Ball, Thomas

Ball, Thomas (b Charlestown, Mass., 3 June 1819; d Montclair, NJ, 11 Dec. 1911).
American sculptor. He began as a painter, but turned to sculpture without formal training in about 1850 and had a successful career with portraits and monuments. Two of his monuments are particularly well known: the equestrian statue of George Washington in Boston's Public Gardens (the plaster was completed in 1861, but the Civil War delayed its casting until 1869) and Lincoln Freeing the Slaves, usually known as the ‘Emancipation Group’ (1875, Lincoln Park, Washington), which was paid for with contributions from freed slaves. ‘More than any Lincoln memorial of the time it captured the imagination of the public in its mixture of naturalism and sentimentality’ (Milton W. Brown et al., American Art, 1979). For much of his career Ball lived in Florence, where he was a friend of Hiram Powers.