Lily Tolpo, Mary Todd Lincoln, Bust Sculpture

Description

Lily Tolpo is best known as a 2oth Century sculptor and a painter. Some of her well-known subjects for sculpture include Abraham Lincoln, Chief Black Hawk, U. S. Grant (on display at the Grant Home in Galena, IL), Stephen Douglas, Samuel Colt, and many others. 

This head and shoulders bust depicts Mary Todd Lincoln, probably sculpted “after” Mathew Brady’s 1861 image ML – O-9.

Mary is shown wearing an off-the-shoulder dress featuring a cluster of flowers in the front center, a necklace and earrings that appear to be from the Tiffany seed-pearl parure Lincoln gifted to her during the inaugural trip to Washington. A headband of flowers encircles her hair; reminding us of her love of flowers. The entire presentation is very similar to the ensemble she is wearing in ML O-13. 

The bust sits on a rough cylinder pedestal.  We have never seen this color work for this bust. Usually it is a solid blue-green patina, very similar to copper.

Excellent; a few minor surface rubs. 

Tolpo, Lily. “Mary Todd Lincoln” engraved on the front of the pedestal is a recessed portion; Signed on the back;  (Illinois):  1983.  #27/200; Painted Hydrostone; 14” x 8-¼” x 6”. 

More About Lily Tolpo

Born in 1917, Chicago, Illinois, Lily Tolpo established her reputation as a portrait, abstract and genre painter as well as an abstract and portrait sculptor – particularly of American Historical figures. Her work appears across the USA as well as internationally.

She was raised in Chicago. As a pre-school child she was aptly named, ” The Little Artist.” Additional encouragement came later in Chicago Public Schools with selection of her soap carving presentation in the Smithsonian Museum She received a scholarship to the Chicago Academy Fine Arts, in 1935-39. Chicago Academy of Fine Arts would become The School at the Art Institute.

Music also provided a source of artistic inspiration for her art, particularly abstract pieces. Encouraged by her mother, she learned to play the violin at an early age and continued in public school orchestras. For four summers (1935-39) she to worked as a professional Vaudeville musician as a member of the Hollywood Cowgirls. Travel on the Vaudeville circuit and later in the American West with her family provided inspiration for her artwork as well.

In 1941, Lily married sculptor and painter Carl Tolpo. That same year, she made her professional one-artist show debut, sponsored by the All Illinois Society of Fine Art. The couple  settled in Illinois and raised three children, all currently professional artists. The family made over twenty painting/camping trips in the summer – particularly to Yellowstone National Park, USA, where Ms. Tolpo completed small paintings of campsite vignettes.

As a husband and wife artist team, they have works publicly displayed together at the County Court Building, Waukegan, Illinois: The Law and Justice Chandelier, corten steel, by Lily Tolpo and Abraham Lincoln heroic head, bronze, by Carl Tolpo. After her husband died in 1976, the sculpture projects by her husband depicting Abraham Lincoln left pathways for her to continue what he started – to complete her own projects including bronze and resin statues of Lincoln as well as other American historical figures like Mary Lincoln, Julia and President Ulysses S. Grant (located at the Grant Home in Galena, IL).  Her most monumental sculpture is a nearly life size bronze of the 1858 U.S. Senate debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas: It was unveiled at the original debate site in 1992 (Freeport, Illinois) This project also inspired and was included in live C-SPAN televised re-enactments of all seven 1858 Lincoln & Douglas Joint Debates.

Portrait paintings by Lily Tolpo can be found in private and public collections – many done as Biographical Paintings, an art form she introduced in 1964. This layered art form depicts the subject superimposed over a background inspired from the subjects’ aura with overlay of illustrations of history about the subject.

Examples of Biographical Paintings include forty-five portraits commissioned as Abraham Lincoln Centre Community Leadership Awards in fields of Education, Business, Government, and Religion, 1977-1994.

Lily Tolpo worked from studios in Illinois for over sixty decades.