William Shakespeare
By Ferdinand Von Miller II
Category: Statue
About
Henry Shaw wanted fine music and works of art in his Tower Grove Park, so he hired architects to build cupola-covered bandstands and commissioned artists to produce sculptures, including marble busts of his favorite composers—Mozart, Rossini, Wagner, Beethoven, Gounod, and Verdi. Busts of Sullivan and Donizetti were planned for the last two pedestals, but Shaw passed away before they could be produced, so simple marble spheres took their place. Beginning in 1873, Shaw provided free Sunday concerts during summer months, featuring at least one piece by one of the composers represented on the busts. The badly deteriorated original busts were put in storage at the park in 1992 and replaced with the replica composite stone sculptures that are on view today. Several of the original pieces are on view in the Piper Palm House in Tower Grove Park.
Dimensions: 12′ x 2′ x 2′
Year Completed: 1878
Material: Bronze on limestone pedestal with bronze plaques
Owner: Tower Grove Park
Donor: Henry Shaw
About the artist:
Ferdinand Von Miller II
1842-1929
Born in Munich, Germany in 1842, Ferdinand von Miller II was the son of the founder of the Royal Bronze Foundry, where many of America’s major nineteenth century monuments were cast. While managing his inherited business, he also worked as a sculptor in stone and bronze. From 1900 to 1918 he was the Director of the Munich Academy. His statue William Shakespeare, unveiled on the 314th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday, shows the poet in Elizabethan clothes with quill pen in hand. Four bronze plaques depict characters in Shakespeare’s plays: Falstaff, Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, and Queen Katherine. When the famous Shakespearean actress Adelaide Neilson visited St. Louis in 1880 she commended the statue as the best likeness she had seen, and promised to send a cutting from the Shakespeare Mulberry tree at Stratford-on-Avon to be planted near the statue. However, her death a few months later prevented her from fulfilling her promise so Shaw imported one himself and planted it behind the statue with a marker honoring Miss Neilson.
