Darius Cobb - A Career in Art

A Career in Art

Though Darius would become the more famous of the two brothers, Cyrus enjoyed national fame, too. Cyrus Cobb practiced law for six years but later devoted full time to the arts of painting and sculpturing. Cyrus predominantly chose sculpture and Darius painting. Both Cobb brothers spent the greater part of their careers in Boston. In their art work their great instructor was Nature. They also received instruction from a relative and pupil of Washington Allston, who imparted to them in their youth many valuable ideas of that master. Cyrus' paintings were of a historical nature and included portraits of General U. S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln and a canvas entitled Warren at the Old South which is hung at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. He also delved into etchings. Cyrus Cobb's two best-known public sculptures are the Soldier's Monument (co-created with brother Darius) on the Cambridge Common and the full-length portrayal of Paul Revere at Boston. His design for the Soldier's Monument was selected from about 40 other entries. His sculptured pieces also included a head entitled The Celtic Bard, a heroic bas-relief Prospero and Miranda, a bust of General Butler, a bust of Phillips Brooks and one of local interest, that of Reverend Samuel Francis Smith, author of the patriotic hymn "America". This latter piece was placed in the State House. Cyrus Cobb also wrote and illustrated Sonnets to the Masters of Art. He was a full member of the Boston Art Club.

In 1862 the brothers enlisted in the 44th Massachusetts Infantry, doing service in North Carolina for nine months. In 1870, the two brothers co-authored a book titled The Veteran of the Grand Army, based on their war experiences. Their Civil War service gave them an edge in the design competition for the Cambridge Soldiers Monument, dedicated in 1870. The figure of a soldier at the top of the monument was their first life-size sculpture.

He had the soldier's hat, the worn knapsack, the dented canteen. But when Darius Cobb set out in the 1870s to make a still-life lithograph of Civil War artifacts, he was missing one important element - a tin cup. So, tacked onto the wall in the trompe-l'œil rendering is a scrap of paper with a sketched outline and the words "Dipper Missing". "Each painting has a story like this," said Susan Abele, curator of "Rediscovering Newton Artists, 1850-1950", at the Newton History Museum at the Jackson Homestead.

Darius was art editor/critic of the Boston Traveler, 1872–79, and became prominent in musical and literary circles and on the lecture platform.

Later in life the Cobb brothers worked together on a series of paintings illustrating French history for Boston's Tuileries Apartment Hotel. While Cyrus eventually became an accomplished sculptor, Darius was best known for his landscapes and portraits. His portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson hung in the Emerson School in Newton Upper Falls for many years. However, it was religious paintings for which Darius Cobb would become better known. His first significant religious work was entitled Judas, followed by Christ Before Pilate, Abraham, and a magnificent head of Christ called The Master. This painting was completed in 1917 when the artist was 83 years of age. He had worked on it for 34 years before considering it finished. Unfortunately, a few years after his death it was destroyed in a fire.

Around 1868 he painted the portrait of Henry Wilson, the U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, 1855–1873, who was then Vice President of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant. This work hangs in the Morse Institute Library in Natick, Massachusetts. In 1881, Cobb was hired to paint a series of pictures titled Site of the Boston Medical Library in 1881. Today, this series of paintings are in the collection of the Harvard Medical Library. In 1877, Cobb produced an oil on canvas portrait of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner. In 1890, Cobb painted a portrait of Civil War General Benjamin Butler at the State House in Concord, New Hampshire. That painting was reproduced as the frontispiece engraving in Butler's autobiography, Butler's Book, which was published in 1892.

Among Darius' more noted pictures are portraits of Louis Agassiz (1875) and Rufus Choate (1876); "King Lear" (1877); "Judas in the Potter's Field" (1877); "Christ Before Pilate" (1878); "For Their Sakes" (1879); "Washington on Dorchester Heights" (1880); portraits of Gen. B. F. Butler (1889),and Rev. Phillips Brooks (1893); "Immortality" (1893); and portraits of John A. Andrew (1894) and Charles P. Clark (1897).

In 1897, assisted by his brother Cyrus, he decorated the walls of the banquet hall of the Tuileries, Boston, with panels illustrative of French history. Of the nine panels he painted six: "Jeanne d'Arc"; "An Intrigue in the Court of Louis XIII"; "Richelieu and the Mayor of Rochelle "; "A Troublesome Edict of Louis XIV"; "The Storming of the Tuileries"; and "The Downfall of the Second Empire."

In 1898 he painted two large pictures for the town hall at Revere, Massachusetts, the subjects being scenes in the ride of Paul Revere. Cobb's work managed to find life on a postcard, too. According to The Town Crier (Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts) for May 5, 1911, 10,000 postal cards printed with Cobb's painting of the Last Comrade's Final Tribute were circulated throughout the United States.