WILLIAM ORDWAY PARTRIDGE (AMERICAN, 1861-1930)

The present bust is one of a series of portraits by the sculptor William Ordway Partridge which included such other British literary giants as John Milton (1608-1674), John Keats (1795-1821), and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Henry Van Dyke, Tennyson's biographer and critic who owned a marble example of the present bust, praised the present model, writing, "This head of Tennyson is the best portrait of the poet extant...This is essentially the head of the music-master of any age. The spirit's impatient, patient battle with the eternal drag of material things is written on these features. That Tennyson fought the battle well is known in his long life, his great work." ("The Soul of Man in Twentieth-Century Sculpture: A Study of Mr. Partridge's Portrait Busts," The Arena, 1908, p. 8). Another bronze example is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (inv. 1944.11.4), having been gifted by the artist's wife.