Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gift of Dr. William Rush Dunton, Jr. 1911.3
One of the three artists who co-founded the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1805, sculptor William Rush, it is said, observed Lafayette at an official dinner during the latter’s weeklong visit to Philadelphia in 1824 and then modeled this bust from memory. A few days later, he showed it to Lafayette, who called it an “excellent likeness.” Never exhibited during Rush's lifetime, the bust remained in his family until his great-grandson presented it to the Pennsylania Academy of Fine Arts in 1911.
