Greenough, Horatio (1805–1852)

US sculptor. He was one of the first American neoclassicists. His works include a colossal statue of George Washington for the Rotunda of the US Capitol 1843, a work heavily criticized at the time for depicting the first president in classical dress.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Greenough studied at Harvard University and then in Rome under the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. His first important commission, a group known as Chanting Cherubs 1830 (now lost), came from the novelist James Fenimore Cooper. Other works include the marble relief Castor and Pollux 1851 (Museum of Fine Art, Washington) and The Rescue (begun 1839, completed after his death), depicting a fight between a frontier settler and an American Indian.