Thomas R. Gould

Thomas Ridgeway Gould (1818 - November 26, 1881) was an American sculptor active in Boston and Florence.

Gould was born in Boston. He was at first a merchant with his brother in the dry-goods business, but studied sculpture under Seth Wells Cheney starting in 1851 and in 1863 exhibited two large heads of Christ and Satan at the Boston Athenæum. As a result of the American Civil War, he lost his moderate fortune, and in 1868 moved with his family to Florence, Italy, where he devoted himself to study and work. His "West Wind" stirred controversy in 1874 when it was denounced as a copy of Canova's Hebe; it was later shown in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. He also created statues of Kamehameha the Great, Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, Ariel, and John Hancock (now in the town hall of Lexington, Massachusetts).

Gould visited Boston in 1878, where he executed a number of portrait busts, including those of Emerson (now in the Harvard University library), John Albion Andrew, Seth Wells Cheney, and Junius Brutus Booth. Two alti-rilievi representing Steam and Electricity, displayed within the Boston Herald building, were among his last works. His statue of John Bridge, now on the Cambridge, Massachusetts commons, was completed by his son. Gould died in Florence, Italy in 1881.

Works

He produced portrait busts of Emerson, John A. Andrew, and Junius Brutus Booth.
* "Christ" (a bust)
* "Satan" (a bust)
* "Kamehameha the Great" in Honolulu and in (National Statuary Hall Collection) (Washington, D. C.)
* "West Wind" (St. Louis Mercantile Library, St. Louis)
* "John Hancock" (Lexington town hall)
* "John Bridge" (Cambridge (Mass.) Common, completed by his son.

References

* "Thomas R. Gould", "Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography", edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889.
* Radford, Georgia and Warren Radford, "Sculpture in the Sun, Hawaii's Art for Open Spaces", University of Hawaii Press, 1978, 32-33, 93.
* Tuckerman, "Book of the Artists" (New York, 1867)

Gallery

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