Larkin Goldsmith Mead
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Larkin Goldsmith Mead (January 3, 1835 - 1910) was an American sculptor.
He was born at Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and was a pupil (1853-1855) of Henry Kirk Brown. During the early part of the American Civil War he was at the front for six months, with the army of the Potomac, as an artist for Harper's Weekly; and in 1862-1865 he was in Italy, being for part of the time attached to the United States consulate at Venice, while William D. Howells, his brother-in-law, was consul. He returned to America in 1865, but subsequently went back to Italy and lived at Florence.
His first important work was a statue titled Agriculture, designed to top the dome of the Vermont State House at Montpelier, Vermont. This work proved so successful that he was soon after commissioned to sculpt a statue of Ethan Allen for the portico of the Vermont State House. Mead's work can be seen as neoclassical. His principal works are: the monument to President Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois; Ethan Allen (1876), National Statuary Hall, United States Capitol, Washington; an heroic marble statue, The Father of Waters, New Orleans; and Triumph of Ceres, made for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, and a large bust of Lincoln in the Hall of Inscriptions at the Vermont State House.
His brother William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928) was a well-known architect.
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
