John Adams Jackson (November 5, 1825 — August 30, 1879) was a noted American sculptor.
Jackson was born in Bath, Maine, and apprenticed to a machinist in Boston, where he gave evidence of talent by modelling a bust of Thomas Buchanan Read. There he studied linear and geometrical drawing and produced crayon portraits. Going abroad in 1853, he visited Florence, where he created several portrait busts in marble, then went to Paris in 1854, where he studied academic life drawing at the Académie Suisse. In 1858 he went to New York City, remaining until 1860, when he moved to Florence, Italy, which was afterward his home.
Jackson's portrait busts include those of Daniel Webster (1851); Adelaide Phillips (1853); Wendell Phillips (1854); "Eve and the Dead Abel" (1862); "Autumn"; "Cupid Stringing his Bow"; "Titania and Nick Bottom"; "The Culprit Fay" (many times repeated); "Dawn" (repeated); "Peace"; "Cupid on a Swan"; "The Morning Glory" (a medallion repeated fourteen times); "Reading Girl" (1869); "Nusidora" (Vienna Exposition, 1873); "Hylas" (1875); and "Il Pastorello," an Abruzzi peasant-boy with his goat. He designed a statue of Dr. Elisha Kane, the arctic explorer, for the Kane monument association (1860); a group intended for the southern gate-house of the former Croton Lower Reservoir in Central Park, New York (1867, not installed);[1] and the Civil War soldiers' monument at Lynn, Massachusetts (1874).
Jackson died in Pracchia in Tuscany on August 30, 1879.