biography of Thomas BALL (1819-1911)

Birth place: Charlestown, MA

Death place: Montclair, NJ

Addresses: Boston,1837-53, and 1857-64; Italy, 1854-57; Italy, 1865-97; Montclair,NJ, 1897-1911

Profession: Sculptor, miniature and portrait painter

Studied: Italy, 1854-57

Exhibited: Boston Athenaeum, early 1840s; Apollo Assoc., NYC, early 1840s; American Art Union, 1848-49 (Christ in the Temple" and "Scene From King Lear")"

Member: Händel and Haydn Soc. of Boston; NSS.

Work: Boston Athenaeum; King's Chapel, Boston; North Carolina Mus.A., Raleigh. Public monuments: George Washington," Boston Public Garden; "Emancipation Group," Lincoln Park, Wash., DC; "P.T. Barnum," Bridgeport, CT; "Daniel Webster," Central Park, NYC."

Comments: His father was a house and sign painter. Ball briefly apprenticed with wood engraver Abel Bowen in Boston before concentrating his efforts (beginning about 1837) on miniature and portrait painting. He also had a strong interest in music and was able to supplement his painting income by singing. About 1850 Ball began working in sculpture, modeling a small portrait bust of the singer Jenny Lind which proved so successful that Ball was called upon to produce numerous replicas. At the time, there was a large demand for these small busts (called cabinet busts") by Americans who wanted images of famous people for their homes. Ball continued to make small portrait busts over the next year, but also made his first larger-than-life portrait, a bust of Daniel Webster. When Webster died shortly thereafter, Ball modeled a statuette of the orator that was patented and mass-produced in the form of numerous bronze and plaster replicas. Success allowed the sculptor to travel to Italy in 1854 where he met Hiram Powers and other members of the Florence art colony. On his return to Boston in 1857, he executed two major works, a statuette of Henry Clay that was widely mass-produced and very popular (an enlarged version was placed in Central Park in 1876), and an equestrian statue of George Washington for Boston's Public Garden. The latter project occupied Ball until 1861 (although it was not cast in bronze until after the Civil War) and during those years he made only about six portrait busts. He returned to Florence in 1865 and remained there until 1897, athough he made frequent visits to the U.S. in the interim. During these years he completed his most famous work, "The Emancipation Group" (also known as "Lincoln Freeing the Slaves"), which was unveiled in Washington in 1875. His last major project was another monument to Washington (later destroyed) for the city of Methuen, Mass. Ball's aesthetic remained fairly consistent throughout his career; his sculptural portraits--large and small--conveyed the heroism of the person portrayed yet were not idealized in the neoclassical sense, rather, they were deeply rooted in naturalism. His autobiography, My Threescore Years and Ten, appeared in 1892.

Sources: G&W; WW09; DAB; Boston CD 1837-53; 1857-64; Swan, BA; Washington Art Assoc. Cats., 1857, 1859; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Lee, Familiar Sketches, 212-13; Gardner; Yankee Stonecutters; Bolton, Miniature Painters. See also Craven, Sculpture in America, 219-229."

Legals