1. Harriet Goodhue Hosmer was a neoclassical sculptor, considered the most distinguished female sculptor in America during the 19th century.
21 Facts About Harriet Hosmer
1. 2.
Harriet Hosmer is known as the first female professional sculptor.
3.
Harriet Hosmer was a cousin of poet William H C Hosmer and tragic actress Jean Hosmer.
4.
Harriet Hosmer was born on October 9,1830, at Watertown, Massachusetts, and completed a course of study at Sedgewick School in Lenox, Massachusetts.
5.
Harriet Hosmer traveled alone in the wilderness of the western United States, and visited the Dakota Indians.
6.
Harriet Hosmer showed an early aptitude for modeling, and studied anatomy with her father.
7.
Harriet Hosmer then studied in Boston and practiced modeling at home until November 1852, when, with her father and her lover Charlotte Cushman, 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.
8.
When Harriet Hosmer knew herself to be a sculptor, she knew that in America was no school for her.
9.
Harriet Hosmer must leave home, she must live where art could live.
10.
Frances Power Cobbe argued that the case of Harriet Hosmer showed that women could be creative artistic geniuses, just as much as men, and that Harriet Hosmer's work was pioneering a new women's art that celebrated female strength and power.
11.
Harriet Hosmer was drawn to the Neoclassical style, which was easy to study given her presence in Rome.
12.
Harriet Hosmer 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.
13.
Harriet Hosmer exhibited her sculpture of Queen Isabella, commissioned by the Queen Isabella Association, in the California State Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.
14.
Harriet Hosmer died at Watertown, Massachusetts, on February 21,1908, and is buried in the family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge.
15.
Harriet 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.
16.
Harriet Hosmer owned her own studio and ran her own business.
17.
Harriet Hosmer became a well-known artist in Rome, and received several commissions.
18.
Mount Harriet Hosmer, near Lansing, Iowa is named after Harriet Hosmer; she won a footrace to the summit of the hill during a steamboat layover during the 1850s.
19.
The Harriet Hosmer School in Watertown, Massachusetts is a public elementary school.
20.
Harriet Hosmer was present for the dedication of the first building, named for her father and her cousin.
21.
Harriet Hosmer made both large and small scale works and produced work to specific order.