Bust of Philip Morgan Plant (1901-1941)

Philip Morgan Plant was New York socialite and millionaire who came of age in the Roaring Twenties. Born in 1901 to B. Manwaring and Mae Caldwell, his parents later divorce and his mother remarried Colonel Morton F. Plant, a railroad and steamship owner. Colonel Plant adopted Philip in 1914 and upon his death in 1902 purportedly left Philip an enormous sum of $15,000,000. After graduating Yale, Philip took a series of trips throughout Africa, collecting 'specimen samples' which he donated to the American Museum of Natural History. His technicolor footage of his travels was instrumental to the curators in recreating the exhibitions accurately.

Philip Plant was perhaps best known as a New York gentleman about town who rubbed elbows with the East Coast elite in the first quarter of the 20th century. He was once called the 'millionaire playboy' by the New York Times, which he politely rebuked. Thanks to his adoptive father's fortune, Plant lived a life of luxury and counted American film actress Constance Bennett as the first of his three wives.

This bronze, dated to 1921, is emblematic of Troubetzkoy's tradition of creating society portraits and was most likely commissioned by Plant himself or possibly his mother, as it was once displayed in the Pavillon d'Amour garden at Clarendon, her Newport estate. An image of the bust in situ in this garden is included in Claus von Bülow’s essay on the mansion, which he owned with his wife Sunny from 1970 until 1986, at which point they sold the house after he had been accused of attempting to murder his wife.

Troubetzkoy's oeuvre includes works of other influential members of New York society, including Edith Rockefeller and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. These sculptures were most likely executed during Troubetzkoy's sojourn in America, as the First World War broke out in Europe.

A plaster version of this bust is in the collection of the Museo del Paesaggio, Verbania and is incorrectly entitled Busto di Giovane.