Launt Thompson

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Launt Thompson (February 8, 1833 - September 26, 1894), American sculptor, born in Abbeyleix, Ireland. Due to the potato famine occurring in Ireland at the time, he emigrated to the United States in 1847 with his widowed mother, and they settled in Albany, New York. There, he found work as a handyman.

After studying anatomy in the office of a physician, Dr. James H. Armsby, he spent nine years as the studio boy of the sculptor, E. D. Palmer. In 1858 he moved to New York where he opened a studio. There he shared an apartment with James Pinchot. In 1862 he was elected academician at the National Academy due to his work "Trapper", a marble portrait of Grizzly Adams. He visited Rome in 1868-1869, and married Maria Louisa Potter, daughter of Alonzo Potter, Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania. From 1875 to 1887 he was again in Italy, living for most of the time at Florence. He died at Middletown, New York on the 26th of September 1894.

Among his important works are : Napoleon the First, at the Metropolitan Museum, New York; Abraham Pierson, first president of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; an equestrian statue of General A. E. Burnside, Providence, Rhode Island; General Winfield Scott, Soldiers' Home, Washington, D.C.; Admiral S. F. Du Pont (Washington, D.C.); General John Sedgwick (West Point, N.Y.); a medallion portrait of General John A. Dix; and portrait busts of James Gordon Bennett, William Cullen Bryant, S. F. B. Morse, Edwin Booth as Hamlet, Stephen H. Tyng and Robert B. Minturn.