William Rudolph O’Donovan
O’Donovan was a self-taught American sculptor who worked with Thomas Eakins on the bas reliefs of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant set in the underside of the monumental arch in Grand Army Plaza. O’Donovan made the figures of Lincoln and Grant; Eakins made the horses.
He was born on March 28, 1844, in Preston County, Va. He served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, and afterward opened an sculpting studio in New York. His work gradually gained renown, and he was made an associate of the National Acadmey in 1878. He died in 1920.
O’Donovan also made the Trenton battle monument in New Jersey.
