August Kiss

This is a self-portrait marble bust by German sculptor August Kiss. Kiss gained a reputation as the best horse sculptor in Berlin following the success of his work Mounted Amazon Fighting a Panther, erected at the entrance staircase of the Altes Museum in 1842. Kiss became a professor at the Berlin Akademie in 1841. Richmond-born sculptor Edward Virginius Valentine studied under him in Berlin in the 1860s, until Kiss’s death in 1865.