In the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C. lies the grave site of Clover Hooper Adams. This unique grave site bears an allegorical bronze sculpture representing despair and grief. It is not named, but does not ask to be named. This sculpture is the questioner. The story of Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams is complex and tragic. An outspoken, intellectual woman who was one of the earliest portrait photographers, fell into a deep depression after the death of her father in April 1885. In December of the same year in her bedroom, she drank potassium-cyanide, a poisonous chemical used in developing her photographs. To read more about Clover Adams, click here . Henry Adams, Clover's husband, traveled to Japan with La Farge in 1886 to learn about Buddhism. The next year he commissioned Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a memorial for his wife. He was specific about the need for the sculpture to be a union of Eastern and Western spirituality . Saint-Gaudens became deeply involved ...
Michael Aaron Hall, Sculpting in Bronze and Stone