Herbert Barbee

Herbert Barbee (October 8, 1848 – March 22, 1936) was an American sculptor from Luray, Virginia. He was the son of William Randolph Barbee (1818–1868), also a renowned sculptor, with whom he studied in Florence, Italy for some time. He lived for much of his life in his home county, where he had something of a reputation as an eccentric, and where he was not respected by many of the locals due to his propensity for carving nude figures. At one time he also kept a studio in New York, and in 1887 and 1888 he was active in Cincinnati. During his career he also worked in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and St. Louis. Eventually he opened a studio in Hamburg, Virginia, not far from his birthplace.

In addition to his own work, Barbee completed several pieces which had been left unfinished by his father at the time of his death, and also carved marble pieces after a number of his father's clay models; one of these, The Star of the West, received a gold medal at the Southern Exposition of 1883. He erected a bust of William, looking up at Mary's Rock, at the old family cemetery in Thornton Gap; placed there in 1930, after the elder Barbee's remains had been moved to a cemetery in Luray, this was removed sometime after the construction of Skyline Drive through the area. It was intended that it should be paired with a bust of Herbert's mother, looking down on her husband from the Rock, but that piece was never completed.

Barbee married, on February 20, 1895, Blanche E. Stover of Luray. With her he had four children: Herbert Randolph, Aurelia Loreta, Mary Frances, and William Clifford. Barbee lived at a house called "Calendine", which had been erected in the 1850s to serve as a general store and stage stop along the Sperryville-New Market turnpike; he used the former store area as his studio. He is buried at the Stover Cemetery in Luray. "Calendine" still stands; it is denoted by a historic marker erected by the Page County Historical Society, which purchased the building in 1968 and which today operates the house as a museum.

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