Herbert Barbee

Herbert Barbee (October 8, 1848 – March 22, 1936^[1]) was an American sculptor from Luray, Virginia. He was the son of William Randolph Barbee (1818–1868), also a renowned sculptor, with whom he studied in Florence, Italy for some time.^[2] He lived for much of his life in his home county, where he had something of a reputation as an eccentric, and where he was not respected by many of the locals due to his propensity for carving nude figures.^[3] At one time he also kept a studio in New York,^[2] and in 1887 and 1888 he was active in Cincinnati.^[4] During his career he also worked in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and St. Louis.^[5] Eventually he opened a studio in Hamburg, Virginia, not far from his birthplace.^[6]

In addition to his own work, Barbee completed several pieces which had been left unfinished by his father at the time of his death,^[7] and also carved marble pieces after a number of his father's clay models; one of these, The Star of the West, received a gold medal at the Southern Exposition of 1883.^[6] He erected a bust of William, looking up at Mary's Rock, at the old family cemetery in Thornton Gap; placed there in 1930, after the elder Barbee's remains had been moved to a cemetery in Luray, this was removed sometime after the construction of Skyline Drive through the area. It was intended that it should be paired with a bust of Herbert's mother, looking down on her husband from the Rock, but that piece was never completed.^[2]

Barbee married, on February 20, 1895, Blanche E. Stover of Luray. With her he had four children: Herbert Randolph, Aurelia Loreta, Mary Frances, and William Clifford.^[6] Barbee lived at a house called "Calendine", which had been erected in the 1850s to serve as a general store and stage stop along the Sperryville-New Market turnpike; he used the former store area as his studio.^[8] He is buried at the Stover Cemetery in Luray.^[1] "Calendine" still stands; it is denoted by a historic marker erected by the Page County Historical Society, which purchased the building in 1968^[8] and which today operates the house as a museum.^[9]

Barbee's most notable work is a memorial to the Confederacy in Luray, erected in 1898; called the "Confederate Heroes Monument", or sometimes "Barbee's Monument", its erection is said to have been inspired by a visit to the battlefield at Gettysburg,^[10] although the more immediate reason for its creation was as the focal point of a proposed park, called Henkel Woods Park, whose construction was never completed.^[11] Its design is said to have been based on the memory of a sentry Barbee saw standing on the mountain above Thornton Gap one winter's day during the Civil War.^[10] The statue is the earlier of two Confederate memorials in Luray, the newer one being erected in 1912. A variety of reasons have been given for the creation of the new statue, including suggestions that the original was disgraceful to the memory of the dead, depicting as it did a soldier in tattered clothing; that the original statue did not face "defiantly north" and so was unacceptable; that the first statue was too far beyond the town's limits to be acceptable; and that Barbee's reputation tainted his work, and so a "purer" representation was needed as a memorial.^[3] Even so, one author said of him, "Herbert Barbee made stone speak as life. He left us a marble monument that endures today, an honor to Luray, Page County and Virginia."^[12]

Barbee also crafted monuments to the Confederacy in Warrenton and Washington, Virginia.^[13][14] The latter was commissioned in 1900, although the date at which it was actually constructed is unknown;^[13] the former, a red obelisk which sits on the green just north of the old jail, was unveiled in 1920,^[15] and includes as part of its design a bas relief portrait of John Singleton Mosby.^[6]

• Moses Jacob Ezekiel