American sculptor
Larkin Goldsmith Mead, Jr. (January 3, 1835 – October 15, 1910) was an American sculptor who worked in a neoclassical style.
Career.
He was born at Chesterfield, New Hampshire, the son of a prominent lawyer. A colossal snowman constructed by the young Mead was reported by the local press. He became a pupil of sculptor Henry Kirke Brown, (1853–1855). He worked as an illustrator for "Harper's Weekly" during the early part of the American Civil War, and was at the front for six months with the Army of the Potomac. In 1862–1865, he traveled to Italy, working for a time in Florence, and also spending part of the time attached to the United States consulate at Venice, where William Dean Howells, his brother-in-law, was diplomatic consul. He married in Venice. He returned to America in 1865, but subsequently returned to Italy, where he lived in Florence until his death.
His first important work was a statue of "Agriculture", designed to top the dome of the Vermont Statehouse at Montpelier, Vermont. This work proved so successful that he was soon commissioned to sculpt a statue of Ethan Allen for the Statehouse portico.
Other principal works include: the granite and bronze Lincoln Tomb, a sculptured mausoleum to President Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois; "Ethan Allen" (1876), National Statuary Hall, United States Capitol, Washington, DC; a heroic marble, "Mississippi – The Father of Waters", Minneapolis City Hall; "Triumph of Ceres", made for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, Illinois, 1893; and a large bust of Lincoln in the Hall of Inscriptions at the Vermont Statehouse.
His brother William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928) was a well-known architect, the "Mead" of McKim, Mead, and White.
He is buried in the Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori in the southern suburb of Florence, Galluzzo (Italy).
References.
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