Ives was born in Hamden, Connecticut and at the age of 16 was apprenticed to Rodolphus Northrop, a woodcarver in nearby New Haven.

In 1844 poor health (and, according to Craven, p. 235, perhaps too much competition from other sculptors in Boston and New York) prompted Ives to move to Europe, where he ultimately settled in the expatriate artist community.

Ives' statue of Undine Rising from the Waters (1884)[1] remains one of the icons of the American neo-classical movement, being selected to grace the front covers of at least three books about sculpture, American Sculpture at Yale University, Marble Queens and Captives and A Marble Quarry, where the back of the statue also serves as the book's back cover.

Art historian and sculptor Lorado Taft includes him in Taft's seminal book The History of American Sculpture in a chapter entitled Some Minor Sculptors of the Early Years, and says of his Trumbull and Sherman statues at the Connecticut State Capitol, "Descriptions of these curious works would be unprofitable.

Some of these portrait statues and busts include ones of: Like many other Victorian era artists Ives studio in Rome generated a large number of works drawn from Greek and other mythologies.