Artist

Edward R. Thaxter

born Yarmouth, ME 1857-died Naples, Italy 1881
Also known as
  • Edward Russell Thaxter
Born
Yarmouth, Maine, United States
Died
Naples, Italy
Nationalities
  • American
Biography

Edward Thaxter was only twenty-four years old when he died, but in his brief career as a sculptor he garnered praise for his work and was deemed an artist with a promising future. Born in Yarmouth, Maine, he is believed to have chosen to study sculpture after seeing the work of John Rogers. At the age of sixteen, Thaxter moved to Boston and studied with the portrait sculptor John D. Perry.

In 1878 Thaxter left for Florence, Italy, where he took a studio and began to create the neoclassical works that won him critical attention. In 1881 he contracted typhoid fever, which left him in a weakened condition, and within the year the young sculptor died in Naples. Thaxter's untimely death was noted with genuine regret in the American press. The critic James Jackson Jarves, writing in the New York Times in August 1881, called it "a severe loss to the young school of American sculpture."

National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996)

Luce Artist Biography

Edward Thaxter's life was tragically cut short when he was only twenty-four. Born in Maine, he moved to Boston at age sixteen to learn from John Perry, a local portrait sculptor. He traveled to Florence in 1878 and opened a studio, where he created idealized sculptures. Unfortunately, Thaxter caught typhoid fever in 1881 and died within the year. The critic James Jackson Jarves wrote in the New York Times that Thaxter's death was "a severe loss to the young school of American sculpture" and that he showed "great promise" (Jarves, "Mr. Thaxter's Sad Death," New York Times, August 9, 1881).