This week’s column owes everything to Maud Fluchere of Newport, PA, who recently wrote me a letter in response to my pieces on Oliver Hazard Perry, the man who gave Perry county its name.

Maud’s father, who was born in Newport, Rhode Island in the late 19th century, liked to tell a story about the two statues, one of Oliver Hazard Perry, the other of his equally famous brother Matthew C. Perry, that grace the village green in Newport.

Maud wrote:

“According to my father, a subscription was taken up to erect a monument to Oliver Hazard. However, when the statue was unveiled, it was of Matthew, the Opener of Japan! More important than [the hero of] Lake Erie. A second statue was made and stands at the lower end of the green! I have seen them myself, and can only wonder if the story is correct…”

Well, Maud, wonder no more. This week, I took it upon myself, Mythbuster-style, to look into the Story of the Scrambled Statues.

I started with a bit of a reality check. How often, I wondered, do sculptors serve up a likeness of the wrong guy?

One of my best friends, Jay Hall Carpenter, happens to be a sculptor whose commissions include bronzes of public figures just like the two Perrys of Newport. Jay’s latest is a statue of screen actor Douglas Fairbanks, which was commissioned by filmmaker George Lucas for the new School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

I asked Jay if he knew of any sculptors who’d gotten it badly wrong. “Not really,” he said. “Usually it’s something small. Like the wrong kind of sword, maybe a sabre where there should have been a rapier. Or a gelded horse which shouldn’t have been gelded.”

While an accidental gelding sounds like a pretty cruel cut to me, it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of, say, the wrong horse entirely. Which is the level we’re talking about in the case of the two Perrys.

If Jay was to be believed, it wasn’t very likely that a sculptor would have made such a big mistake. For more details, I turned to the Newport Historical Society. I spoke with Bert Lippincott, the librarian there.

But not before doing a little homework. I learned that the earlier statue was indeed of Matthew Perry, the Opener of Japan. The Matthew Perry sculpture was unveiled October 2, 1868. Which is interesting, since the younger Perry’s historic mission to Japan had concluded a mere fourteen years earlier, in 1854—practically yesterday, in the glacial world of monumental sculpture.

Matthew Perry’s statue definitely came first. So that much of Maud’s father’s story checked out.

The later statue, the one of Oliver Hazard Perry, was unveiled on September 10, 1885, the 72nd anniversary of the battle of Lake Erie.

I read up on the sculptors of the two statues, too. Just for kicks.

The sculptor of the Matthew Perry statue, was John Quincy Adams Ward, one of the great civic artists of the 19th century—the “dean of American sculptors,” according to his 1910 obituary in the New York Times. Mr. Ward had a somewhat salty view of public commissions. He was quoted in the obituary as follows:

“As soon as a man dies in this country his friends and admirers raise a fund to erect a statue for him, instead of waiting to see whether the public will be at all interested in him twenty-five years afterward. The committee which chooses the sculpture is often without taste in matters of art, and the result is often a piece of work which is neither valuable of itself nor of any interest in perpetuating the memory of a man to whom history will give no place.”

Perhaps he was speaking here of Matthew Perry, whose recent accomplishments in the Far East might not have had the same resonance in the Gilded Age that they do today.

The sculptor of the Oliver Hazard Perry statue, William Greene Turner, was an artist of much more modest accomplishments. Trained as a dentist before being wounded in the Civil War, William Turner quit the United States, took up residence in Florence, Italy, and recreated himself as a sculptor. He was a native son of Newport, which perhaps explains the commission.

An article from the New York Times dated May 2, 1885, and entitled “Cottage Hunters Disgusted. Jottings from Rhode Island’s Fashionable Summer Resort,” finds Mr. Turner on a sailing vessel en route to Newport, along with his statue of Commodore Perry, which, the article gushes, “…is said to be his best work.”

So now I knew when each of the two statues was unveiled, and something about the artists who created them.

But why would the city of Newport erect a statue of the younger brother first, especially in light of his very recent accomplishments?

“Let’s take a look at who paid for the statues,” Mr. Lippincott said, pulling a book from the stacks of the Newport Historical Society. “Ah. Looks like the Matthew Perry statue—” the earlier one—“was commissioned by Perry’s son-in-law, August Belmont.”

August Belmont was a successful banker and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He was also a fan of the sculpture of John Quincy Adams Ward, having commissioned a bust of himself from the artist.

So the Matthew Perry statue of 1868 was an act of filial piety, privately funded, and shaped by the hand of one of the hottest—and most expensive—artists of the day.

Whereas the Oliver Perry statue of 1885 was an act of civic pride, commissioned by the Rhode Island General Assembly, and executed by a local son of more modest accomplishments.

I asked Mr. Lippincott whether he’d heard a version of the story told by Maud’s father.

He hadn’t personally, but he said he liked it.

I liked it, too, and I would invite other readers of this column to write in with their stories, especially their juicy family mysteries. I promise to do my best to get to the bottom of them.

Thank you, Maud!

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 27 August 2009

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com