Horatio Greenough was a sculptor by profession, but some critics have praised him more for his writings than for his artistic creations. He was an exponent of the organic theory in sculpture and architecture whose essays place him in the early school of rationalism in the United States as a predecessor to Louis Sullivan and his famous declaration that "Form follows function." Greenough's struggle to develop distinctly American artistic ideals and works persisted throughout his life, and he attacked revivalism, especially Gothic, as derivative and unoriginal. While he did not reject classical models, he believed that the artist should emulate their finest features, but with inventiveness.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 6 September 1805 to a family with deep roots in that city, Horatio Greenough early adopted Yankee "notions" that remained, in his words, "intact," combined with "others acquired by a long sojourn on different points of the earth's surface...