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A fine marble bas relief profile of a young girl by Irish American artist Launt Thompson (1833-1894). Thompson was born in Abbeyleix in County Laois, Ireland, and immigrated with his widowed mother to Albany, New York in 1847 during the potato famine.
The fourteen-year-old was hired as an office boy by Dr. James H. Armsby, a surgeon at the Albany Hospital and professor at Albany Medical College. Thompson\'s constant practice of sketching prompted the doctor to introduce him to the landscape painter William Hart, who gave the boy drawings to copy. In 1849, sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer saw Thompson\'s anatomical drawings and put him to work carving and finishing marble portrait reliefs, busts and statues in his new sculpture studio at the corner of Columbia Place and Eagle Street in Albany. Thompson would become Palmer\'s most successful pupil and considered the equal of John Quincy Adams Ward , the so-called dean of nineteenth century American sculptors. He became well known for his portrait busts of distinguished persons including William Cullen Bryant and Napoleon, and for allegorical bas reliefs.
Marble bas relief, signed lower center and dated 1879, and presented in a brass surround. Some minor edge chips. Dimensions: 16 ½’ Diameter x 3” D. Ref: 14262Item id:11409
New Hampshire Antique Co-op
323 Elm Street
Milford, NH 03055
A local family business since 1983
Named Best of New England by Yankee Magazine
