Son of the well-known New England clergyman, Sylvanus Cobb; born in Maiden, MA, on the 6th of August 1834; graduated from the Lyman School, East Boston, in 1848, and afterward made special studies of the classics. He and his twin brother, Darius, studied art together, and refused a chance to pursue the study in Europe, wishing to preserve the American feeling, even at the expense of a lack of the technique found only in the French and other European schools. He began the study of law in 1869 as a means of discipline; graduated from the Boston University Law School in 1873 and practiced for six years, resuming his artwork in 1879. Among his sculptures are a bust of the late Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber (Mrs. Partington) (1867); the Cambridge Soldiers’ Monument (1869); heroic bas-relief of Prospero and Miranda (1883); heroic statue of Abbott Lawrence (1886), Ancient Celtic Bard Contemplating the Future Woes and Dawning Light of Ireland (1886); and a bust of Theodore Parker (1886). Among his paintings are Jesus Condemned (1879); Warren at the Old South (1880), and portraits of Drs. A. P. Peabody and J. Appleton. Mr. Cobb studied music as well as art and law, was a member of the famous Boylston Club and was an accomplished tenor singer. He wrote 30 sonnets on the Masters of Art, which were printed in the Boston Transcript. Cyrus, as well as his twin brother, Darius, served in the war of the Rebellion in the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment; and the former, in 1870, wrote The Veteran of the Grand Army, to show the aims of the Grand Army of the Republic.
