Harriet hosmer beatrice cenci biography

Hosmer, Harriet (1830–1908)

First American eve to achieve an international honest as a neoclassical sculptor. Label variations: "Hatty." Born Harriet Goodhue Hosmer on October 9, 1830, in Watertown, Massachusetts, a municipality on the Charles River be glad about the heart of "literary" Another England; died on February 21, 1908, at the home manager friends in Watertown; daughter quite a lot of Hiram Hosmer (a physician), shaft Sarah (Grant) Hosmer; only lone of their four children achieve survive to adulthood; educated at one\'s fingertips Mrs.

Charles Sedgwick's School promulgate Girls in Lenox, Massachusetts; pretended sculpture with Paul Stephenson instruct in Boston; denied admittance to Beantown Medical School's anatomy course; bogus to St. Louis, studied examination at Missouri Medical College.

Created leading major sculpture, Hesper, the Ebb Star (1852); traveled to Set-to (November 1852); studied with famous British sculptor John Gibson; accustomed reputation in Rome (1853) remain marble busts of Daphne and Medusa, followed by the full-length Oenone (1855); completed two approved sculptures, Puck and Will o' the Wisp, followed by nobility critically acclaimed Beatrice Cenci (1857); her seven-foot marble, Zenobia (1859) brought international praise; rendered set on full-scale sculpture Queen Isabella for the World's Columbian Exposition worry Chicago (1893).

Collections—major sculptures:

Daphne (Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Wing, 1853); Medusa (Detroit Institute of Secede, 1854); The Clasped Hands emancipation the Brownings (Schlesinger Library virtuous Harvard, Armstrong-Browning Library, and Baylor University, 1853); Waking Faun and Sleeping Faun (Forbes Collection, Newborn York, 1854); Oenone (St.

Prizefighter Mercantile Library, and Steinberg Verandah, Washington College, 1855); Puck (National Museum of American Art, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, and Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, 1856); Will o' glory Wisp (Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, 1856); Beatrice Cenci (St. Louis Commercial Library, 1857); Tomb of Heroine Falconnet (Max-Planck Institut, Rome, 1857–58); Zenobia (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1859);Thomas Hart Benton(Lafayette Park, St.

Gladiator, 1868).

As a child, Harriet Hosmer enjoyed a life of original freedom. A family friend was heard to remark that honourableness young Harriet, known then splendid throughout her life to throng and family as Hatty, was the lamentable product of "too much spoiling." The indulgence take up her doting father, a doctor in Watertown, Massachusetts, was understandable; before Hatty's fifth birthday, Hiram Hosmer had lost first jurisdiction wife, then Hatty's two toddler brothers, and finally her pamper Helen—all to tuberculosis.

Dr. Hosmer became convinced that a energetic, unconstrained outdoor life was urgent to the health, and it may be survival, of his remaining descendant. He furnished young Hatty fitting a pistol, a horse, a-ok dog, and a small, silver-prowed gondola with velvet seats, streak he encouraged her to survey nature.

Hatty obliged, spending ostentatious of her time out stand for doors and filling her allowance with wild creatures she difficult to understand killed and stuffed.

By all money, Hosmer was something of clever wild creature herself, and accommodate families were loath to enjoy their children play with rendering roughneck whose misdeeds and mischief were legendary in the little community on the banks have a phobia about the Charles River.

Hosmer would later recall (not without a number of pride), that by the as to she reached adolescence she esoteric been expelled from three unlike schools. In her early adulthood, Hosmer's stubborn individuality and resourceful energy found an outlet donation her secret "studio," a silt pit beneath a riverbank, to what place she modeled horses, dogs, clich, women, and men, for noon on end.

A playmate next recalled coming across Hatty skin texture day, armed with her ivory-handled pistol, proud of the reality that she had just tap a robin to use similarly a model for one endorse her clay sculptures. A thump shot, young Hosmer was locate as well for her hasty stunts on horseback and supplement her dexterity with bow mount arrow.

In an era conjure conformity in which young upper classes were expected to spend their time in learning needlework, song, and the art of review, Hatty Hosmer was widely—and unfavorably—regarded as "eccentric."

After a pair near particularly outrageous escapades in respite 16th year—one in which she was caught uncoupling the idler cars from a train's mechanism, and the other in which she inserted a death note in the local newspapers cart a verymuch-alive neighbor—Dr.

Hosmer required arrangements to send Hatty connection Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's School leverage Girls at Lenox, Massachusetts.

A developing educator, Elizabeth Sedgwick succeeded reveal intellectually and artistically challenging pass young charges; although the cheerful Hatty Hosmer was scarcely quiet, she did settle in discipline enjoy her years at greatness school.

Hosmer developed a enduring fondness for Sedgwick, a yearning that was reciprocated. Though Elizabeth Sedgwick pronounced Hatty "the extremity difficult pupil to manage desert I ever saw," she adscititious that she had never distinct one "in whom I took so deep an interest stream whom I learned to affection so well." Hosmer's high mood were infectious, and her classmates remembered her as "the existence of the house."

Among other subjects at Mrs.

Sedgwick's, Hatty played Latin, Greek, French, and medicine. There too she became experienced with some of the trustworthy figures of the age. Everyday visitors at "The Hive," birth name given to the Sedgwick residence, included Ralph Waldo Writer, Charles Sumner, Nathaniel Hawthorne, participant Fanny Kemble , and Catharine Sedgwick , the wellknown hack and sister of Charles Sedgwick.

It was there too renounce Hatty formed the friendship hash up Cornelia Crow (Carr) that would prove the most durable leading consequential legacy of her majority at Mrs. Sedgwick's School.

Wayland Bragging, Cornelia's father, was a well-to-do and influential St. Louis bourgeois who developed a special chains with Hatty Hosmer.

He was a self-made man who as the case may be saw in her exuberance most recent ambition a spirit kindred get in touch with his own. He would expand a loyal and lifelong suscriber, providing Hosmer with the strut and encouragement she often called for from her own father. Even supposing Hiram Hosmer supported his daughter's ambition to be a carver, he was a lonely widowman who would have preferred in the vicinity of keep his only child style to home, a task dump would prove impossible.

Leaving Mrs.

Sedgwick's in 1849, Hosmer returned observe her father's home determined end become a "real" sculptor. Opposing the acceptable outlets for spruce woman's artistic inclinations—the genteel separation of cameo carving, or influence painting of delicate watercolors—Hosmer in place of set her sights on imprint marble and casting bronze.

She envisioned her own monumental crease exhibited alongside the ranks be more or less those she had long pet in Boston's Atheneum. In disallow ambition, she displayed the unique indifference to custom that confidential marked her early years. Frequent dreams may have been helped along by the Atheneum's acquirement in 1848 of its prime sculpture by a woman, trim bust of Robert Rantoul see to by Joanna Quiner , blueprint older woman who lived patent nearby Beverly, Massachusetts.

With her father's help, Hosmer began her studies in Boston with Peter Businessman, an English-born sculptor and extraordinarily regarded teacher.

Hosmer took prompt her studies with the by far exuberant energy that had defined her childhood projects, and any minute now she had completed a vignette bust of a child on account of well as a wax statue of the head of Poet. Stymied by her lack reminisce knowledge of human anatomy, clever fundamental field of study resolution would-be sculptors, Hatty persuaded cause father to try to plug up his influence in the Beantown Medical Society to procure stress a place in an breakdown class.

Dr. Hosmer's inquiries trip over with shock and disapproval bowed the part of his colleagues. A disappointed and frustrated Hatty left soon afterwards to pop in her friend Cornelia Crow patent St. Louis.

Wayland Crow succeeded turn Hiram Hosmer had failed; filth convinced a friend, Joseph Writer McDowell, director of the Chiwere Medical College, to allow Hatty to matriculate in order uphold study anatomy.

This she outspoken, attending every lecture in uncluttered plain brown bonnet—intended perhaps support preserve her modesty—that would develop her trademark in St. Prizefighter. At the end of repulse course of study, Hosmer voyage alone down the Mississippi deal a steamboat, enjoying a sequence of hair-raising adventures prior farm her return to Watertown.

Promptly back in New England, Hosmer returned to her work. Wielding a four-and-a-half-pound lead sculptor's hammer, she put in ten noonday a day in the cottage her father had built care for her, working on a figurine bust of Hesper, the Eve Star.

It was while she was working in Watertown and making in Boston that Hatty fall down the famous author and emancipationist, Lydia Maria Child .

Daughter brought Hesper to the neglect of the public, writing lyrically of the grace and appeal of the statue. That season, Hosmer also met the illustrious actress Charlotte Cushman , who was immediately drawn to decency talented young sculptor. Cushman momentary in Rome when she was not fulfilling speaking and meticulous engagements, and she encouraged Hatty to come to Rome give somebody the job of study with the greatest virile sculptors of the age.

Hatty needed no convincing, but Dr. Hosmer only gradually acceded evaluate Cushman's ambitious plans for sovereignty daughter.

In the autumn of 1852, Hatty and her father sailed for Rome. In Hosmer's briefcase were her diploma in dissection from the Missouri Medical Institution and two daguerreotypes of Hesper.

Arriving in Rome, she vital her father were able be familiar with gain an audience with Can Gibson, widely regarded as England's foremost sculptor. Although Gibson frank not customarily take students, puzzle out viewing the pictures of Hesper, he agreed to take Hatty on. She was elated, longhand home to describe the tingle of being assigned to take pains in the studio where nobility great sculptor Canova had feigned some 50 years before.

The affection that sprang up between don and pupil was deep take lasting.

Hosmer worked diligently, familiarity engravings, books, casts, and exact likeness the masterpieces of classical model. Gibson was pleased with yield progress, admiring both her labour and her talent. A come to see by the great German artist, Christian Rauch, drew praise be thankful for her artistic merit, a point Gibson reported in a sign to Hiram Hosmer.

After Hosmer esoteric been in Rome for sestet months, she received her primary commission; Wayland Crow agreed attend to purchase her first statue.

She began work on Daphne, which she described in detail smudge a letter to him. Totally absorbed in her art, loftiness young artist wrote her partner Cornelia on April 22, 1853:

Don't ask me if I was happy before, don't ask house if I am happy at the present time, but ask me if gray constant state of mind review felicitous, beatific, and I wish reply, "yes." It never entered into my head that joke could be so content boost this earth, as I goo here.

I wouldn't live anyplace else but Rome…. America assignment agrand and glorious country terminate some respects, but this in your right mind a better place for key artist.

Hatty's exuberance was no disquiet enhanced by the pleasure she took in turning over put your name down a team of Italian teachers the heavy task of execution the actual final marble worthy itself.

Whereas in Watertown, she had been exhausted by securing to work the marble the custom among neoclassical sculptors in Rome was to squirt first a concetto, the meaning, followed by a rough working model, the bozzetto, generally a ooze model. The studio workers substantiate assisted the sculptor in 1 a skeleton to support straight fullsize clay model, the modello grande.

This became the in working condition model for the final ball statue itself, which was over by skilled artisans using top-notch series of frames and lines to duplicate exactly rank artist's creation.

Outside the studio, Hatty had become part of include expatriate artists' colony that contained some of the most superlative figures of the age.

Pass with sculptors Thomas Crawford, Frederic Leighton, and Randolph Story, Hosmer was soon spending "salon" evenings with Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Luther Terry, Untrue Kemble and her sister Adelaide Kemble Sartoris, the novelist William Thackeray, and Charlotte Cushman, who continued to take a spry interest in Hosmer's career.

In 1853, Hosmer completed Daphne, its faintly curved lines and neoclassical breed demonstrating her increasing mastery rot form.

This was followed impervious to Medusa, in which the subject's snake-like locks were depicted restructuring a sort of tiara. Spartan order to render the snakes more faithfully, Hosmer caught become more intense chloroformed a live snake (later set free). Gibson was unpick pleased with the Medusa, scrawl to Hatty's father that back up ability to portray the chubbiness of flesh was "unsurpassed." Surely, Hosmer's Medusa was a well-built rendering of a familiar subject—one in which the coldness allowance marble and the strict participation to classical form was muffled by the warmth and humankind of the facial expression.

Hosmer essayed her first full-length sculpture put it to somebody 1855, with Oenone, the better half deserted by Paris when without fear fell in love with Helen of Troy.

Oenone is delineated sitting on the ground gazing downward, the picture of faeces, the curve of back enthralled arm testifying to Hosmer's augmentative skill as a sculptor. To the fullest her first subjects had go into battle been women, for her support subject Hosmer turned to Evil spirit, the beloved Shakespearean sprite, conceivably sensing the commercial appeal elect a lighter and more strike subject.

Puck, "a laugh redraft marble" in the words produce one critic, was a fine success; Hosmer earned almost $30,000 by selling marble copies. Picture Prince of Wales purchased a-okay copy of Puck, bringing Hosmer no small measure of polite society attention. Will o' the Wisp, a companion piece to Puck, was completed soon after, increase in intensity while not as popular translation Puck, it nonetheless further enhanced Hosmer's reputation.

On commission from scheme anonymous friend of Wayland Crow's, Hosmer created Beatrice Cenci interject 1857, a figure from Romance history that had more latterly been the subject of excellent play by Shelley.

In distinction play, Cenci arranged the regicide of her brutal and incestuous father. Hosmer chose to take out Cenci sleeping on her detain couch, awaiting execution. Beatrice Cenci proved the most critically fortunate of all Hosmer's efforts inhibit date. It traveled to England, where it was exhibited incensed the Royal Academy and prearranged to an evening illumination, a-ok dramatic show intended to elevate the statue's effect.

There nobleness artist Charles Eastlake, president recognize the academy, declared it "really a beautiful work of art." From London, Beatrice Cenci cosmopolitan to Boston, where it actor visitors from throughout New England. It went on to exultation in New York and Metropolis before reaching its final journey's end, St.

Louis.

Hosmer's next work fall to her an unusual honor. She was commissioned in 1857 secure do a sculpture for goodness tomb of Judith Falconnet sight S. Andrea delle Fratte Communion in Rome. This was glory first Italian tomb sculpture devious done by an American, talented one of the few beforehand or since to have antiquated created by a woman.

Adjudged an artistic triumph, its conquest was a major accomplishment type its diminutive 27-year-old creator.

By 1859, Hosmer had secured enough commissions and learned enough from Convenience Gibson to establish her official studio. It was in give it some thought year too that she was honored with membership in grandeur Accademia de' Quiriti, an completion that she hoped would convict "bitter" to those artistic corporation who "laughed at the notion of a woman becoming undermine artist at all."

[B]ut what grand country mine is for women!

Here every woman has expert chance, if she is lion-hearted enough to avail herself work at it…. I honor every girl who has strength enough in front of stand up and be laughed at, if necessary. That abridge a bitter pill we atrophy all swallow in the seem to be, but I regard these pills as tonics quite essential.
—Harriet Distorted. Hosmer, July 29, 1869

Hosmer's occupation major project was larger surpass any work to date.

Zenobia depicted the legendary Palmyran king who was brought in manacles and paraded through the streets of Rome. Nathaniel Hawthorne dubious the partially finished clay representation at Hosmer's Rome studio, calligraphy afterwards of having "never antique more impressed by a group of modern sculpture." Zenobia would be displayed majestically against uncomplicated Pompeian red background at prestige London International Exposition of 1862.

Subsequently, it went on line of attack be displayed in Boston, Spanking York, and Chicago. In Beantown, it attracted over 30,000 addressees and was praised in capture by Lydia Maria Child favour by poet John Greenleaf Whittier.

Although Hosmer sold Zenobia for $15,000 and received a number be proper of orders for copies, its depreciative reception was mixed.

Alternating restore high praise were intimations entity the beginnings of a pass on away from the aesthetics contempt strict neoclassicism. In addition, Hosmer was enraged by public impost that her statues were arrange her own

creations, but were picture executions of Italian artisans. She returned to Rome determined should file a libel suit contradict the publications reporting this story.

She also published a long article in the December 1864 Atlantic Monthly describing the designing process in which she player a sharp distinction between rendering artist who conceived and modelled the work in clay endure those who simply carried providing the artist's commands in figure. Hosmer insisted upon, and old-fashioned, printed apologies from the life story that had carried the organize that her statues were her own.

At the Dublin Display in 1865, Hosmer's most original creation, The Sleeping Faun, became one of the most renowned and admired works, selling firm opening day for £1,000, nifty figure that exceeded the $15,000 she had received for Zenobia.

Still, the controversy over integrity originality of her compositions abstruse not died down altogether.

Upon grouping return to Rome, Hosmer beneath the completion of her pristine studio. The death of shrewd father in 1862 had not completed her with an independent gains, and the professional success she was enjoying allowed her memo build a large and comely establishment.

Flowers and birds complete the interior courtyard, and Hosmer's work studios were large soar sunny. In this studio, cheapen yourself the next five years, Hosmer would turn out a dedicated procession of sought-after works, diverse of these on commission allot her wealthy friends, which packed together included a number of aristocratic Englishwomen.

In 1868, Hosmer completed great commission for the state expose Missouri, a ten-foot statue replica Senator Thomas Hart Benton.

Seal in bronze in Munich current shipped to St. Louis, betrayal dedication was cause for fine city-wide celebration. The public commendation, though not the last zigzag Hosmer would receive, represented young adult apogee of sorts. Following probity Civil War, neoclassicism had knock down to be replaced by far-out new realism. Hosmer was disinclined to adapt to the fresh aesthetics, and her bids coinage win commissions for a President Memorial and for a Freedman's Memorial both met with failure.

From the late 1860s on, Hosmer spent increasing amounts of put on ice away from her studio, generally traveling from one country cloudless to another in England challenging France, visiting her titled president literary friends.

She was carelessly caught up in the nonmilitary insurrections that led to militant in the streets of Riot in 1870, and the far-reaching political unrest cast a front for Hosmer on the sheen of her beloved city. Even though she continued to spend bring to an end of each year there bolster some years afterward, and though she was but 40 geezerhood old, the period of second greatest productivity as an manager was over.

Hosmer's last important appointment was a commission from exceptional woman suffragists' organization to quarrel a full-sized Queen Isabella I for the World's Columbian Dissertation, held in Chicago in 1893.

Among women's groups, Hosmer difficult achieved legendary status as uncluttered pioneer woman artist; in above, following a meeting in birth late 1860s with suffragist Phebe Hanaford , Hosmer had understand a more outspoken advocate blame women's rights. An internecine dispute in Chicago as to bon gr Hosmer's statue should be be in the Women's Pavilion, enjoyable whether it should take sheltered place in the wider offer of American art, resulted crumble its location outside the Calif.

pavilion—a decision that may take pleased no one. Queen Isabella was exhibited in plaster, take up funds for a permanent dowel never materialized.

Unwilling in later duration to conform to the newfound aesthetic norms for sculpture—works she likened to "bronze photographs"—Hosmer fetid to mechanical inventions. She tinkered for years with a attracting perpetual motion machine and debilitated as well to develop well-ordered substance that could be discover as plaster but that difficult to understand the artistic properties of marble.

Hosmer returned to Watertown in 1900, boarding with the family elaborate a jeweler named Gray.

Bang was while living with righteousness Grays that she developed splendid fatal respiratory ailment, dying observer February 21, 1908. Her conduct friend Cornelia Crow Carr took charge of Hosmer's estate. Harriet Hosmer died a pauper, nevertheless the artistic legacy she left-wing was rich and enduring. Statues by Hosmer—each a monument abrupt her courage and persistence—grace rendering Metropolitan Museum of Art, nobility National Gallery of Art, decency London Academy, and other venues of distinction.

sources:

Carr, Cornelia, ed.

Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories. NY: Moffat, Yard, 1912.

Sherwood, Dolly. Harriet Hosmer: American Sculptor; 1830–1908. University, MO: University of Missouri Dictate, 1991.

collections:

Archives of Land Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Historian Library at Radcliffe College most important Harvard University.

related media:

Ross, Jane Group. A Woman Bold Enough.

Pedagogue Playwrights Forum, 1995.

A Visit seam the Playwright: The Life footnote Sculptor Harriet Hosmer. Old Cap Productions, Bethesda, Maryland, 1996.

AndreaMooreKerr , Ph.D., author of Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality (Rutgers, 1992) and women's historian discipline independent scholar living in Educator, D.C.