This long-dead South Carolinian isn’t someone you might recognize easily. But there’s a pretty good bet he was pretty important to the United States at some point in his life. Who is he? end your guess to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live.
Our previous Mystery Photo
Our previous mystery, “Curly hair,” got a great, but obviously intended-to-be-wrong, guess from one wag, whom we won’t identify. He guessed the marble bust to be of powerful longtime state Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, before the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina invented hair dye!
Ha! Not true, but funny. Seriously, the bust in the Gibbes Museum of Art on in front gallery under the Tiffany-style dome was of George Washington in a Roman style by an Italian sculptor.
FYI: If Washington were alive, he’d turn 287 on Feb. 22!
Congrats to the sleuths who correctly identified the first president: Eric Hansel of West Ashley; Freida McDuffie of Charleston; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; and Charleston native Marnie Huger of Richmond who said she had a delightful time figuring out this mystery.
Graf correctly shared that the bust attributed to Giuseppe Ceracchi has been at the Gibbes Museum of Art since 1917. “According to charlestoncitypaper.com, Ceracchi’s bust of Washington first made its way to Charleston when collector John Izard Middleton purchased it in 1820; it lived at Middleton Place for nearly a century (surviving the 1865 fire) and was donated to the Gibbes in the 20th century.”
- Send us a mystery: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send it along to editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
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