American sculptures

As a rule, I don't think of American sculpture as anything particularly special.  And then I happened across five (5) nineteenth-century works in marble at the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and all that changed --

Genius of mirth, 1842, by Thomas Crawford

California, ca. 1855, by Hiram Powers

Cleopatra, ca. 1860, by William Wetmore Story

Venezia, ca. 1866, by Latkin Goldsmith Mead

Hiawatha, ca. 1872, by Augustus St Gaudens

Two more surprises were these moving works in bronze, by John Q. A. Ward --

The Indian Hunter, ca. 1860

The Freedman, ca. 1865