William Rimmer (1816-1879) was probably the most individual and independent American sculptor in the 19th century. He was also a painter and a physician.

William Rimmer was born in Liverpool, England, on Feb. 20, 1816. At the age of 2 he was brought to Nova Scotia and at 10 to Boston, Mass., with which city he was primarily associated. In 1840 he began his artistic career as an itinerant portrait painter and also studied medicine, which he began to practice in the mid-1850s. At the same time he began carving directly in stone, producing such works as St. Stephen, a colossal granite head that is very personal in its display of fierce emotionalism and full of life. In his use of granite as a favored medium, he departed from the smooth, unbroken surfaces of the contemporary neoclassicists.

Falling Gladiator (1861), Rimmer's best-known sculpture, was done for his most important patron, Stephen Perkins. Although...