Q. David Bowers
CAREY, Arthur Graham
Arthur Graham Carey was a Rhode Island silversmith who worked with the Rhode Island School of Design and in private business.
Commemorative credit: 1936 Rhode Island Tercentenary half dollar (prepared designs with his friend, John Howard Benson).
COPPINI, Pompeo Luigi
Born in Moglia (province of Mantua), Italy on May 19, 1870, the son of Giovanni and Leandra (Raffa) Coppini, Pompeo Coppini studied architecture in Florence but changed his interest and enrolled in the Academia di Belle Arti in the same city, where he learned the techniques of sculpture under Augusto Rivalta and graduated with highest honors in 1889 after completing an eight-year course of study in just three. He then spent several years in the Italian army, after which he engaged in various lines of work, doing some sculpting as opportunities presented themselves.
Pompeo Coppini came to the United States in 1896 and worked as an assistant to New York sculptor Alexander Doyle. He then gained employment with the Eden Musee, a public attraction with many features (stage playlets, sculptures, motion pictures, etc.), where he worked in 1897 and 1898. In 1898 he produced statuary groups for the Government Building at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition held in Omaha. In 1901 he received a commission to create the Confederate Monument for the State Capitol at Austin, Texas. While working on the project he visited San Antonio, which he liked so much that he decided to move there, becoming an American citizen in 1902.
While he was a Texan for the rest of his life, from 1916 to 1922 he maintained a studio in Chicago, and in New York City he had a studio from 1922 to 1956, although he continued to make Texas his residence. From 1943 to 1945 he headed the Fine Arts Department at Trinity University in San Antonio. He founded the Classic Art Fraternity, later renamed the Coppini Academy of Fine Arts, sponsored by his foster daughter, sculptress Waldine Tauch.
Coppini achieved renown as a sculptor and created nearly 100 public and other monuments in the United States and others in Mexico and Italy. His work included 75 portrait busts and 19 statues including the Washington Monument in Mexico City, a statue of General J.H. Morgan in Louisville, the Memorial Fountain at the University of Texas, and an equestrian grouping at Bellinger, Texas. In 1949 his autobiography, From Dawn to Sunset, was published.
The artist was married in New Haven, Connecticut on February 27, 1898, to Elisa DeBarbieri. Coppini died in San Antonio on September 27, 1957.
Commemorative credit: 1934-1938 Texas Centennial half dollar.
COX, Kenyon
Born in Windsor, Vermont on October 27, 1856, Kenyon Cox was the son of Maj. Gen. Dolson Cox (governor of Ohio and Secretary of the Interior under U.S. Grant) and Helen Finney Cox (a daughter of the president of Oberlin College). Kenyon Cox became interested in art as a child and, while an invalid from the age of nine to 13, passed much time by sketching. From 13 to 18 he was a student at the McMicken art school in Cincinnati, Ohio, and spent much of his spare time sketching animals at a local private zoo.
At the age of 20, in 1876, he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he spent a year before going to Paris, where he studied under several masters including Carolus Duran and Jean Leon Gerome, whom he considered to be his mentor. Returning to the United States, Cox established a studio in New York City in 1883. In 1889 two of his works were awarded prizes at the Paris International Exposition. For the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, he painted architectural murals for the Manufacturers' Building and the Liberal Arts Building. He decorated the Capitol Building in St. Paul, Minnesota. Cox became known as a portraitist, illustrator, and author.
On June 30, 1892 he married Louise Howland King, for whom he had served as an art instructor. Kenyon Cox died in New York City on March 17, 1919.
Commemorative credit: 1893 Isabella quarter (he prepared sketches, but it is not known if his ideas were used by Charles E. Barber, who reviewed Cox's work and designed the coin).
CRAWFORD, Thomas
Born in New York City (presumed) on March 22, 1814, the son of Aaron and Mary (Gibson) Crawford, Thomas Crawford became interested in art as a child, when he spent time drawing sketches and carving in wood. At the age of 19 he studied stone cutting in the studio of John Frazee (1790-1852), later working in the marble carving facility of Robert E. Launitz (1806-1870) where he produced designs for monuments.
In 1835 Crawford went to Rome, where he studied under Bertel Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor. For the next several years he produced copies of statues for display in the Vatican. During one particularly creative 10-week period in 1837 he produced 17 marble busts. In 1838 he created his first significant original work, Orpheus and Cerberus. Charles Sumner, the well known Massachusetts politician, saw Crawford's work while on a trip to Rome, and commissioned him to produce several works for display in Boston. Crawford decided to make Rome his home and remained there for most of the rest of his life, except for a visit to the United States in 1849.
For the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. he created life-size figures for the front pediment, bronze doors (illustrating scenes from the Revolutionary War), and a statue originally called Armed Liberty, later popularly known as Columbia or Liberty, and still later as Freedom or the Statue of Freedom, for the Capitol dome. This work was posthumously cast in bronze in a Maryland foundry and was hoisted atop the Capitol dome amid great festivities on December 2, 1863.
In 1844 Crawford married Louisa Ward (her sister, Julia Ward Howe, wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic), who bore him four children, the youngest of whom, Francis Marion Crawford, became well known as a novelist. For a dozen or so years after his marriage he maintained a large studio of 12 rooms, employing about 50 assistants. Many works were created including Hebe and Ganymede, Anacreon Ode LXXII, 1842 (Boston Athenaeum), Christian Pilgrim in Sight of Rome, Genius of Mirth, 1842 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), 1847 (Boston Athenaeum), Beethoven, 1855 (New England Conservatory of Music, Boston), Babes in the Woods, 1851 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Boy Playing Marbles, 1853 (Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts), Flora, 1853 (The Newark Museum), Peri and the Gates of Paradise, 1855 (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), and Adam and Eve, 1855 (Boston Athenaeum).
Following an accident to his eye, Crawford developed a brain tumor, became blind, and suffered greatly. He went to Paris to seek help, and then to London, where he died on October 10, 1857. He was interred in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. In 1861 his widow married Luther Terry, a painter in oils.
Commemorative credits: The Statue of Freedom motif was used on the obverses of the 1989 Congress Bicentennial half dollar and silver dollar.