Moses Jacob Ezekiel, also known as Moses "Ritter von" Ezekiel, was an American sculptor, who lived and worked in Rome for the majority of his career.
Background
Moses J. Ezekiel was born on October 28, 1844, in Richmond, Virginia, into a home with a strong Jewish-Spanish heritage. Moses Ezekiel was the son of Jacob Ezekiel, Jr. and Catherine DeCastro, and grandson of Jacob Ezekiel, Sr. and Rebecca Israel, a couple who came from Amsterdam, Holland, and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1808.
As a child, his artistic nature showed itself ; Ezekiel wrote poetry, drew, painted ; at ten, "he cut figures for little shadow pictures. "
Education
Leaving school at fourteen, Ezekiel attempted business life, but, dissatisfied with it, entered the Virginia Military Institute in 1861. After the burning of its buildings by Gen. Hunter’s men, he joined the Confederate army with the other cadets, and fought in the battle of New Market. Returning to "V. M. I. " after the war, he was graduated with honors in 1866. Again essaying business and again finding it unsatisfactory, he turned toward painting.
At the Military Institute Ezekiel had been a protégé of Gen. Robert E. Lee and his wife, to whose home in the neighborhood he was made welcome, and one of his early pictures is "The Prisoner’s Wife, " painted for Mrs. Lee.
Then sculpture drew him; he made a bust of his father, and an ideal group, "Cain. " Ezekiel studied anatomy and dissections at the Virginia Medical College.
After a brief period in Cincinnati, where he attended the Art School, worked in a sculptor’s studio, and made a statuette called "Industry, " he went to Berlin in 1869, and entered the Royal Art Academy. Then, he served for a time as war correspondent in the Franco-Prussian War.
After three years’ study at the Academy under Prof. Albert Wolff, he won the Michael-Beer Prize; this award ended his anxious poverty and granted him two care-free years of study in Rome.
Career
Rome was thereafter to be his home, although Ezekiel made many visits to the United States and at times kept a studio in Paris. His course at the Virginia Military Institute, with its interlude of actual combat, his prestige from the Roman Prize, his genial nature, and his gift for forming desirable acquaintances, prepared the ground for a career remarkably successful from many points of view, yet lacking the highest artistic values.
Partly for economy, partly with an eye to the picturesque, he set up a studio in the Baths of Diocletian (1874). By degrees he beautified it with antiquities and other objects of art. Here for more than thirty years he lived and worked, producing busts and other sculptures of European interest, and sending home many monuments, particularly to the South, proud of her gifted son. Gaining Italian facility without losing German thoroughness, he was a skilful and prolific executant. His studio, with its romantic aspects and its practical products, became something halfway between a salon and a show-place. Concerts of a high order were given there, and in the season it was a weekly rendezvous for the cosmopolitan society of Rome, gentle and simple being received with equal courtesy.
Among the sculptor’s friends were Cardinal von Hohenlohe and Franz Liszt. Ezekiel made a portrait of the Cardinal and one of the composer, and the Grand-Duke of Saxe-Meinin- gen ordered a copy of each.
His bust of Prof. Alfonso Sella for the University of Rome and that of the Dowager Queen Marghe- rita, together with such works as his "Neptune" fountain at Nettuno, Italy, and his figure of "Faith" in a Roman cemetery, won him Italian fame. Beginning with his marble group, "Religious Liberty, " much applauded at the Columbian Exposition (1893), and ending with his seated statue of Poe erected in Baltimore (1917), the list of his works in the United States is extensive.
For the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Virginia, Ezekiel made a colossal bronze group, "Virginia Mourning her Dead"; for the Confederate Cemetery, Johnson’s Island, Ohio, a memorial bronze figure, "The Outlook"; for Charleston, West Virginia, a bronze statue of Stonewall Jackson; for the court house, Louisville, Kentucky, a bronze monument to Thomas Jefferson, perhaps his outstanding work, a replica of which belongs to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. His monument to the Confederate dead was unveiled in Arlington National Cemetery in 1913, President Wilson making the chief address. Numerous other sculptures by Ezekiel are in American public buildings and in private ownership. He has a work in Westminster Abbey, and one in a Paris chapel.
After thirty years of residence in the Piazza delle Terme, Ezekiel was naturally dismayed when the Italian government took over his quarters at the Baths of Diocletian as an adjunct to its National Museum there. Still active in his art, he took a studio not far from the Piazza del Popolo. As a residence he found a romantic haven in the Tower of Belisarius, given to him by the municipal authorities. There Moses Ezekiel died on March 27, 1917, beloved and mourned by many in Rome.
Achievements
Membership
On the strength of a colossal bust of Washington, a copy of which is owned by the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, Moses Ezekiel was admitted into the Society of Artists, Berlin.
Connections
Although Moses Ezekiel never married, he is known to have fathered a "natural" or illegitimate daughter, Alice Johnson.
Father:
Jacob Ezekiel, Jr.
Mother:
Catherine Ezekiel (DeCastro)
Sister:
Hannah Workum (Ezekiel)
Sister:
Josephine Ezekiel Brauer
Sister:
Sallie I. Ezekiel
Sister:
Rebecca Collier (Ezekiel)
Sister:
Rosa G. Bernheim (Ezekiel)
illegitimate daughter:
Alice Darling Williams (Johnson)
Brother:
Louis P. Ezekiel
Brother:
Henry Clay Ezekiel
Brother:
Walter Ambrose Ezekiel
Brother:
Ezekiel Michael Ezekiel
Friend:
Franz Liszt
Friend:
Gustav Adolf, Cardinal Prince of Hohenlohe-Schillingfürst
the Silver Medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri
and the Raphael Medal from the Art Society of Urbino, Italy.
In 1904, he was presented the New Market Cross of Honor at VMI by the Government of Virginia as one of the 294 cadets who fought at the Battle of New Market. As a veteran of the Civil War, Ezekiel was also entitled to wear the Civil War Campaign Medal.
and the Raphael Medal from the Art Society of Urbino, Italy.
In 1904, he was presented the New Market Cross of Honor at VMI by the Government of Virginia as one of the 294 cadets who fought at the Battle of New Market. As a veteran of the Civil War, Ezekiel was also entitled to wear the Civil War Campaign Medal.
At age 29 Moses Ezekiel was the first foreigner to win the Michel-Beer Prix de Rome for a bas relief entitled Israel.
In his lifetime, Moses Ezekiel received numerous honors: he was decorated by King Umberto I of Italy, the "Crosses for Merit and Art" from the German Emperor, another from Prince Frederick Johann of Saxe-Meiningen, and the awards of "Chevalier" (Cavaliere) and "Officer of the Crown of Italy" Cavaliere) and "Officer of the Crown of Italy" (1910
At age 29 Moses Ezekiel was the first foreigner to win the Michel-Beer Prix de Rome for a bas relief entitled Israel.
In his lifetime, Moses Ezekiel received numerous honors: he was decorated by King Umberto I of Italy, the "Crosses for Merit and Art" from the German Emperor, another from Prince Frederick Johann of Saxe-Meiningen, and the awards of "Chevalier" (Cavaliere) and "Officer of the Crown of Italy" Cavaliere) and "Officer of the Crown of Italy" (1910