Strolling along Green-Wood Cemetery’s Atlantic Avenue one may come upon a magnificent cast metal bear perched upon a headstone. One might assume that this was put there during the cemetery’s heyday of grand sculptures and mausoleums in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries, but while this particular grave has been there since 1900, the bear is a more recent addition. William Holbrook Beard was a painter who studied at the Düsseldorf Academy and later relocated to New York in 1861. He was known for his anthropomorphic portraits of animals performing human…
