Ney, Elisabet (1833–1907)

Flamboyant German artist who sculpted major European figures of the day and spent the second half of her career in Texas, where she contributed to the development of an arts community. Name variations: Elise, Elisabeth. Pronunciation: NAY. Born Franzisca Bernadina Wilhelmina Elisabeth Ney on January 26, 1833, in Münster, Westphalia; died on June 29, 1907, at her studio in Austin, Texas; daughter of Johann Adam Ney (a stonemason) and Anna Elisabeth (Wernze) Ney; attended St. Martin's Girls Seminary in Münster; graduated from the Bavarian Art Academy in Munich, 1853, and the Berlin Art Academy, 1854; married Edmund Duncan Montgomery (a physician), on November 7, 1863, in Funchal, Madeira; children: Arthur (1871–1873); Lorne (b. 1872).

Studied art in Munich (1852) and in Berlin (1854); exhibited at Paris Salon (1861); lived in Madeira and sculpted Sursum (1863–65); traveled to Caprera to sculpt Garibaldi (1865); moved to Austrian Tyrol (1866); returned to Munich (1867); commissioned for Munich Polytechnikum (1868); traveled to Italy (1869); sculpted King Ludwig II of Bavaria and abruptly left Germany (1870); arrived in New York and moved to Georgia (1871); moved to Texas (1873); exhibited German works in San Antonio (1890); established studio in Austin and contracted for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892); became president of new Association of the Texas Academy of Liberal Arts (1894); completed self-portrait and gathered works in Europe for 1904 St. Louis World's Fair (1903); completed Lady Macbeth (1905); died and buried at Liendo (1907); Formosa studio purchased to create Elisabet Ney Museum (1908); works and personal papers donated by her husband to the University of Texas (1910).

Selected works:

bust of King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1869), Hohenschwangau Castle, Munich; King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1870), Herenchiemsee Castle, Munich; Giuseppe Garibaldi (1865), Otto von Bismarck (1867), King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1870), Sursum (Genii of Mankind, 1864), Prometheus Bound (1866), The Young Violinist (Lorne Ney Montgomery, 1886), William Jennings Bryan (1901), among others, Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin; Sam Houston (1892), Stephen F. Austin (1893), National Statuary Hall, Washington, D.C., Texas State Capitol, Austin, and University of Texas Center for American History, Austin, which also houses Oran Roberts (1882); Albert Sidney Johnston Memorial (1902), Texas State Cemetery, Austin; Elisabet Ney (self-portrait, 1903), Liendo Plantation, Hempstead; Lady Macbeth (1905), Smithsonian National Museum of AmericanArt, Washington, D.C., and University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin; angel marker for grave of Elisabeth Emma Schnerr (1906), Der Friedhof cemetery, Fredericksburg, Texas. Bombings in World War II destroyed many of Ney's German commissions.

When Elisabet Ney's mother told her redhaired, blue-eyed daughter the story of Sabina von Steinbach , who worked alongside her father at the sculpting of the south portal of the Strassburg cathedral and then completed the carving after his death, her intention was simply to offer a lesson in piety. But the message absorbed by the willful young Elisabet was of a girl who achieved fame through stonecarving, and the story became the inspiration for her career as a sculptor.

From quite early, my life has been a protest against the subjection to which women were doomed from their birth.

—Elisabet Ney

Ney was born on January 26, 1833, and christened Franzisca Bernadina Wilhelmina Elisabeth Ney by her parents Adam Ney, a stonemason, and Anna Ney . The family lived in Münster, a predominantly Catholic city and the capital of Westphalia, where the tone of cultural life was set by two women: Princess Amalie von Galitzin , who gathered a salon of artists and intellectuals at her estate, and novelist and poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff . According to Bride Nell Taylor , who wrote the "authorized" account of Ney's life upon which many of the sculptor's biographers rely, Ney showed fierce independence from an early age, and often fought with her older brother Fritz as he tried to keep her within the bounds of what was considered appropriate female behavior. (A more recent writer, Emily Fourmy Cutrer , suggests that Ney exaggerated her daring rebel persona.) She won her first major victory over her mother by refusing traditional dress in favor of drape-style clothing she made herself in imitation of carvings done by her father. Both Taylor and biographer Jan Fortune portray the girl as her father's favorite, reading his books, copying his sketches, and dabbling with charcoal, clay and marble dust as she played in his atelier. Ney never acknowledged being taught by her father, however.

At age 17, she stunned her parents by announcing that she would study art at the Academy of Art in Berlin, and would never marry. She reportedly gained their permission to leave home first by going on a hunger strike and then by winning the support of Munich's Bishop Müller, who interceded on her behalf. He also encouraged her to study not in Protestant Berlin but in Catholic Munich, which gloried in its art community and housed numerous important art collections. There she began her studies in 1852 at the private school of history painter Johann Baptiste Berdellé. Through Berdellé, she met architect Gottfried von Neureuther, who would later help her to obtain commissions. Also around this time Ney was invited by a fellow student, Johanna Kapp , to visit her family in Heidelberg. In the home of philosopher Christian Kapp, Ney met a Scottish medical student named Edmund Montgomery, and the two fell in love. She began to explore the liberal theology and philosophy she heard discussed, and later recalled that Montgomery "echoed the revolt in her own soul."

While she was studying with Berdellé, Ney repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, applied for admission to the Munich Academy; she was reportedly denied because the school's director feared that her presence would disrupt the male students. Finally she was admitted, and spent almost two years studying there under the supervision of Max Widnmann, who trained his students in the execution of every aspect of the sculptural process. (Although Ney later claimed that she had been the first woman admitted to the academy, she was in fact only the first to be admitted to study sculpture.) She received her certificate of completion from the Munich Academy in 1853 and moved to Berlin, prompted by a desire both to be near Montgomery, who was then a student at the University of Berlin, and to fulfill her childhood dream of studying with sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch. According to Taylor, Ney's approach to Rauch was "like an assault upon a fortress," implying that he did not like to teach, and rarely took students, particularly female students. In reality, Rauch took many students, including women, and Ney did nothing extraordinary to obtain his mentorship; like other young artists, she submitted a sketch for his assessment and was readily admitted to his studio. (He also helped her gain admission to the Berlin Academy, from which she would graduate in 1854.)

Working with Rauch's live models brought more realism to Ney's portraits. As she gained in experience, she turned increasingly from her early interest in religious and idealized works (one of her first commissions, in 1857, had been an idealized statue of St. Sebastian for Bishop Müller) to portraiture. These portraits were generally in the form of busts and medallions, and the move may have been dictated by the market-place. In Ney's lifetime, commissions for institutional monuments declined both in number and scope, while commissions (from church, state, and the wealthy elite) for portraiture in busts and medallions increased. The trend was of benefit to women sculptors, who usually had not received thorough training in human anatomy, because it allowed them to circumvent both that lack of training and the presumed limitations of women's physical strength.

In addition to the training she received from Rauch, who was a court sculptor and member of the artistic and intellectual elite, Ney gained some important introductions, in particular to the diplomat Karl Varnhagen von Ense. She sculpted his portrait and attended his salon, which not only brought her commissions but influenced her mind. Ney embraced the German Enlightenment ideas discussed there of secularism and classical humanism that emphasized reason and the development of personality, as well as the "pre-feminism" of Varnhagen's deceased wife, Rahel Varnhagen . As related to Ney by the diplomat and his niece, Ludmilla Assing , this philosophy encouraged women toward intellectual progress, emancipation, and the grasping of opportunities. While Cutrer notes that Ney did not mention Rahel in her letters or in her reminiscences with Taylor, the biographer also points to a false statement Ney made to a reporter in 1904, that "you might also say I have Jewish traditions and that is why I spell my name without the final 'h,'" and suggests that Ney dropped the "h" from her name to emulate Rahel's dropping of the "c" from her own.

Ney's next major portrait, in 1859, was of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who was then enjoying acclaim for his gloomy ideas after years of indifference from the public. Edmund Montgomery later recounted that Ney was intent on giving Schopenhauer (who had had a troubled relationship with his mother Johanna Schopenhauer and held a very low opinion of women in general) "a lesson" about female abilities. On a more practical level, Rauch had recently died, and the young artist was in need of both the commission and the attention such a celebrated subject could bring. While finishing this bust, she received a commission to model George V, king of Hanover. The king was so pleased with the results that he later commissioned two more busts as well as a portrait of Ney done by the court painter Friedrich Kaulbach. The portrait was entitled L'artiste, suggesting that it was a commemoration of the elevation of her reputation. Her newfound celebrity did not stem solely from the skill of her sculpting, however; there was an element of curiosity about a woman in such a profession, and just as she had earlier worn unusual clothes, now she wore her hair cut short. Such an affront to social custom in the mid-19th century drew attention to her ahead of her art.

Galitzin, Amalie von (1748–1806)

German princess. Name variations: Princess Gallatzin, Gallitzin, Galitzyn, or Golitsin. Born Amalie von Schmettau in Berlin, Germany, on August 28, 1748; died in Angelmode, near Munster, Westphalia, on August 24, 1806; married Prince Dimitri Alexeivitch Galitzin (1738–1803, a Russian diplomat, ambassador to the court of France and The Hague).

Assing, Ludmilla (1821–1880)

German writer. Born at Hamburg, Germany, on February 22, 1821; died at Florence, Italy, on March 25, 1880; niece of Karl Varnhagen von Ense and Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833).

Ludmilla Assing edited several works of her uncle Karl Varnhagen von Ense as well as several by Alexander von Humboldt. From 1863 to 1864, she was imprisoned for libel by the Prussian government.

Ney moved in artistic and intellectual circles upon her return to Berlin from Hanover, but without much work. She exhibited the Schopenhauer bust and a bust of scientist Eilhardt Mitscherlich at the Paris Salon of 1861, and then received a commission from her home city of Münster for life-size statues to be installed in a new parliament building. For over a year she studied the likenesses of four Westphalian heroes: 14th-century noble Englebert van der Mark, 15th-century soldier Walter von Plattenberg, 18th-century author Justus Moser, and 18th-century official Franz von Furstenburg. The completed statues were arranged in traditional poses but outfitted in contemporary dress, which was somewhat progressive for the time. She next completed a bust of playwright Tom Taylor while on a visit to Montgomery in England. Ney visited him there again in September 1863, then traveled to the islands of Madeira, off the west coast of Africa, to "spend the winter months in the South." On November 7 of that year, she was married to Montgomery by the British consul at Funchal, the capital of Madeira. According to Taylor's account, the marriage was a "galling humiliation" for Ney, and took place only because Montgomery feared his reputation as a physician would be jeopardized by their unconventional relationship. (Some evidence for this may perhaps be seen in the couple's later behavior in Texas, when they could not be bothered to tell their neighbors they were married.) Whatever the circumstances, however, they remained on Madeira for several years; Ney opened a studio in Funchal, and Montgomery established a medical practice.

In 1865, Ney traveled to Caprera, off the Mediterranean coast of Sardinia, to request permission to sculpt a portrait of the Italian revolutionary General Guiseppe Garibaldi. In her journal, Ney described the persuasive tactics she used on the general, which included telling him of the length of her journey, her longstanding interest in him as a subject, and the inadequacy of existing portraits. After he granted permission for the project, she moved into his household, and they developed a close relationship while she completed both a bust and a statuette of him. (The latter was exhibited in the London National Academy Exhibition, but brought her no new commissions.) This was the beginning of the chain of events which would give rise to speculation about Ney's political involvement in the unification of the German empire.

Garibaldi, who was an ally of Prussia, fought briefly against Austria in 1866. That year Prussia also briefly (in what is known variously as the Seven Weeks' War or the Austro-Prussian War), and successfully, went to war with Austria, and finally, also in 1866, Ney and Montgomery moved to the Austrian Tyrol. They took with them their housekeeper Crescentia "Cencie" Simath , who many years later revealed herself as the messenger between Ney and Garibaldi. In 1867, Ney received a commission to do a bust of Otto von Bismarck, prime minister of Prussia, for Garibaldi's ally King Wilhelm I of Prussia. Some historians speculate that Garibaldi arranged the work so that Ney could act as a political agent between himself and Bismarck. That same year Ney traveled to Munich to do a portrait of King Ludwig II of Bavaria (the "mad king"), who was one of the last holdouts against Bismarck's plan for a united Germany. While this may perhaps also point to her involvement in political intrigue, Ludwig was passionate and profligate about art, and Ney may have sought to sculpt him simply because of her connections with some of his artists.

In early 1868, Ney received a commission to portray Iris and Mercury and chemists Friedrich Wohler and Justus von Liebig for the Munich Polytechnikum. Cutrer believes that the Wohler bust represents the first use of French Romantic sculptural characteristics in Ney's work and marks a stylistic change towards greater liveliness. When this work was completed, she enlisted the help of her friend Neureuther, the architect, to show a pencil sketch of it to King Ludwig. By winter, Ney had permission to sculpt the king in the guise of a Knight of St. George, although he did not actually get around to providing her with a sitting until February. The project almost ended as soon as it had begun when, failing to show sufficient deference to the king in their initial meeting, Ney measured him "with as much indifference as if he were a yard of carpet." Matters were smoothed over, however, and, though Ludwig broke off the work after a few more sessions that month, he resumed sitting for her the following August. Their relationship shifted to a more personal level after Ney began reading from Goethe's Iphigenia whenever he showed signs of becoming troubled during their sessions. Cutrer suggests that the two also conversed about the political climate and Bavaria's possible unification with Prussia. In November 1870, when she had completed her model of Ludwig and had cast it in plaster, the king inadvertently signed a document that put Bavaria into the new German nation and requested Prussia's King Wilhelm I to become the nation's emperor. The following month Ney obtained a passport, and in mid-January, with Montgomery and Cencie, sailed on the SS Main from Bremen to America.

Biographers disagree on what exactly may have precipitated her flight: Vernon Loggins suggests that she decided not to influence Ludwig and feared punishment from Bismarck, while Montgomery's biographer Ira Stephens argues that she either failed to persuade the king to her position or began to sympathize with his. Cutrer, noting that no document exists to substantiate any of these possibilities, proposes that Ney might have grown to dislike Bismarck, or that Ludwig learned of her involvement with Prussia. Politics aside, the move may have reflected a change in Ney's and Montgomery's approach to life, a view supported by her Genii of Mankind (Sursum) and Prometheus Bound, both completed without commission. Sursum suggests her belief in the need for mankind to progress to a higher plane through cooperation, and, according to her journals, Prometheus Bound (modeled in 1867, while she was living in the Austrian Tyrol) was inspired by Garibaldi's exile away from the people he had tried to assist. Ney also had begun reading the works of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and she later told Taylor that she and Montgomery had hoped to create a utopian community in the States. In later interviews and conversations with friends, Ney evaded

questions about her reasons for emigration to America. Whatever the actual circumstances, one of Germany's most famous sculptors virtually disappeared from the art world that winter, not to resurface until the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, over 20 years later.

After arriving in New York City, Ney and Montgomery traveled to Georgia, where by mid-February 1871 they had purchased land in Thomasville and built a two-story, nine-room "log castle." Their first son Arthur was born later that year, much to the horror of neighbors who believed that the bloomer-wearing Ney was not married to Montgomery. When the townspeople grew convinced that their German neighbors were establishing a "free love" colony, the couple began looking for other places to live. They were on a trip to Wisconsin to visit another German emigré, Theodor Bayrhoffer, when they stopped in Minnesota for the birth of their second son Lorne. Ney and Montgomery then turned their attention toward Texas, which had attracted a sizable German population. She traveled by steamer to Galveston in search of a house, and was shown the Liendo Plantation near Hempstead. Reportedly, she looked out over the property from the second-floor balcony and declared, "Here is where I shall live and die!"

Shortly after the family moved in, Arthur died from diphtheria in 1873. Running the plantation proved to be beyond either Ney or Montgomery, who preferred to busy himself with scientific research in his laboratory. Nonetheless, despite their lack of success at managing the corn and cotton grown by day laborers and tenant sharecroppers, they inexplicably used mortgage financing to increase their landholdings several times over the next decade. (In 1880, they operated a sawmill in Montgomery County to harvest plantation lumber, and eventually shifted to cattle raising and dairying.) Except for a few German immigrants, they had little contact with their neighbors, whose suspicions about the newcomers were compounded by Ney's eccentricity as a mother. She refused to allow Lorne to play with other children, dressed him in what the neighbors termed to be "frocks," and insisted on educating him herself; perhaps not surprisingly, their relationship grew increasingly fractious. Throughout his life, Ney literally molded Lorne, keeping plaster casts of his arms, hands and feet. She did a bust, completed around 1886, of him as a young man, which became known as The Young Violinist and later occupied a prominent position in her studio, but her attempts to mold him into an idealized being of the sort found in Rousseau's teachings were thwarted by the rebellious Lorne. He was finally sent away to one school after another, showing little interest in study and a propensity to get into trouble.

Montgomery began to participate more actively in the community of Hempstead in the late 1880s, becoming active in local Democratic party politics and community affairs, giving lectures, and developing a friendship with future Texas governor Oran Roberts. Ney, too, attempted to become involved in local affairs, but met more resistance than her husband. One hindrance was her unconventional appearance; she often appeared in public in a white flannel robe, and rode astride her horse, in pants, rather than sidesaddle in a long skirt, all of which was outside the local standards of both fashion and decency. The fact that the couple continued to conceal their marriage also resulted in gossip; they even went so far as to list themselves as bachelor and spinster on the 1880 census. (The truth of their marriage could be found in Montgomery's application for citizenship in 1884, but the neighbors did not check such records.) Ney's real "sin" appears to be her refusal to conform to late 19th-century ideas about "true womanhood": she never exhibited the acceptable characteristics of domesticity, piety, purity, and submissiveness.

In 1882, lacking both subjects for her work and a suitable audience, Ney turned to the state capital at Austin. A tentative agreement with the governor for statuary to decorate the new state capitol building fell through, apparently the victim of Texans' preference for great height over ornamentation. The following year she sought a commission from der Vierziger, a German intellectuals' group in San Antonio, for a monument to Texas Congressman Gustav Schleicher. By then aged 50, Ney stayed more than three weeks in San Antonio to create a bust for Schleicher's memorial in the National Cemetery; the committee chose to use a 20-foot high obelisk instead. After this failure, she attempted to attract clients through publicity, and in 1887 traveled to Galveston to model her friends the Runges, who were prominent in the city. Ney donated her Schleicher bust to the state the following year, in hopes that it would be prominently displayed in the capitol, and arranged for her German attorney to ship six of her earlier busts, including those of Bismarck, Garibaldi, and King Ludwig. It took more than a year for the works to reach her, but they finally went on exhibit in San Antonio in September 1890.

In the summer of 1892, the Board of Lady Managers and their leader, Benedette Tobin , approached Ney for advice on presenting Texas at the World's Columbian Exposition scheduled to open in Chicago the following spring. The group hoped to exhibit two statues and three busts in the fair's Texas building, but lacked the finances to commission the works. Ney explained that there was not enough time for such works to be completed in marble, but that plaster could be done. Although the committee had not intended to hire her, she offered to forego remuneration and to produce the two statues at cost. In September 1892, Ney signed a contract for the creation of statues of Texas impresario Stephen F. Austin and of Sam Houston, the state's first governor. She then hired contractors to build, in the Austin suburb of Hyde Park, a studio she had designed. She and her husband went further into debt to finance the building costs, and when she moved in she found that the builders had not included the windows specified in the plans, and that the roof and the mortar in the limestone walls leaked. Nonetheless, the opening of the studio, which Ney named Formosa, appears as a sudden move back into her professional life. Some biographers have intimated that she hoped to win the respect of her son, who had moved back home to the plantation the previous year, but she also may have realized the effect that isolation at Liendo had had upon her. Unable to rise above the financial burdens of the plantation, Ney and Montgomery had been stuck in Texas, where a population busy creating the infrastructure for their state had little interest in visual arts. Commissions for public sculpture had all but disappeared since the early days of Spanish colonization, and the few that did exist went to local stonemasons; most artists in 19th-century Texas were painters who lived in the German settlements and could not support themselves with their art.

Getting materials for her work proved equally daunting. She found clay near Austin, but eventually had to borrow a skeleton from the superintendent of the police asylum to model the first statue of her commission. Relatives of Houston and Austin were helpful, however, and offered engravings, artifacts, and detailed descriptions to aid her work. Sam Houston was completed by April, but the statue of Austin was not ready in time for the World's Fair; she was further frustrated by being unable to enter her European pieces there. That July, Lorne eloped with a local girl, and when Ney vented her anger against his new wife it opened a rift with her son that lasted to the end of her life. Nonetheless, she threw herself into her work. She completed the statue of Austin despite the passing of the deadline, hoping that funds would be raised for both works to be cut in marble for display in the state capitol. Her hopes rested on signs of a rising interest in urban beautification across the country and in Austin, and in the concurrent creation of several organizations interested in Texas history, including the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT), the Texas State Historical Association, and a chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. She completed six busts between 1893 and 1895, only one of which, a portrait of Governor Francis Lubbock, she received payment for.

Ney also pursued her idea of establishing a school of sculpture. In 1893, when she petitioned the legislature for funds, the scope of her idea had expanded beyond fine arts to include all liberal arts. "The Mission of Art," as described in her speech, was to make art part of society and to create "a veritable industrial Democracy … in which all citizens shall, by means of well regulated cooperative industry … become sufficient masters of their time and energy" and enjoy the beauty they created. More pragmatically, she argued that Texans lost money by relying on outsiders to provide architecture, art, sculpture and woodcarving. In 1894, Ney led a group of officials and citizens in creating the Association of the Texas Academy of Liberal Arts under state charter, and she served as the group's president. But the association lacked funding, and the speculation that still swirled around her did not enhance chances of public support. (Her hopes for this project died, finally, in 1901, when the legislature voted to create what later became Texas Women's University in Denton.)

Part of Ney's difficulties, both in receiving commissions and in attracting people to her plans, stemmed from her habit of seeking support primarily from men. This strategy had arisen from her successful experiences in Europe, but it did not fit the situation in Texas. Men rarely participated in the cultural sphere there; those who propelled the development of cultural institutions and the arts in the state were generally women. Although in 1894 Ney sent a paper titled "Art for Humanity's Sake" to the first State Council of Women, during this period she continued to focus on politically connected men, not the women who knew or were related to them, for support of her work. However, in the spring of 1897, about the time that she was again lobbying legislators to reproduce Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin in marble for the state capitol, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas requested a marble copy of Austin for the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., and she learned that women might be better allies for her work. Additional difficulties were caused that same year, after she sought and lost the commission for a monument in Galveston to Texas Revolution heroes, when she publicly debated the artistic merit of other state monuments both erected and planned. These unsolicited comments may have lost her local support, as her efforts against the design of a Confederate monument at the capitol may have cost her many other commissions (although the design was, in the end, changed). The sculptor brought in to cast that memorial, a recent Italian emigré named Pompeo Coppini, took such a liking to Texas that he settled there and subsequently competed with Ney, often successfully, for commissions, though she continued to consider herself the only true sculptor in the state. A final, and perhaps most serious, difficulty was the fact that her style and themes remained European, and never truly reflected American culture.

Despite her stubbornness and eccentricities, Ney enjoyed the company of friends, particularly children, and often hosted picnics or Easteregg hunts at her studio. She lent money when she could, and she entreated her friends on the behalf of others while the family continued to subsist by borrowing money, which they would either give away or use to repay other creditors. In 1895, they received word that her attorney in Munich had succeeded in selling her German studio, and that Bavaria wished to purchase the statue of King Ludwig. Ney netted $10,000 from the transactions; in celebration, she chartered a boat on Lake McDonald to give a party for her friends.

In 1900, while waiting for the DRT to raise the funds needed for the marble copy of Austin, Ney persuaded Populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan to sit for a portrait. (It would prove to be the only one she completed of a national figure in America.) Ella Dancy Dibrell , the new chair of the DRT, visited Ney about that time to express her interest in having both Austin and Houston placed in Washington. Through her husband, a state senator, Dibrell energetically sought funding from the legislature for the carving of Sam Houston. In June 1901, the legislature accepted Ney's gift of the models of those two statues and marked funds for them to be cut in marble for the state capitol; later that fall, it appropriated further funds for the statues to be placed in Washington. During the next year, Ney received $8,000 from the state for the two statues and arranged contracts for duplicates to go to Washington. Now approaching 70, she also modeled a bust of Governor Joseph Sayers, and during his sittings explained her views on public monuments in Texas. In October 1901, the state legislature appropriated $10,000 for a memorial to Texas Civil War hero Albert Sidney Johnston, and in December 1902, after submitting a clay model showing Johnston being carried off the battlefield at Shiloh, Ney signed the contract to oversee the memorial. The following year, while she was busy completing that statue in order to ship it to Europe to be cut in marble, more than 3,000 Texans attended the unveiling of Houston and Austin in the Texas capitol's south hall. She also completed a portrait medallion of the University of Texas' first dean of women, Helen Marr Kirby , and hurried to complete a self-portrait (begun nearly 40 years earlier), so that she might oversee its cutting in Europe.

Ney left for Europe in November 1903. In Germany, she gathered works for exhibition in both the Texas building and the Palace of Fine Arts at the upcoming St. Louis World's Fair, and in Seravezza, Italy, she oversaw the execution of her recent works in marble. By March 1904, she had finished the memorial to Johnston, duplicates of Houston and Austin, a bust of Christ, her self-portrait, and several medallions and busts, a burst of productivity that took its toll. Upon her return from Europe, Ney attended the St. Louis World's Fair. She disliked the placement of her works next to those of her rival Coppini and resented the absence of a catalog (hastily, she made explanatory cards and attached them to her works), but primarily she was disappointed that her Albert Sidney Johnston received only a bronze medal.

Back in Austin, Ney completed a statue of Lady Macbeth (Gruoch ) which she first had modeled four years earlier. In 1905, without the strength to return to Europe, she had the marble for the statue and a stonecutter sent to her in Austin. Her correspondence with German contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink reveals that Ney viewed this last major work as something of a self-portrait, embodying the artist as anguished martyr. That spring, she divided her time between Montgomery at Liendo and her circle of friends in Austin; in May, after she suffered a severe heart attack, her husband joined her at her studio. She died there in her secondfloor living quarters on June 29, 1907, and was buried at Liendo.

In 1908, after failing health and precarious finances prevented Montgomery from preserving Formosa and Ney's works (their son Lorne had already sold what he could of the studio's contents), Ney's friends stepped in. Formosa was purchased to create a museum to Ney, and Lady Macbeth went on loan to the National Museum of American Art. Montgomery retained rights to the collection, which he donated to the University of Texas in 1910, one year before his death, with the stipulation that it stay at Formosa as long as the site remained a museum honoring Ney. In 1911, the women who had surrounded Ney and supported her work in Austin formed the Texas Fine Arts Association, to oversee the museum and promote arts in the state.

sources:

Barrington, Carol. "George Custer, Sam Houston, and Elisabet Ney add to the intrigue of Life at Liendo," in Texas Highways. Photographs by J. Griffis Smith. Vol. 41, no. 1. January 1994, pp. 38–45.

Bishop, Nancy. "Elisabet Ney: trailblazing talent of Texas' cultural frontier," in Texas Highways. Photographs by Jennifer Van Gilder. Vol. 41, no. 1. January 1994, pp. 14–21.

Cutrer, Emily Fourmy. The Art of the Woman: The Life and Work of Elisabet Ney. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Fortune, Jan, and Jean Burton. Elisabet Ney. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1943.

Taylor, Bride Nell. Elisabet Ney, Sculptor. Rev ed. Austin, TX: Thos. F. Taylor, 1938.

suggested reading:

Goar, Marjory. Marble Dust: The Life of Elisabet Ney, an Interpretation. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1984 (a historical novel).

Loggins, Vernon. Two Romantics and Their Ideal Life: Elisabet Ney and Edward Montgomery, 1835–1911. NY: Odyssey Press, 1946.

Long, Sandra. "Arthur Schopenhauer and Elisabet Ney," in Southwestern Review. Vol. 69. Spring 1984, pp. 130–147.

Von Rosenberg, Marjorie. Elisabet Ney, sculptor of American heroes. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1990 (juvenile).

Wood, Sarah Lee Norman. "The Heroic Image: Three Sculptures by Elisabet Ney." Thesis. Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1978.

related media:

Elisabet Ney: artist, woman, Texan (140 slides, 1 audio cassette), San Antonio, TX: Institute of Texas Cultures, 1983.

collections:

Elisabet Ney Museum, a National Historic Site, 304 East 44th Street, Austin, Texas.

Liendo Plantation, Hempstead, Texas, a Texas historic landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. Private residence open for tours the first Saturday of every month.

Materials concerning Elisabet Ney, her work, and the Elisabet Ney Museum may be found in the following collections: Elisabet Ney Papers, Center for American History, University of Texas; Ney Museum Archives; Montgomery Collection, Fondren Library, Southern Methodist University; Austin-Travis County Collection, Austin Public Library; Daughters of the Republic of Texas Archives; Texana Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

University of Texas Institute of Texas Cultures at San Antonio.

Laura Anne Wimberley , Ph.D., Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas