An antique dealer, Frank Cutadean, kept a shop at W. Main St. in Lexington, Ky. when in the mid 1980s related to me that a couple of sculpted plaster busts portraying Afro-American subjects had recently been delivered to him by two men who were cleaning out a building where stored along with other cast aside objects. Evidently dry untended storage outside a living area. About a decade after Cutadean’s initial purchase he decided to sell and exhibited each at a monthly antique show held in a tobacco warehouse on Angliana Ave. at Lexington, Ky. where I purchased both. Dunbar’s identity was quickly learned while leaving the show from one of the twin brothers Morgan or Marvin Smith, of Lexington & NYC, who had seen the busts at the show prior to my stroll through and graciously shared his knowledge. 

Soon after purchasing I sold the still unknown bust as likely sculpted by Isaac Hathaway. The new owner enlisted Addison Malone, a researcher at UNC in Durham, N.C., who identified the bust as Dr. John Edward Hunter. Both with dry sooty surfaces when delivered to Cutadean, with Dr. Hunter having fresh chipping from indifferent handling and Dunbar with half the paint lost, presumedly due to severe heat and humidity while enduring a lengthy storage period. Dr. Hunter’s chipping was later restored by Terry Boyle in Cincinnati. Dunbar remains in the same condition as when purchased.

Dr. John Edward Hunter (1859-1956), was the first African American surgeon to be offered privileges at any hospital in Lexington, Ky. Born a slave in Virginia and soon adopted as an infant by a family in Ohio. He studied pre-med at Oberlin in Ohio before receiving 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. There 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 possibility Dunbar received medical counseling from Dr. Hunter for respiratory disease. 

Dunbar allegedly visited Lexington for Isaac Hathaway, artist of the busts, is recorded in one online article (without a citation) 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. By all accounts taking a life mask is a miserable experience for the sitter who must breath through tubes inserted in the nostrils. Another possible scenario (Isaac Scott Hathaway 1874-1967 Sculptor Exhibition Catalog 2-15-1996 through 3-16-1996 Univ. of Arkansas at Pine Bluff page 26) is Hathaway took a death mask of Dunbar in 1906 at Dayton, Ohio while the artist was still living in Lexington and subsequently did a bust of Dunbar, from that mask, the following year after moving to Washington, D.C. Had Hathaway taken a life mask successfully there was little need to do a death mask. The later scenario, as reported in the catalog, possibly more likely as Dunbar suffered from tuberculosis, which would have been awful for the sitter whose lungs were expiring to suffer a life mask procedure. Dunbar was under his mother’s care the last two years of his life.

Isaac Hathaway, the artist, was born at Lexington in 1872 the same year as Dunbar at Dayton, Ohio. Hathaway was raised by his father Robert Elijah (Lige) Hathaway, a Bourbon Co. Ky. slave to U.S. Senator Garrett Davis. In 1864 Elijah Hathaway ran away to join the Union Army to avoid a whipping by his master for blooding the master’s son’s nose. Elijah self educated when young and after the war became a minister. The widowed Reverend Hathaway took the nine year old Isaac, who lost his mom at age two, to an Art Museum in Cincinnati exposing the youth to classical sculptures of famous Americans, none of whom were Black. Isaac is puzzled by the omission after a failed search for Frederick Douglass, 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 later accomplished portraying over a hundred subjects in his lifetime. 

Dr. Hunter’s arrival at St. Joseph Hospital finds Hathaway studying at Chandler Normal School / College in Lexington. The future sculptor leaves for Boston, Massachusetts in 1894 for more academic study in the art department at the New England Conservatory of Music where he is credited with sculpting his first bust in 1896, the bishop of the AME church in Philadelphia, Richard Allen. Later in his career he press molds 12″ versions of the Reverend Allen and Dunbar among other notables for more affordable distribution. These busts sold for a dollar and could be purchased on the installment plan of 25 cents a month for four months. 

After two years study in Boston, Hathaway enrolls at the Cincinnati Art Academy, and by 1897 he returns to teach English at Keene High School in Jessamine County until 1902 when opening “The Isaac Hathaway Company”. The Company was located on Pine St. (a bisecting street to Davis Bottoms) 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. Hathaway reports to C. Frank Dunn in the publication (“In Kentucky” Vol. II , No. 1 Spring 1947, pp 24-25, 44-46) that his prior studio was in a cleared chicken coop at his dad’s home in Davis Bottoms where Dr. Hunter’s bust would likely have been sculpted. 

A renowned Afro-American surgeon of the community for the previous seven years elevated Dr. Hunter to a must sculpt subject for the returning artist to record at Lexington in 1897. Quite possibly Dr. Hunter’s bust was Hathaway’s second full life size bust accomplished as an academically trained artist. Hunter’s bust is more elaborate, with the subject rising above an open book, than other notables subsequently sculpted. Dunbar would be sculpted perhaps a decade later, as the modeling suggests. He wears a masonic order lapel pin which would date after his initiation in 1899 to the Dayton chapter which he founded. 

Dunbar’s image is recorded as sculpted after the poet’s death in 1907 at Washington, D.C. The two appearing together suggests the busts may have once been the property of the elder Dr. Hunter. His son, Dr. Bush Hunter, was a Lexington pathologist, who also had a long philanthropic career until his death in 1983 and possibly had inherited the two from his dad. Sometime near the date of Dr. Bush Hunter’s death is when Frank Cutadean acquired the busts. Hathaway by 1907 is in Washington D.C., expanding his legacy as a portrait artist for the next eight years, not to relocate again at Lexington in his storied career.

By 1915 Hathaway is teaching ceramics in the summers at Branch Normal College, now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and English, Literature, and Expression at a local high school through the traditional school year. He remains there until 1937 when moving to the 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 in as a student. He was offered a professorship at Auburn though declined, having previously committed to accept the same position in Montgomery. 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 anonymously 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 Washington Carver. The online resource: “The Davis Bottom History Preservation Project, The Hathaway Family Part 1 & 2” gives an excellent short bio of the artist. The exhibition catalog “Isaac Scot Hathaway 1871-1967 Sculptor” Feb. 15-March 16, 1996 printed for the Univ. of Arkansas at Pine Bluff another valuable resource.

Dunbar’s accomplishments too were sizable executed in a very short window. He carried multiple “First African American to …..” titles. Go to the Poetry Foundation for a critique of his oeuvre which covered just about all of the literary vehicles, including poetry his better known discipline. 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 of Dunbar bust: About half of the paint has vanished having been stored an extended 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 subject’s 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. A shallow 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, chunk out of base molding with a vertical crack extending 4” up from the loss, a two inch series of shallow concentrated small 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.