Harriet Hosmer

Infobox Artist
name = Harriet Hosmer


imagesize = 180px
caption = Harriet Hosmer
Photo by Matthew Brady taken 1857
birthname =
birthdate = birth date|1830|10|09|mf=y
location = Watertown, Massachusetts
deathdate = death date and age|1908|02|21|1830|10|09
deathplace =
nationality = American
field = Sculpture
training =
movement =
works =
patrons =
awards =

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer (October 9, 1830 - February 21, 1908), American sculptor.

Biography

Harriet Hosmer was born at Watertown, Massachusetts.

She showed an early aptitude for modelling, and studied anatomy with her father, a physician, and afterwards at the St Louis Medical College. She then studied in Boston until 1852, when, with her friend Charlotte Cushman, she went to Rome, where from 1853 to 1860 she was the pupil of the English sculptor John Gibson.

While living in Rome, she was associated with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thorvaldsen, Flaxman, Thackeray, George Eliot and George Sand; and she was frequently the guest of the Brownings at Casa Guidi, in Florence. Later she also resided in Chicago and Terre Haute, Indiana.

Novelist Henry James unflatteringly referred to the group of women artists in Rome of which she was a part as "The White Marmorean Flock," borrowing a term from Nathaniel Hawthorne in "The Marble Faun". These artists included lesbians Anne Whitney, Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis and non-lesbians Louisa Lander, Margaret Foley, Florence Freeman, and Vinnie Ream.citation |url=http://www.glbtq.com/arts/whitney_a.html |title=Whitney, Anne |periodical=glbtq.com |last=Williams |first=Carla |year=2002 |accessdate=2007-11-30 ]

elected works

* "Daphne" and "Medusa", ideal heads (1853)
* "Puck" (1855), a spirited and graceful conception which she copied for the prince of Wales, the duke of Hamilton and others
*"Oenone" (1855), her first life-sized figure, now in the Saint Louis Art Museum
*"Beatrice Cenci" (1857), for the St. Louis Mercantile Library
*"Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, in Chains" (1859), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City;
*"A Sleeping Faun" (1867) is now being displayed at the Cleveland Museum of Art
*"A Waking Faun"; a bronze statue of Thomas H. Benton (1868) for Lafayette Park, St Louis
*Bronze gates for the Earl of Brownlow's art gallery at Ashridge Hall
*A siren fountain for Lady Marian Alford
*An alternate Emancipation Memorial -- designed but not constructed
*Statues of the queen of Naples as the heroine of Gaeta, and of Queen Isabella of Spain for the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, "The Mermaid's Cradle", Bronze, Fountain Square, Larchmont, NY

A book of poetry, "Waking Stone: Inventions on the Life Of Harriet Hosmer," by Carole Simmons Oles, was published in 2006.

Hosmer died at Watertown, Massachusetts, on the February 21, 1908.

References

*

External links

* [http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/HTML_Finding_Aids/COL0413.htm The Winterthur Library] Overview of an archival collection on Harriet Hosmer.