TWENTY-B'IFTH ANNUAL REPORT 133 



persons. Biographies, books of music, daguerreotypes, paintings, 

 engravings, pianos, china busts, medals, autographs, and other 

 relics were forwarded for the exhibition from Massachusetts, 

 California, and other states. On October 6, the one hundredth 

 anniversary of her birth, exercises were held in the building and 

 presided over by Dr. Johannes Hoving, Chairman of the Com- 

 mittee. Cablegrams to and from King Gustaf of Sweden were 

 read, addresses were made by Mr. W. A. F. Ekengren, Swedish 

 Minister to the United States, Mr. Madison Grant as Chairman 

 of the Executive Committee of the Zoological Society, and Di- 

 rector Townsend of the Aquarium; and excellent singing was 

 rendered by the Swedish Singing Society Svea. 



A marble bust of Jenny Lind, slightly larger than life size, 

 which it had been rumored would be presented to the Aquarium 

 by the city on the day of the exercises, did not arrive, but was 

 presented by the Centennial Celebration Committee in January. 



The only inscription it bears are the characters on the back, 

 "W. V. Hoyer, Roma, F. 1848," and it has been an exceedingly 

 difficult matter to gain any knowledge of the sculptor or as to 

 where and under what circumstances the bust was made. 



Jenny Lind, we are told, was never in Rome, and one account 

 says that von Hoyer merely sent the bust to Rome to be done in 

 marble. She brought the bust to America, but never carried it 

 back to Europe, having given it to the lady with whom she lived 

 on Staten Island. It was eventually sold and found its way to an 

 art shop in New York, where the attention of the Committee was 

 called to it. 



About the sculptor practically nothing is known. Walton's 

 Gallery of Sculpture contains an engraving of his statue of 

 Psyche, which was the property of Queen Victoria, and a brief 

 biographical notice in German states that he was a theological 

 student at Rome and made numerous statues of idealistic sub- 

 jects. He died in Dresden in 1873. 



An examination of over sixty books on sculpture and Ger- 

 man biography, revealed but two that mention von Hoyer, one 

 stating that his name was Wilhelm, the other that it was Wolf. 

 Even the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, a work of German 

 biography in sixty volumes, contains no reference to this sculptor, 

 and it is significantly sad that a man who could do work that was 

 prized by Queen Victoria should be so little known to fame. 



