Constellation Similarity Assertions

Hoffman, Malvina Cornell, 1885-1966

Malvina Cornell Hoffman, the American sculptor known for her life-size bronzes figures, portraits, and dance sculptures, was born in New York City on June 15, 1885. She was the youngest child of Richard Hoffman, an English concert pianist and teacher, and Fidelia Marshall Lamson Hoffman, an amateur pianist from a socially prominent New York family. From the beginning of her life Hoffman was immersed in an artistic and intellectual milieu, surrounded not only by her parents' music, but by a large circle of family and friends engaged in a wide range of artistic professions.

Hoffman was educated at home until she was nine or ten years old and then attended private girls' schools on Manhattan's Upper East Side, first as a pupil at Chapin School and then at Brearley School, then one of the city's top finishing schools. While still a teenager studying at Brearley Hoffman took evening classes in composition and watercolor at the Woman's School for Applied Design followed by a "life class" at the Art Students League of New York. She then began night classes at the Veltin School for Girls, studying sculpture with Herbert Adams and George Gray Bernard, and took Saturday painting classes with John White Alexander. Hoffman also studied painting and drawing at home with Harper Pennington, who was a family friend, and sculpture with Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore and another family friend. The heavy schedule she carried as young student came to be indicative of Hoffman's career of intense artistic production. Throughout her life overwork led to periodic bouts of exhaustion and illness.

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