John Adams Jackson

Who was John Adams Jackson?

John Adams Jackson was a noted American sculptor.

Jackson was born in Bath, Maine, and apprenticed to a machinist in Boston, where he gave evidence of talent by modelling a bust of Thomas Buchanan Read. There he studied linear and geometrical drawing and produced crayon portraits. Going abroad in 1853, he visited Florence, where he created several portrait busts in marble, then went to Paris in 1854, where he studied academic life drawing at the Académie Suisse. In 1858 he went to New York City, remaining until 1860, when he moved to Florence, Italy, which was afterward his home.

Jackson's portrait busts include those of Daniel Webster; Adelaide Phillips; Wendell Phillips; "Eve and the Dead Abel"; "Autumn"; "Cupid Stringing his Bow"; "Titania and Nick Bottom"; "The Culprit Fay"; "Dawn"; "Peace"; "Cupid on a Swan"; "The Morning Glory"; "Reading Girl"; "Nusidora"; "Hylas"; and "Il Pastorello," an Abruzzi peasant-boy with his goat. He designed a statue of Dr. Elisha Kane, the arctic explorer, for the Kane monument association; a group intended for the southern gate-house of the former Croton Lower Reservoir in Central Park, New York; and the Civil War soldiers' monument at Lynn, Massachusetts.