Robert Eberhard Schmidt Von Der Launitz

Background

Robert Eberhard Launitz was born into a Baltic German family in Riga (nowadays, Latvia) and came to the United States about 1828. One of his five brothers was a bishop, one a fieldmarshal, and three were generals.

Education

Robert received an excellent classical and military education and was intended for the army, but his native inclination was toward art. As a young man he went to Rome, where one of his uncles, a sculptor, was employed. He studied at first with his uncle, and later, for four years, under Thorvaldsen.

Career

On arriving in New York, Launitz was seriously handicapped. Though talented and agreeable, he was friendless. He could speak Russian, German, French, Italian, and Spanish, but knew very little English. As a result of Roman fever, he was deaf. Thus circumstanced, he was glad to work as journeyman for John Frazee, then in the marble business in New York City.

With far more education in art than his employer, he soon became indispensable. In 1831 they formed a partnership, and Launitz's name appeared in the city directory as sculptor, 591 Broadway. His knowledge of European languages enabled him to employ and train the best of the foreign carvers arriving as immigrants. He turned out excellent workmen. Under him, Thomas Crawford learned to handle the chisel.

After Frazee received the commission for the New York Custom House (1839), Launitz took entire charge of the Broadway shop. All his life he was artist rather than business man and in his contracts often underestimated costs. His gains were at times so meager that to eke out a living, he turned small objects in alabaster. His gifts and training won him a welcome among the artists.

For many years his output from the marble shop was confined to mantelpieces, gravestones, and the like. His first outstanding public work, the memorial portrait statue of Charlotte Canda, in Greenwood Cemetery (1845), together with his New York Firemen's monument, also in Greenwood, brought him wide recognition.

Other large cemeteries ordered his designs; these his rivals often pirated in meaner material and workmanship. In 1848 the Kentucky legislature contracted with him for a fifteen-thousand-dollar monument "to those who had fallen in defense of their country. " This tribute, placed in the center of the "Bivouac of the Dead, " in the State Cemetery, Frankfort, Kentucky, was a female figure of War, sixty-two feet high, carved in Italian marble. It cost Launitz $17, 500, but with characteristic probity, he chose to abide by his contract and declined the $2, 500 proffered by the legislature to reimburse him. His last important monument was the statue of Pulaski, erected in Savannah, Georgia (1854). At the close of the Civil War, Launitz found it impossible to compete successfully with the mushroom monument firms scattering stone soldiers from coast to coast, and his influence declined.

Achievements

• Launitz played an important part in developing the carving industry in this country. He designed the commemorative stone for the State of New York that was installed on the interior walls of the Washington Monument. He was responsible for the monument and statue in honor of Casimir Pulaski located in Savannah, Georgia. He executed many funerary monuments in Frankfort Cemetery and New York's Greenwood Cemetery.

Membership

In 1833 he was made a member of the National Academy of Design on his bas-relief, "Venus and Cupid. "

Connections

Uncle:

Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz

sculptor