Thomas Ball

Thomas Ball (June 3, 1819 – December 11, 1911) was an American sculptor and musician. His work has had a marked influence on monumental art in the United States, especially in New England. Life He was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas Ball, a house and sign painter and Elizabeth Wyer Hall. His father died when he was twelve. After several odd jobs to help support his family he spent three years working at the New England Museum, the precursor to the Boston Museum. There he entertained the visitors by drawing portraits, playing the violin, and singing, and repaired mechanical toys. He then became an apprentice for the museum wood-carver Abel Brown. He taught himself oil painting by copying prints and casts in the studio of the museum superintendent. Sculptor His earliest work was a bust of Jenny Lind, whom he saw on her 1850 tour of the United States. Copies of his Lind work and his bust of Daniel Webster sold widely before being widely copied by others. His work includes many early cabinet busts of musicians. His first statue of a figure was a two-foot high statue of Daniel Webster, on which he worked from photographs and engravings until he managed to see him pass his studio shortly before his death. Musician Ball was an accomplished musician and from his teenage years working as a paid singer in Boston churches. He performed as an unpaid soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society beginning in 1846 and with that organization sang the title role in the first United States performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah, and the baritone solos in Rossini's Moses in Egypt. On a visit to Boston years later he performed the baritone role in Boston's first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Germania Orchestra on April 2, 1853.