Ney, Elisabet, 1833-1907

From the Handbook of Texas Online :

Franzisca Bernadina Wilhelmina Elisabeth Ney, one of the first professional sculptors in Texas, was born in Münster, Westphalia, on 1833 January 26 to Johann Adam and Anna Elizabeth (Wernze) Ney, a Catholic stonecarver and his wife. Ney enrolled at the Munich Academy of Art in 1852 and, after her graduation two years later, moved to Berlin, where she studied with Christian Daniel Rauch, one of the foremost sculptors in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Under Rauch's tutelage, Ney developed a classical style in the German tradition, with a tendency toward realism and a faithfulness to accurate scale. Through Rauch, she also became acquainted with Berlin's artistic and intellectual elite and sculpted her first works, among them portraits of such luminaries as Jacob Grimm and Alexander von Humboldt. During the late 1850s and 1860s Ney led a peripatetic life, traveling around Europe to complete portraits of intellectual and political leaders. Among her best-known works from this period are portrait busts of Arthur Schopenhauer, Giuseppi Garibaldi, and Otto von Bismarck and a full-length statue of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

On 1863 November 7 in Madeira, Ney married Edmund D. Montgomery, a Scottish physician and scientist. They left Europe in 1871 and settled briefly in Thomasville, Georgia, where their two sons were born. In 1872 Ney moved with her family to Texas and purchased Liendo Plantation in Waller County, where Ney, for much of the next twenty years, managed the plantation while Montgomery busied himself with his scientific work. After visiting Austin at the invitation of Governor Oran M. Roberts in the 1880s, Ney decided to resume her artistic career. She built a studio, called Formosa (now the Elisabet Ney Museum), in the Hyde Park area of Austin in 1892 and began lobbying notable citizens and the state legislature for commissions. During the next fifteen years she completed a number of portrait busts as well as statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, now in the state Capitol, and a memorial to Albert Sidney Johnston, in the State Cemetery. Copies of the Austin and Houston statues are also in the United States Capitol. One of her few ideal pieces, a depiction of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, was also a major project during her Austin years; the marble is now displayed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art. In addition to her sculpting, Ney took an active role in artistic and civic activities in Austin, where she died on 1907 June 29. Four years later a number of her supporters founded the Texas Fine Arts Association in her honor.

References

Cutrer, Emily F. "Elisabet Ney." Handbook of Texas Online . http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fne26 .

Cutrer, Emily Fourmy. The Art of the Woman: The Life and Work of Elisabet Ney . Women in the West, eds. Sandra L. Myres, Elliott West, and Julie Roy Jeffrey. Lincoln, Nebraska, and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Elisabet Ney biographical file, Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio, Texas.

German-born sculptor came to Texas in 1872 with her Scottish husband, Dr. Edmund Montgomery.

Their home was Liendo Plantation near Hempstead, although Ney built a studio in Austin in 1893 where she lived and worked until her death. She is best known for her statues and busts of prominent military, political, and literary figures.

Portrait sculptor; Austin, Texas.

Born in Westphalia, Germany. Date of birth sometimes cited as 1830. She formed a band that came from Germany to Georgia to form a colony. When it disbanded in 1872 she bought a plantation in Texas. Famous people who sat for her include Garibaldi, Sam Houston, Bismark, Von Humboldt, Von Liebig, Jacob Grimm and Schopenhauer. The museum was founded in 1909.