The Museum Collection
Edmund Quinn Bust of Poe
Description:The Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences presented a bronze version of this bust to the City of New York on January 19, 1909 in honor of the centennial of Poe's birth. The Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences gave this plaster cast of the work to the Poe Museum in 1931. The Poe Museum displayed the piece in the Poe Shrine in the Museum's garden until 1987, when it vanished. Some time later, a gentleman carried the bust to the bar of the Raven Inn and bought it a beer. The police found the bust sitting on the bar with a mug of beer and a transcription of Poe's poem "The Spirits of the Dead."
Having trained under the painter Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Edmond T. Quinn established himself as a successful sculptor of portrait busts and statues which a 1919 issue of the New York Times described as "recording subtleties of expression that play like rippling water over the rock structure of the human head." His best-know work is the bronze statue of Edwin Booth as Hamlet in New York City's Gramercy Park.
Gift of the Bronx Society of Arts and Sciences