Louis-Auguste MalempréFrench
Alice
May one see it?
Unknown: the museum keeps its counsel
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known. Whether it is on view today, the museum does not say, and we were not trained to guess.
- In this state since
- Sep 25, 2026
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the sculpture
The Alice named on the base of this bust refers to the sitter, Alice Pike Barney, an artist, playwright, and art patron who lived in Washington. On a trip to Rome at age seventeen, she met the sculptor Louis-Auguste Malempre at an exhibition of his marble portrait busts. He invited her to his studio for a small party and she commissioned him to do a portrait of her. The sculptor engraved small dots and lines, called stippling, to create the decorative lace at the top of her dress.
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1952.13.85
What it shows
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 3 days ago
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0