Thomas Ball

June 3, 1819 (age 91)

Charlestown, Massachusetts, United States

Thomas Ball's first life-size bust was one of Daniel Webster. He executed statues of Pandora and a Shipwrecked Boy, a statuette of Washington Allston, and a bust of Napoleon I. His first public commission was the models for the bas-reliefs Signing of the Declaration of Independence and Signing of the Treaty of Peace in Paris, both for the pedestal of a statue of Franklin before the City Hall, Boston. The plaster model of his greatest work, a statue of Washington, was completed in 1864 after three years' work, was cast in bronze, and was erected in 1869 in the Public Garden, Boston. He modeled a small Emancipation, Lincoln and a kneeling slave; in 1875 a large group patterned upon it was erected in Washington. Other works of this period were a model of Edwin Forrest as Coriolanus (to order), Eve Stepping into Life, a bust of Liszt (from memory and photographs), and a small head, La Petite Pensée.Pensee. St. John the Evangelist (1875) is perhaps his best imaginative work. His heroic statue of Daniel Webster was unveiled in Central Park, New York City, in 1876. In 1893 he finished a majestic statue of Washington, which was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition before erection on the Searles estate in Methuen, Mass. In 1891 he published My Threescore Years and Ten.