American Art Collaborative

Louisa “Loulie” Greenough Powers was Hiram Powers’s oldest daughter, born soon after the death of his first child, Jimmy. She was named after the sculptor Horatio Greenough’s sister, Louisa, who was a close friend of the family. Loulie Powers married the successful English steel manufacturer Alfred Buckingham Ibbotson in 1862. The portrait bust was modeled shortly before her marriage and departure for England. The Ibbotsons later built a huge villa on the property adjoining her father’s home in Florence, which became known as the “marble palace” and is still home to descendants of the Powers family.