Harriet Goodhue Hosmer

Background

Hosmer was born on October 9, 1830 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Her mother and three siblings died during her childhood. Her father was a physician, Hiram Hosmer.

Education

Hosmer completed a course of study at Sedgewick School in Lenox, Massachusetts. She was encouraged by her father to pursue a course of physical training by which she became expert in rowing, skating, and riding. He also encouraged her artistic passion. She showed an early aptitude for modeling, and studied anatomy with her father. Through the influence of family friend Wayman Crow she attended the anatomical instruction of Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell at the Missouri Medical College. She then studied in Boston and practiced modeling at home until November 1852, when she went to Rome, where from 1853 to 1860 she was the pupil of the Welsh sculptor John Gibson, and she was finally allowed to study live models.

Career

Hosmer was not allowed to attend art classes because working from a live model was forbidden for women, but she took classes in anatomy to learn the human form and paid for private sculpture lessons. The biggest career move she made was moving to Rome to study art. Hosmer owned her own studio and ran her own business. She became a well-known artist in Rome, and received several commissions. While living in Rome, she associated with a colony of artists and writers that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bertel Thorvaldsen, William Makepeace Thackeray, and the two female Georges, Eliot and Sand. When in Florence, she was frequently the guest of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning at Casa Guidi. Hosmer was drawn to the Neoclassical style, which was easy to study given her presence in Rome. She enjoyed studying mythology, and she created various representations of mythological icons, such as the sculpture of The Sleeping Faun, which includes intricate details of elements such as his hair, the grapes, and the cloth draped over him. She also designed and constructed machinery, and devised new processes, especially in connection with sculpture, such as a method of converting the ordinary limestone of Italy into marble, and a process of modeling in which the rough shape of a statue is first made in plaster, on which a coating of wax is laid for working out the finer forms. Hosmer later lived in Chicago and Terre Haute, Indiana. Hosmer died at Watertown, Massachusetts, on February 21, 1908. Aside from the work she produced, Harriet Hosmer made her mark on art history and feminist and gender studies.

Achievements

• Hosmer was an American sculptor, one of the leading female sculptors working in Rome in the 19th century and perhaps the only one to win complete financial independence through her artistic work. Among other technical innovations, she pioneered a process for turning limestone into marble.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Harriet Hosmer American Sculptor, 1830-1908

    (Traces the life, career, and relationships of the ninetee...)

  • Patricia Cronin: Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found: A Catalogue Raisonné

    (Written and illustrated (in watercolor) by American conce...)

  • Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories The Pa...)

Connections

Friend:

Wayman Crow

References

• Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography