Mumtaz Mahal, 1957

25.5 x 33 cms

Herbert Haseltine was born in Rome on 10th April 1877. His parents were American; his father a landscape painter. Educated at the Collegio Romana before graduating at Harvard in 1899, Herbert Haseltine studied art at the Royal Academy in Munich and spent time at the Atelier Julian in Paris. In 1905 he met the French painter Aimé Morot who advised him to consider modelling to correct a certain flatness in his portraits of horses, his favourite subjects. Haseltine’s bronze, Riding Off, received an honourable mention at the Paris Salon in 1906 and from then forward he concentrated on sculpture. Living mainly in Paris and working in bronze, marble and limestone, his work was shown widely in France and England. In June 1914 an exhibition of his work was held at the Goupil Gallery, London. He was soon modelling racehorses, carriage and heavy horses for a very large number of patrons in Europe and America. Among his major sculptures is the gilded bronze statue of George Washington for the National Cathedral and of Sir John Dill in the Arlington Cemetery, Washington DC. His small bronzes of horses, and also of Spanish bulls after a visit to that country, are found either vigorously modelled or with a smoother finish reminiscent of the work of John Skeaping (q.v.). Haseltine died in Paris on 8 January 1962.