Statue of John Winthrop (U.S. Capitol)

John Winthrop
The sculpture in the National Statuary Hall Collection, 2013
ArtistRichard Saltonstall Greenough
MediumMarble sculpture
SubjectJohn Winthrop
LocationWashington, D.C., United States

John Winthrop is a marble sculpture of John Winthrop by Richard Saltonstall Greenough, installed in the United States Capitol, in Washington D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. It is one of two statues donated by the state of Massachusetts.[1] The statue was accepted in the collection by George Frisbie Hoar on December 19, 1876.[2]

A bronze cast of the statue of Winthrop, who served eleven terms as governor of Massachusetts and presided over the witchcraft trial and execution of Margaret Jones, and the trial that expelled Anne Hutchinson,[3] was made in 1880 and was first placed in Scollay Square in Boston. In 1903, it was moved to the First Church in the Back Bay, as its location in Scollay Square was needed for an exit for the Court Street subway station.[4] Badly damaged by a fire in 1968, it was eventually restored and remains in front of the church.[5]

  1. ^ Architect of the Capitol Under the Direction of the Joint Committee on the Library, Compilation of Works of Art and Other Objects in the United States Capitol, United States Government Printing Office, Washington 1965 p. 206.
  2. ^ Murdock, Myrtle Chaney, National Statuary Hall in the Nation’s Capitol, Monumental Press, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1955 pp. 44–45.
  3. ^ from the colony Forbes, Allan and Ralph M. Eastman, Some Statues of Boston: Reproductions of some of the statues for which Boston is famous, with information concerning the personalities and events so memorialized, State Street Trust Company, Boston Massachusetts, 1946, pp. 72–74.
  4. ^ Kruh, David (1999). Always Something Doing: Boston's Infamous Scollay Square. Northeastern University Press. pp. 39, 44. ISBN 1555534104.
  5. ^ Carlock, Marty, A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston: From Newburyport to Plymouth, The Harvard Common Press, Boston MA, 1988 p. 40.