Elisabet Ney

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Franzisca Bernadina Ney (1833-1833 – 29 June 1907) was a celebrated German-American sculptor who spent the first half of her life and career in Europe, creating portraits of influential figures such as Otto von Bismarck, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Hanover's King George V.

She and her husband, Edmund Montgomery, immigrated to Texas at the age of 39 and became a pioneer of art history.

Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, life-size marble figures, were among her Texas exhibits, as well as Texas State Capitol commissions.

A substantial number of her exhibits are on view in the Elisabet Ney Museum, which is located in Austin's home and studio.

Other works can be found in the US Capitol, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and numerous museums in Germany.

Early life

Ney was born in Münster, Manitoba, to Johann Adam Ney, a stonecarver and suspected nephew of Field Marshal Michel Ney, and Anna Elizabeth on January 26, 1833. Fritz, the only other living child in the Ney family, was her older brother. Her parents were Catholics of Alsatian-Polish descent. She was Michel Ney, the Marshal of France, and was the great-niece. "I want to know great people" early in life.

Personal life

Ney encountered Edmund Montgomery, a young Scottish medical student, scientist, and philosopher who was visiting friends in Heidelberg in 1853. They kept in touch, and although she regarded marriage as a state of bondage for women after he opened a medical clinic in Madeira, they were married at the British consulate on November 7, 1863.

However, Ney was still outspoken about women's roles. She refused to use Montgomery's name, often denied she was even married, and once remarked: "She once said, 'I never married.'

As men, she wore trousers and rode her horses astride. She liked to make her own clothes, which included boots and a black artist frock coat in addition to the slacks.

In 1863, Montgomery was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The Franco-Prussian War had started about 1870. Ney and their first child were born in the fall of this year. Montgomery received a letter from Baron Carl Vicco Otto Friedrich Constantin von Stralendorff of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who had migrated to Thomasville, Georgia, with his new wife, Margaret Elizabeth Russell of Boston, Massachusetts, naming the area "Earth's paradise." Ney and Montgomery, as well as their housekeeper, Cenci, immigrated to Georgia on January 14, 1871, becoming a consumptive resort. Arthur, their first son, was born in 1871 but died two years later (possibly from diphtheria), but the reason for death is unclear. Sadly, the Thomasville colony did not turn out as they had hoped. Baron and Baroness von Stralendorff returned to Wismar, Germany, where he died on July 1, 1872.

Ney and Montgomery looked elsewhere in the United States for a home, including Red Wing, Minnesota, where their second son, Lorne (1872–1913), was born. Ney returned from Texas alone later this year. She was shown Liendo Plantation near Hempstead, Waller County, with the assistance of Julius Runge, a businessman from Galveston. Montgomery and the remainder of the family arrived in 1873 on March 4, 1873, and they purchased the plantation. Although he devoted her time to his studies, she continued it for the next 20 years.

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Career

Ney grew up helping her father with his jobs. As her parents refused her from becoming a sculptor, she embarked on a weeks-long hunger strike, prompting her parents to request the assistance of their local bishop. Her parents relented, and she became the first female sculpture student at the Munich Academy of Art under professor Max von Widnmann in 1852. She received her diploma on July 29, 1854. After graduating, she moved to Berlin to study under Christian Daniel Rauch. She researched realism and the German artistic tradition under Rauch, and began sculpting her first portraits of the German elite.

In 1857, Ney established a Berlin studio. Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, wanted to see a sculpted portrait at Edmund Montgomery's persuasion, whom she would marry in 1863. It was described as an artistic success and resulted in other commissions, most notable Jacob Grimm of the Brothers Grimm, composer Richard Wagner, Cosima von Bülow (the daughter of Franz Liszt and Wagner's granddaughter), King George V of Hanover, and Prussian-German political figure Otto von Bismarck. Josef Joachim and his wife, the contralto Amalie Weiss Joachim, were also commissioned bust portraits by the latter. Ney was hired by Prussian agents to sculpt a full-length portrait of Ludwig II of Bavaria in Munich in 1868, just shy of completing the Bismarck bust.

Ney, then a Texas resident, was welcomed by Governor Oran M. Roberts in Austin, which resulted in the resuming of her artistic career. She founded Formosa Studio in the Hyde Park neighborhood north of Austin in 1892 and began to request commissions.

Ney was hired by the Chicago World's Fair Association's Chairman in 1891 and increased by $32,000 by the Texas state legislature to model figures of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin for the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition World's Fair in 1893. Ney was late for the deadline and the sculptures were not on view at the Exhibition. The marble sculptures of Houston and Austin can now be seen in both the Texas State Capitol in Austin and the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C., where she was commissioned to build a monument to career military officer and war hero Albert Sidney Johnston's grave in the Texas State Cemetery. Lady Macbeth, one of her signature sculptures, is on display in the Elisabeth Ney Museum, and the finished marble is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection. She succeeded in arranging the orator, three-time presidential nominee, and noted attorney William Jennings Bryan to attend a portrait; she also planned to sell replicas of this bust to debate clubs around the country.

David Thomas Iglehart's 1903 life-size portrait bust can be seen at Symphony Square in Austin, Texas, where it is on permanent loan to the Austin Symphony Society. At Der Stadt Friedhof in Fredericksburg, Texas, what is believed to be Ney's last known work, a sculpture of a tousled haired cherub resting over a grave and the 1906 Schnerr Memorial, can be found.

Ney was also involved in Austin's cultural affairs in addition to her sculpture work. Formosa has become a center of cultural gatherings and curiosity seekers. Among her visitors were composer Paderewski and Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova.

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