Elisabet Ney
Francisca Bernardina Wilhelmina Elisabetha Ney (born January 26, 1833 in Münster , † June 29, 1907 in Austin , Texas ) was a German-American sculptor . Since December 1856 she had the stage name Elisabet Ney.
education
Elisabet Ney was born in Münster in 1833 and was one of the first sculptors in the world to make a living from her work. In doing so, she could not fall back on any role model that would have exemplified her life as a creative woman to personal and economic independence. Before 1871, women, even working women, hardly appeared in public beyond the nobility. Since her father Adam Ney was a sculptor, she likely learned the basics of her work from him. According to her biographer, the self-confident and headstrong girl went on a hunger strike to get her training as a sculptor. In November 1852 she was accepted as a student at the Munich Academy of the Arts and in 1854 went to Berlin to study with Christian Daniel Rauch - the leading sculptor in German-speaking countries at the time. Even if she was never enrolled in the academy in Berlin, she received a scholarship for one year due to her talent in design and execution. She belonged to the inner circle of students and worked with others in Rauch's studio - in the so-called “Royal Warehouse” - on the execution of the master's works.
The artistic creation in Europe: 1858 to 1870
Ney recognized early on that the jobs would not come up by themselves. She therefore pursued the acquisition of commissions with particular tenacity, for example the portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). The well-known misogynist was fascinated by the young woman who led him to have himself portrayed in many hours and sessions in 1859, shortly before his death. He wrote: “She works for me all day. When I come home from dinner, we drink coffee together, sit together on the sofa, it makes me feel like married. "
In 1862 she was commissioned to produce four statues for the hall of the Ständehaus in Münster: Wolter von Plettenberg , Count Engelbert von der Mark, Franz von Fürstenberg and Justus Möser . From 1868 she lived and worked again in Munich - from 1869 to 1870 in Suresnes Castle . She was involved in the design of the New Polytechnic University under Gottfried von Neureuther (1811–1887) and portrayed King Ludwig II of Bavaria in life-size. She also made busts of Arthur Schopenhauer, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1865), Otto von Bismarck (1867), Justus Liebig , Friedrich Wöhler , Jakob Grimm (1863), Joseph Joachim , Amalie Joachim , Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , Eilhard Mitscherlich and Pope Pius IX. , also a bound Prometheus and a Saint Sebastian .
In the years 1897 and 1903 Elisabeth Ney stayed in Munich for a few months.
Artistic creation in America
After emigrating to Texas, she was commissioned to create the busts of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, both of which she executed as memorial statues on behalf of the State of Texas in 1903. The busts can be viewed today in the Texas State Capitol in Austin and in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol in Washington, DC . She also created a funerary monument of Albert Sidney Johnston (now in Texas State Cemetery ), a bust of the murdered President James A. Garfield and a Lady Macbeth , now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum .
Private life
Ney was also a special personality in her everyday life: she dealt with healthy eating, refused to accept the constricting fashion of the time and, decades before the reform dress movement at the turn of the century, was wrapped in long, flowing robes that not only gave her enough freedom of movement left their work. In Heidelberg in 1853/1854 she met the Scottish doctor Edmund D. Montgomery . Despite their wedding in Madeira on November 7, 1863, neither of them announced their wedding. Outwardly, Elisabet Ney did not want to see her independence affected in any way. She had found her stage name in 1856 and stuck to it as well as to her short hairstyle (at least since 1854) and to her given "Miss image" until the end of her life.
Life in texas
Despite a successful artist life in Munich, which at least enabled her to acquire a stately home with a studio, she emigrated to the USA with her husband Edmund D. Montgomery in 1871. In 1873 they bought a farm called Liendo Plantation in Hempstead , Waller County , Texas. A long, unsuccessful phase of life as a farmer began there and ended with economic difficulties. Elisabet Ney had run the Liendo farm on her own there and her husband Edmond Montgomery had tried to set up a school for the freed black slaves in addition to his academic work. After 17 years of unsuccessful struggle for the farm, Elisabet Ney turned back to art and built a studio in Austin / Texas. In addition, she was also active in art politics and founded a group of art enthusiasts who campaigned for the establishment of an art academy in Austin. In 1893, she had a stone studio built according to her own plans.
The world's first museum for a visual artist
She died in Austin / Texas in 1907 and left her artistic legacy to the university there. A museum has existed since 1911 in the studio building she designed herself, which is certainly the oldest museum in the world dedicated to an artist. The collection contains many of the original design busts and some marble versions from her creative days in America.
Elisabet Ney in the "Three-Women-Museum" Münster
On January 6, 1932, a municipal museum in honor of three important women of the city of Münster was opened on the upper floor of the former Johanniterkommende on Bergstrasse, which was soon called the “Three Women Museum”: the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff became three Rooms, one room each dedicated to Princess Amalie von Gallitzin and the sculptor Elisabet Ney. The objects shown there were made available by private collectors. A special eye-catcher in this room was the main work of the sculptor: the boys group Sursum.
In 1936 the Droste-Hülshoff museum area moved to the Rüschhaus . Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the objects from the two other museum areas. The city of Münster terminated the lease that had existed since 1929 with the royal administration of Bentheim-Steinfurt, owner of the Johanniterkommende, on August 31, 1938. By then at the latest, these two rooms had to be vacated. To what extent this actually happened and about the exact process, including the return of individual objects to their owners, no reliable statement can be made. Not all of the sculptor's works that were once presented are still preserved today; their traces have been lost. Not all objects were returned to their lenders. Many of the factories were probably destroyed in the Second World War.
Art-historical significance of Elisabet Ney
Elisabet Ney found its way into US art history early and still has her place there today. Although her contact with Germany has never been broken, she is largely forgotten here today. This is due, among other things, to the war damage, which also fell victim to the buildings in which she made major contributions to the furnishings: for example the Ständehaus in Münster or the New Polytechnic University in Munich . But at least one important work is at the center of a tourist stronghold: the statue of Ludwig II of Bavaria at Herrenchiemsee Palace . The larger than life marble picture of the Bavarian king can be seen in the Ludwig II Museum in the palace. But the mysterious fame of the Bavarian “fairy tale king” hardly attracts any attention to the sculptor.
Ney's works are represented in the major museums in Berlin , Hanover , Munich and Weimar as well as in the university town of Göttingen . One of her first works, the Varnhagen bust, can be found in the Berlin State Library as part of the Varnhagen collection , which also contains letters, testimonies and a manuscript of poems (these Ney manuscripts are kept in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków ).
The most important repository of her oeuvre is the Elisabet Ney Museum in Austin / Texas. The plaster models in particular make it clear with what intensity the artist dealt with the portrayed personality during the hour-long sessions and captured their character traits with great sensitivity in a lively surface. Although Ney remained connected to the representative and classicist style of the Berlin sculpture school under its head Christian Daniel Rauch , the original design busts in particular have a psychological dimension that is second to none. In contrast to later-born artists like Camille Claudel or Gabriele Münter, she manages to lead an independent artistic and economic life - even if often not without debts.
Elisabeth Ney died in 1907 and was buried in Liendo - later her husband found his final resting place at her side. In 1911 the Texas Fine Arts Association was founded in her honor .
literature
- Saskia Johann: The sculptor Elisabet Ney. Life, work and activity . Logos Verlag Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-8325-3995-5 (also: Dissertation, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 2014).
- Barbara Rummy (Ed.): Elisabet Ney. Mistress of her art. Sculptor in Europe and America . Wienand et al., Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-87909-945-0 , (exhibition catalog: Stadtmuseum Münster).
- Magdalena Köster (Ed.): "I will not lie at anyone's feet". Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim et al. 2003, ISBN 3-407-78914-9 , (Susanne Härtel (Ed.): Eight Artists and Their Lives 2), ( Beltz - & - Gelberg-Taschenbuch 914).
- Dagmar von Stetten-Jelling: Elisabet (h) Ney (1833–1907). Sculptor in Europe and America. An unusual career . Printed as a manuscript. dissertation.de, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89825-635-9 , ( Dissertation.de 735 Classic ), (At the same time: Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 2002).
- Carol Morris Little: A Comprehensive Guide to Outdoor Sculpture in Texas. University of Texas Press, Austin TX 1996, ISBN 0-292-76034-5 .
- Patricia D. Hendricks, Becky Duval Reese: A Century of Sculpture in Texas. 1889-1989. University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 1989, (exhibition catalog: ao Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1989).
- Emily Fourmy Cutrer: The Art of the Woman. The Life and Work of Elisabet Ney. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE 1988, ISBN 0-8032-1438-3 , ( Women in the West ).
- Jan Isbelle Fortune, Jean Burton: Elisabet Ney. Alfred A. Knopf, New York NY 1943.
- Eugen Müller-Münster: Elisabeth Ney. The strange life fates of Elisabeth Ney and Edmund Montgomery (1833–1907) . Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1931.
- Bride Neill Taylor: Elisabet Ney. Sculptor . The Devin-Adair Co., New York NY 1916.
Web links
- Literature by and about Elisabet Ney in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Elisabet Ney in the German Digital Library
- Elisabet Ney. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
- Retrospective on Elisabet Ney from January 27, 2008 to May 25, 2008
- Handbook of Texas, name: Elisabet Ney (Engl.)
- Homepage of the Elisabet Ney Museum (Engl.)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ney, Elizabeth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ney, Francisca Bernardina Wilhelmina Elisabetha (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American sculptor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 26, 1833 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Muenster |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 29, 1907 |
| Place of death | Austin , Texas, USA |