The Biographical Dictionary of America/Akers, Benjamin Paul

AKERS, Benjamin Paul, sculptor, was born in Saccarappa, Me., July 10, 1825. His father was a wood turner, self-educated and of limited means, eccentric, independent, liberal, poetical and unpractical. His mother was refined, energetic, spontaneous, enthusiastic, sympathetic and broad. He was the eldest of eleven children. He was christened Benjamin, but his playmates had nicknamed him St. Paul, and he became known to the art world as Paul Akers. When a boy the family removed to Salmon Falls on the Saco river, and Paul worked in the shop with his father and attended school. His skill in designing ornamental wood-work first disclosed artistic ability. His first effort in marble was the rough life-like outline of a neighbor who periodically passed the shop. His reading was directed solely by his inclination, and he read Plato, Aristotle and Dante, and afterwards German and French literature. When he had studied Goethe his horizon was widened and he saw beyond the confines of his rural surroundings. He made some efforts with both pen and brush at home, and then determined to adopt literature as a means of satisfying a longing and to provide the more practical needs of life. He went to Portland and found employment in a printing office. In a shop window in that city a bust by Brackett determined his life work, and he at once went to Boston, where he received instructions in plaster-casting. The next winter he spent at home and executed a medallion head and the bust of the village doctor, and a head of Christ. In 1850 he opened a studio in Portland, Me., and made busts of the poet Longfellow, John Neal, Governor Gilman of New Hampshire, Professor Cleaveland of Bowdoin college, Samuel Appleton of Boston, and other prominent men, which gave him considerable reputation. He subsequently visited Italy, and returned in October, 1853, and the following winter modelled his well-known "Benjamin in Egypt," destroyed with the Crystal Palace, New York, in 1854. His experience in Italy and its revelation to his immature art-spirit he discloses in a letter written in 1853: "I was thrown at once from a world where not in all my life had I seen art, although I lived there with my own shadowy creations—not strong, for I knew not the mighty or the feeble—thrown at once into a world where all was art. All around me, on earth, in the far heavens, were multitudes of forms, all silent but all demanding place; and none might help me, none to say 'here' or 'there'; I only in this mighty realm to appoint, to assign. I was set down in the Louvre a boy from the woods of that new world, no idle spectator." While in Florence he executed two bas-reliefs, "Night" and "Morning," for Samuel Appleton, Boston, and sent home several portrait busts. In 1854 he spent some time in Washington, modelling the busts of distinguished men, among them President Pierce, Edward Everett, Gerrit Smith, and Sam Houston. He afterward had a studio in Providence, R. I., where he made busts of several prominent persons. In 1855 he again went to Italy and remained there three years, producing in Florence and Rome some of his best-known works, among which were: "Una and the Lion," "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," the "Pearl Diver," and an ideal head of Milton, which last two are described in the "Marble Faun" of Hawthorne. By permission of the authorities of Rome he was allowed to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero that lay neglected on a shelf in the Vatican. To this he restored the eye, brow and ears and modelled the neck and bust, and Akers restored Cicero is an accepted portrait. In 1856 he travelled in Switzerland, Germany, France and Great Britain. In England he studied the authorities for his bust of Milton, which when seen in Akers' studio, Browning designated "Milton, the man angel." He planned a free gallery of art for New York, to contain copies in marble of the chief works of ancient art, but in the midst of his work and plans his health failed and he returned home in 1858, and the next year started for Rome, where after his arrival he entered upon the execution of a commission from August Belmont of a statue of Commodore Perry for Central Park, New York, which was left unfinished. His state of health precluded further work, and in 1860 he returned home and the same year was married to Mrs. Elizabeth Taylor, afterwards known in the literary world as Elizabeth Akers Allen. He died in Philadelphia, May, 1861.