Zeus, in which he is indeed half-nude (from the waist
up) and which is displayed in the National Museum of American History.  There
are many sculptures of Washington in existence, and there was confusion about
which one we were discussing.

I note that in the image Bill Maurer cited, which is part of an educational
(!) series, it isn't made clear where the Powers bust is located or who owns
it.  There is a reference to the Walker Art Center, but it doesn't exactly
say it's in the Walker collection.  I couldn't find this sculpture in the
references I have at hand, so I'm not sure where it's located.  This relates
to my caution about credit lines in reproductions of museum artifacts: the
fact that the caption under the image of the Powers bust doesn't include the
location or owner of the piece added to the confusion about which sculpture
we were talking about.

(To further confuse everyone, the Greenough sculpture isn't actually owned by
the National Museum of American History: it's on loan from another
Smithsonian museum, which is now called the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
I have one book on American sculpture which shows several views of the
Greenough work and says it's in the collection of the National Collection of
Fine Arts--an old bureau name, subsequently changed to National Museum of
American Art, which was renamed the Smithsonian American Art Museum just last
year.)   In any event, name changes notwithstanding, many works of art
scattered about various museums are similar or related, especially in the
realm of sculpture, and one often needs to cite ownership in order to be sure
everyone is talking about the same item.  As news agencies used to admonish
newspapers, watch your credit lines.

David Haberstich

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