Clark Mills and the Phrenologist

Abstract

This note concerns an account published more than a hundred years ago that relates the circumstances surrounding Clark Mills's decision to become a sculptor. It is a revealing document about the culture of America in the antebellum era because it indicates the considerations that might have induced a young man of the time to take up art as a career. During a phrenological examination, Mills was convinced that he possessed the requisite talents to succeed in sculpture, and that conviction led him from the obscurity of his early life as a plasterer to a position of national eminence. He was not alone among artists in consulting phrenology for advice about his prospects: before phrenology is dismissed as the prosaic outgrowth of the century's infatuation with science, it is important to consider how it reinforced Romantic notions about innate genius.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Charles Colbert

A contributor on phrenology and American art to the Art Bulletin (June, 1986), Charles Colbert is presently preparing a book on the topic. He teaches at Boston College. [24 Daniel St., Newton, MA 02159]