William Rush - Legacy

Legacy

Along with friend Charles Willson Peale, Rush helped found the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, showing his interest in art beyond the American craft tradition. At age 66, he carved a self-portrait bust (1822), that is today housed in that museum. Wisdom and Justice are on loan to the Academy, whose holdings include a collection of Rush's portrait busts, a life-sized eagle statue attributed to him, and the head of the nymph from Water Nymph and Bittern.

Rush's life-sized statue of George Washington (1815), long exhibited at Independence Hall, is now at the Second Bank of the United States. Seven life-sized allegorical figures by him (1820–22) are exhibited at the Philadelphia Masonic Temple. Collections of his portrait busts can be found at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society, and a ship figurehead of Peace, at the Independence Seaport Museum. A ship figurehead of Benjamin Franklin is at Yale University Art Gallery. An 1817 portrait bust of George Washington is in the collection of the American Revolution Center.

The largest collection of Rush's work can be found at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, including Comedy, Tragedy, The Schuylkill Chained, The Waterworks, portrait busts, and the 1872 bronze casting of Water Nymph and Bittern (on loan from the Fairmount Park Commission). The museum's holdings include many of Thomas Eakins's sketches and studies related to his paintings of Rush, along with the most famous painting: William Rush Carving his Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River (aka William Rush and His Model), 1876–77, oil on canvas (mounted on Masonite), 20 1/8 x 26 1/8 inches (51.1 x 66.4 cm).

Eakins felt a strong personal connection to the sculptor, and returned to him as a subject late in life. In one of Eakins's final paintings, created almost exactly a century after Rush's carving of Water Nymph and Bittern, the painter seems to have portrayed himself as Rush.