Toward the end of the 1960s, Hart began work on one of his earliest and most personal sculptures, Family. Years later, Hart would say that Family was for him a way to come to terms with Chesley's death; it was an effort to represent an idea of stability, to capture a sense of belonging. The first casting Hart presented as a gift to his girlfriend in 1969. Stylistically, Family signals Hart's tendency to straddle the line between Classical and Romantic sculptural traditions. The heavy pyramidal form of Hart's Family evokes the solidity of French's Abraham Lincoln, but the raw, earthy contours set it apart, and situate it within the Romantic tradition of Rodin.
