Around the mid 1980s Frank Cutadean kept an antique shop on W. Main St. in Lexington, Ky. where he related the story that the Dunbar plaster bust and another of Dr. Thomas Edward Hunter, unknown subjects to either of us, having come to him from two men who were cleaning out a building where both busts had been stored along with other cast aside objects. Evidently dry untended storage for a lengthy period outside a living area. Both with dry sooty surfaces. Dunbar, is still as found, with half or more of the paint lost and Dr. Hunter had scattered fresh chipping due to recent harsh handling when delivered to Cutadean. Those chips were later restored by Terry Boyle for the current owner. About a decade later Cutadean decided to sell and exhibited each at a monthly antique show held at a tobacco warehouse on Angliana Ave. in Lexington where I purchased both. Soon after purchasing Dr. Hunter was sold and later identified by Addison Malone a researcher at UNC in Durham, N.C. Dunbar was identified while I was leaving the show by either Morgan or Marvin Smith, twin brother photographers who, one or the other, had seen the busts at the show prior to my stroll through and graciously shared his knowledge.

Dr. Thomas Hunter (1859-1956) was the first African American surgeon to be offered privileges at any hospital in Lexington, Ky. Born a slave in Va. and soon adopted as an infant by a family in Ohio. He studied pre-med at Oberlin getting his medical degree at Case Western Reserve while working as a waiter. His hospital employment after graduation included Cleveland General, Mayo Clinic, Chicago General, and Boston General before 1890 when landing a stay, at age 41, to St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington, Ky. where he practiced into his eighties. One of his many accomplishments was being instrumental in the establishment of Dunbar High School in 1922. There is a good possibility Dunbar received medical counseling from Dr. Hunter for respiratory disease. Dunbar presumedly visited Lexington for Isaac Hathaway, artist of the busts, is recorded to have taken a life mask from Dunbar and possibly had him pose for a sitting then or later before the poet’s death in 1906.

Hathaway born at Lexington the same year as Dunbar in Dayton, Ohio. The year of Dr. Hunter’s arrival at St. Joseph Hospital finds Hathaway studying in his first year at Chandler College in Lexington. The sculptor soon leaves for more academic study in Cincinnati and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston where he is credited with sculpting his first bust, the bishop of the AME church in Boston, Richard Allen. Later in his career he press molds 12″ versions of the Reverend Allen and Dunbar among other notables for more affordable distribution. It is reported as a child Hathaway was raised by his father, a former slave, who self educated when young and after emancipation became a minister. The widowed Reverend Hathaway took young Isaac to the Cincinnati Art Museum at age nine exposing the youth to classical sculpture of famous Americans none of whom were black. Isaac is puzzled by the omission, remember he is a child, and is quoted as telling his dad that one day he would sculpt famous blacks for exhibition so to fill that void. This he did accomplish portraying a hundred subjects in his lifetime. By 1897 he returns from Boston to teach at Keene High School in Lexington until 1902 when opening “The Isaac Hathaway Company” located at 2008 Pine St. in Lexington where “Manufacturers of plaster casts of the human anatomy, accurately reproduced for medical school, and private purposes. Death masks and busts a speciality….. “ were sculpted. There is a report that his prior studio was in a cleared chicken coop at his dad’s house in Davis Bottoms where Dr. Hunter’s bust would likely have been sculpted. Now a renown surgeon of the community for seven years would have made Dr. Hunter an urgent subject for the returning artist to record at Lexington in 1897. Dunbar would be sculpted later, as the modeling might suggest, for he wears a masonic order lapel pin which would date after initiation in 1899 to the Dayton chapter which he founded. Dunbar’s image likely sculpted a few years prior to the poet’s death in 1906 as he was seriously ill living with his mom his last two. The two appearing together suggests both busts may have once been the property of the elder Dr. Hunter whose son, Dr. Bush Hunter ,a Lexington pathologist, too with a long philanthropic Lexington career until his death in 1983. Sometime near that date is when Frank Cutadean acquired the busts. Hathaway by 1907 is in Wahington D.C., expanding his legacy as a portrait artist, not to relocate again at Lexington in his storied career.

By 1915 Hathaway is teaching at Branch Normal College now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and a local high school. He remains there until 1937 when moving to Tuskegee Institute to establish their ceramics department. In 1947 he moves to Montgomery, Alabama to teach at Alabama State College. That summer Professor Hathaway introduces ceramic instruction at Auburn Polytechnic Institute which later became Auburn University ironically a school he could not have enrolled as a student. His penetration of racial barriers and being the first African American to accomplish several firsts among his people is impressive. Hathaway’s career is punctuated with milestones of similar magnitude as Dr. Hunter’s dedicated life. Google either’s accolades. Then there is his art which viewed color blind, as an unknown, stands proudly among any peers of his day in America. Twice in 1945 & 1951 he is awarded commissions to design commemorative coins of Booker T. Washington and his friend & colleague George Wahington Carver. See arrowmont.org/black-history-month-ceramics-spotlight-isaac-hathaway/ for one of several short biographies.

Dunbar’s accomplishments too were sizable executed in a very short window. He carried multiple “First African American to …..” titles. Go to poetryfoundation.org/poets/paul-laurence-dunbar for a critique of his oeuvre which covered just about all of the literary vehicles including poetry which he is best known. He also wrote short stories, novels, a play, songs, and collaborated on an opera, after a start in journalism. Over 40 schools honor his name along with streets, a housing project, a hospital, a Masonic lodge and a scholarship fund.

Condition: Over half of the paint has vanished having been stored dry though likely a lengthy period without temperature or humidity control. See images for areas of abrasions observed: One large chunk is an old loss at the bottom of the subjects right jacket lapel. Chip out of top of left ear. Right ear looks as though there may have been a chip that was long ago smoothed to a lower profile than the left. Slash at top of right eye socket extends to bridge of nose, a small divot on the forehead, small shallow wound atop the end of his nose, three slashes to the left shoulder, small chunk out of base molding with a vertical crack extending 4” up from the injury, a two inch series of shallow concentrated chips to the underside of the base molding, and a sooty surface which I have only once dusted with a soft haired brush. The previous 30 years of Dunbar’s tenure has resided in a HVAC controlled building inside a closed door cupboard. This being the first 21st century offering.