1560 - Curiosities - An exceptionally large bronze commemorative sculpture. New York, 1892, inscribed as "Presented to Ross C. Browning, President, upon his Retirement from Active Business by the Managers of The Metropolitan Mfg. Co. of the United States and Canada, May 1, 1891,” modeled by the New York sculptor Caspar Buberl and cast by the Henry Bonnard Bronze Company, New York, 1892; patinated bronze. Dimensions approx. 75 x 50 x 27 cm; weight approx. 55 kg.

Curiosities - An exceptionally large bronze commemorative sculpture. New York, 1892, inscribed as "Presented to Ross C. Browning, President, upon his Retirement from Active Business by the Managers of The Metropolitan Mfg. Co. of the United States and Canada, May 1, 1891,” modeled by the New York sculptor Caspar Buberl and cast by the Henry Bonnard Bronze Company, New York, 1892; patinated bronze. Dimensions approx. 75 x 50 x 27 cm; weight approx. 55 kg. Ross Charles Browning (1822–1899), a 19th-century American publisher and map editor known for co-publishing *Johnson’s New Illustrated Family Atlas* with Alvin J. Johnson and later manager of the Metropolitan Washing Machine Company. "The Metropolitan Washing Machine Co., located at 32 Cortlandt St. and listed in city directories as early as 1867. Ross C. Browning (1822–1899) was president of the Metropolitan Washing Machine Co. The following appeared in the New York Times on March 28, 1899: “Ross C. Browning, a longtime resident of Llewellyn Park, West Orange, N.J., died Sunday in Jacksonville, Fla., of pneumonia. He is survived by a widow, two sons, and a daughter. Mr. Browning was born in Barre, Vt., in 1833—should be 1822—and graduated from the Liberal Institute in Lebanon, N.H., later teaching school for several years in Sussex County, N.J. He then began working for the Erie Railroad in Piermont-on-the-Hudson, and in 1859 formed a partnership with the late Alvin J. Johnson under the name Johnson & Browning, publishing a world atlas. Mr. Browning lived in Richmond, Va., and managed the Southern operations; when the war broke out, he managed with great difficulty to get his family through the lines. The printing presses were left behind and were later used by the Confederate government to print its currency and bonds. During the war, Mr. Browning was a staunch Union supporter, and at the time of the draft riots in New York, he closed his business and, along with his employees, joined the special police force. After the war, Mr. Browning went into the business of manufacturing clothes wringers, and in 1892 sold his business to a syndicate and retired from business. He had lived in Llewellyn Park since 1865." Source: waltergrutchfield.net Caspar Buberl (1834 Königsberg on the Eger–1899, New York) was an American sculptor; as a young man, he studied art in Prague and Vienna before immigrating to the United States in 1854 to train under sculptor Robert Eberhard Launitz. He is best known for his Civil War monuments, for the terra-cotta relief panels on the Garfield Memorial in Cleveland, Ohio (depicting the various stages of James Garfield’s life), a bronze bust of President Abraham Lincoln, and for the 1,200-foot (370 m)-long frieze on the Pension Building in Washington, D.C. "His most celebrated work in Washington is the magnificent terra-cotta frieze of soldiers and sailors on the exterior walls of the Pension Building, now the National Building Museum. Buberl was also responsible for other sculptures in Washington: “Columbia Protecting Science and Industry” (1881) above the Mall entrance to the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building (built as the United States National Museum), and for the relief panels and roundel portraits in the Patent Building’s model hall (now home to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery). Buberl also created many Civil War memorials, both Union and Confederate, located in places as far afield as Hartford, Connecticut; Buffalo, New York; Richmond, Virginia; and Mobile, Alabama. A number of his monuments (to New York battalions) can be found in the Gettysburg National Military Park." Source: Goethe-Institut USA. The Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company was a prominent New York-based bronze foundry operating from 1872 to 1926 that specialized in high-quality sand-cast art bronzes. "The Henry-Bonnard foundry, named for the two French bronze casters who founded it in 1872, was by 1884 operated by another Frenchman, Eugene Aucaigne, who transformed the Manhattan company into the most productive and expert bronze foundry in America during the last 15 years of the nineteenth century. The foreman of the celebrated Barbedienne foundry in Paris was one of many French workers reportedly recruited by Aucaigne.” From the exhibition: “Frontier to Foundry: The Making of Small Bronze Sculpture in the Gilcrease Collection,” December 2014–March 2015. Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator at the Gilcrease Museum, 2014. Provenance: 1945–2020, private collection, Amsterdam; 2022–2026, private collection, Berlin.