William Randolph Barbee (17 January 1818–16 June 1868), sculptor, was born at Hawsbury in the part of Culpeper County that became Rappahannock County in 1833, the third of six sons and fifth of twelve children of Andrew Russell Barbee and Nancy Britton Barbee. His early attempts at whittling and carving initially served only to convince his parents and teachers that he was just an idle dreamer. When he reached the age of fifteen his parents sent him to the Virginia Baptist Seminary in Richmond. By the time he graduated with honors in 1836, Barbee had decided he wanted to be a professional sculptor. Like most would-be American sculptors of his day, he believed that travel and study in Europe were absolutely essential for the further development of his artistic talent. Faced with the need to earn enough money to pay for his study abroad, Barbee read law in Moorefield, Hardy County, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. After establishing a flourishing practice in Luray, he married Mary Jane McKay in 1847. Two of their four sons and one of their three daughters died young.
By the mid-1850s Barbee had saved enough money to give up his law practice and study sculpture in Europe. With his wife and young children he settled in Florence, Italy, and acquired a studio. He plunged into a period of concentrated study. He apparently worked for a time with fellow American sculptors Hiram Powers and Joel Tanner Hart. While in Florence, Barbee developed the sculptural skills and methods that characterized his subsequent artistic career. He favored an idealized, sentimental classicism that was then popular among American artists and also popular with the public. Barbee produced a number of pieces in marble, among them his principal works, Coquette and Fisher Girl, both of which were obviously inspired by the creations of Powers and Hart. When exhibited in the United States in 1858 and 1859, they were well received, and both were subsequently sold for substantial sums. Barbee also executed a fine plaster bust of James L. Orr, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, which was exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1859.
When Barbee returned to the United States in 1858, he received a great deal of favorable notice in the press. Some of his admirers persuaded the American government to provide him a rent-free studio in the Capitol in Washington. He began work on a frieze in the west wing of the building, but the outbreak of the Civil War abruptly terminated his work, and the government took possession of the studio and its contents, which included more than a dozen finished busts and works of art in addition to models. Barbee valued the items at $39,000.
Barbee regained use of the studio after the war, but his health began to fail. He devoted his final years to work on a life-sized statue of Pocahontas entitled The Star of the West. Illness prevented Barbee from completing The Star of the West and a number of other works. Among them was one to which he had given long thought and labor, The Lost Pleiad, its subject drawn from Greek mythology. Contemporaries recognized Barbee as an artist of talent and promise and ranked him with his fellow Virginian Alexander Galt among the most gifted nineteenth-century American sculptors. Later generations, although not rating Barbee's work as highly as Galt's, appreciated his creativity through the reproductions produced by Barbee's eldest son, Herbert Barbee. William Randolph Barbee died of cancer at the family home near Luray on 16 June 1868. He was buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Luray.
Sources Consulted:
L. Moody Simms Jr., "William Randolph Barbee: Virginia Sculptor," Virginia Cavalcade 22 (summer 1972): 40–47 (portrait); National Cyclopędia of American Biography (1891–1984), 18:423; Barbee-Summers family Bible record, Accession 27917, Library of Virginia; Barbee Collection, Page Co. Heritage Association, Luray, Va.; vertical file, The Valentine, Richmond, Va.; Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser, 1, 8 Oct. 1858; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 4 Oct. and 8 Oct. 1858; New York Times, 22 Dec. 1859; Charles E. Fairman, Art and Artists of the Capitol of the United States of America (1927), 164–165; Albert TenEyck Gardner, Yankee Stonecutters: The First American School of Sculpture, 1800–1850 (1945), 22; Margaret Farrand Thorp, The Literary Sculptors (1965), 78, 187; William Randolph Barbee & Herbert Barbee: Two Virginia Sculptors Rediscovered, exhibition catalog, Dimock Gallery, George Washington University (1977); obituaries in Lynchburg Virginian, 18 June 1868, Richmond Enquirer, 19 June 1868, and Staunton Spectator, 23 June 1868; editorial tribute in Richmond Whig and Advertiser, semiweekly ed., 23 June 1868.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by L. Moody Simms Jr.
How to cite this page:
L. Moody Simms Jr.,"William Randolph Barbee (1818–1868)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 1998 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.php?b=Barbee_William_Randolph, accessed [today's date]).
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