William Couper (sculptor)
William L Couper (September 20, 1853 – June 23, 1942) was an American sculptor. Life and career. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Couper studied in Munich and Florence, and remained in the latter city for 22 years before returning to the United States and establishing himself in New York in 1897 as a portraitist and sculptor of busts in the modern Italian manner. He and Thomas Ball purchased a three-story brick building on 17th Street in Manhattan to serve as shared studio space. He married Eliza Chickering Ball, daughter of sculptor Thomas Ball (1819–1911), in Florence in 1878 . He was also a colleague of Daniel Chester French. He sculpted the figure of the Roman goddess "Flora" for the exhibit of the Apollinaris Company at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. At the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 his work won a bronze medal. Couper retired from sculpting in 1913. Couper is well known for his winged figures, such as the "Recording Angel" at the Couper family plot in Elmwood Cemetery in Norfolk and allegorical figures, such as "Psyche" and "A Crown for the Victor", in the collection of the Montclair Art Museum. Couper lived much  of his life in Montclair, New Jersey, where he built a large neoclassical villa he named "Poggioridente" or "laughing knoll". He had a home in Cortland, New York, as well. His wife died in 1939. They had several sons, one of whom, Thomas Ball Couper, lived in Montclair. His son Richard Hamilton Couper, a landscape painter, died in 1918 at the age of 33. He spent his last year at his other son William's farm in Bozman, Maryland, and died in an Easton, Maryland hospital after a brief illness on June 23, 1942.