PALM 00025

Perry, Roland Hinton

General John Breckinridge Castleman

1913

Metal/Stone

Bronze/Marble

General John B. Castleman was a man of considerable influence in Louisville during this period. He was a veteran Confederate officer of the Civil War and had also been an officer in the Spanish-American War, a member of the Louisville Legion militia unit, and a prominent landowner. Castleman also served as Commissioner of Public Parks for over 25 years and helped to establish the city's Olmsted Park system. With his reputation for public service, it is perhaps not surprising that Castleman became the subject of yet another public work in 1913, this time on a much larger scale and in a more accessible location--the Cherokee Park Triangle.

Roland Hinton Perry (1870-1941), an American painter who trained in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, depicted Castleman in civilian clothes on a trotting horse, straying from the standard representation of distinguished figures in military garb atop stoic or bucking horses that characterize traditional equestrian portraiture. Castleman, an avid horseman, was a founder of the American Saddlebred Horse Association and winner of the grand championship hosted at the Chicago Columbian Exposition World's Fair in 1893. The choice to place Castleman in civilian clothes atop a calm, amiable horse, which was in fact modeled after Castleman's own prized American Saddlebred mare, Caroline, works to downplay military involvement and instead focuses on his contributions as a civic leader. (KTF)