# Last of the Tribe [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [POWERS, Hiram]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Marble ## Commentary In the United States, as in France, Neoclassicism benefited from the political situation: it helped to bolster the regime by suggesting kinship between it and the Roman Republic of antiquity. Two generations of sculptors took up residence in Italy, first in Florence, to which they were attracted by Lorenzo Bartolini, and subsequently, after Bartolini's death, in Rome. They included, among others, Chauncey Bradley Ives, Hiram Powers, and Randolph Rogers, all for either Philadelphia or Boston, the two cities that vied with each other for the title of the "Athens of America." Hiram Powers sought to step up his production by designing not only sophisticated tools but also machines capable of manufacturing them. He executed graceful figures with exquisite modelling that remained in thrall to the Neoclassical ideal even where the subject hardly lent itself to such treatment. The figure with the Greek profile, Last of the Tribe, is far more suggestive of Diana, despite her hairstyle and her picturesque short skirt, than of an Indian maid. ## Related artworks - [Bust of General Andrew Jackson]() - [Fisher Boy]() - [George Washington]() - [The Greek Slave]() - [The Greek Slave]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()