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Women Sculptors at the 1893 Exposition Compiled by K. L. Nichols

Women Sculptors

A - Manan  I  Mears - Yandell

This Page:
Caroline Peddle Ball
Sarah Bernhardt
Hélène Bertaux
Caroline S. Brooks
Marie Cazin
Camille Claudel
Katherine M. Cohen
Laure Coutan-Montorgueil
Fraulein Finzelberg
Mary R. Grant
Harriet Hosmer
Vinnie Ream Hoxie
Mme. Clovis Hugues
Jeanne Itasse-Broquet
Adelaide Johnson
Mary T. Lawrence (Tonetti)
Edmonia Lewis
Evelyn B. Longman
Carol Brooks MacNeill
Adelaide Manan

Caroline Peddle Ball (1869 - 1938)
 

Trophy--representative work
 

It is unclear which work Ball
exhibited at the 1893 World's Exposition

Caroline Peddle Ball was born in Terre Haute, Indiana and studied art privately at the Rose Polytechnic Institute, followed by a brief sojourn at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and then in New York at the Art Students’ League under Kenyon Cox and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. For a time, she was employed by Tiffany & Company which exhibited her design at the 1893 Chicago Exposition.  During the 1890s she lived and worked in Florence, Italy and Paris, France, as well as in Terre Haute.  Her work ranged from larger public sculptures to bronze statuettes and bas-relief decoratives.  She was married for a time to Bertrand E. Ball.

Queen Isabella Coin

Sarah Bernhardt (1844 - 1923)
 

A Portrait Bust of an Actress (c.1885-1895)-- representative work.

Le Bouffon (A Jester)-- representative work

Ophelia (bas relief)--exhibited in the
Women's Building, 1893 Exposition

Bust of child and Bust of Louise Abbema (French artist) --
exhibited in Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.

One of the most famous actresses of the Nineteenth Century, Sarah Bernhardt (born Henriette-Rosine Bernard) was born in Paris of French-Dutch-Jewish heritage.  One of her famous roles was Camille in La Dame aux Camélias by the younger Alexandre Dumas, but she was also known to don "breeches" and play males roles like Hamlet. Oscar Wilde named her "The Divine Sarah" and wrote his play Salome for her. Bernhardt was also an accomplished (and largely self-taught) sculptor who exhibited her work regularly in Paris, London, and New York from the 1870s to about 1900.  Her often highly imaginative, sculptured self-portraits include the foot-tall symbolist-grotesque "Inkwell, Self-Portrait as a Sphinx" (1880). Her autobiography, Memories of My Life, was published in 1907.

Biography
Sarah Bernhardt Pages--information on Bernhardt as actress.
Sculptured Self-portraits--4 images
In Praise of Women--scroll down to "Sculpture by Sarah Bernhardt"
Life's Vanity (1880-1900)--example of Bernhardt's painting

(Mme. Léon) Hélène (Pilate Alletit Hebert) Bertaux (1825 - 1909)
 

Spring--representative work
 

Young Gaul 1864-- representative work

Flight into Egypt-- representative work

Eveillee [Resting Young Nude Girl with a Dragon Fly on
 her Back] c. 1870--exhibited as "Young Girl Bathing"
in the Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.
 

Psyche in the Realm of Mystery--This may be "Psyche under the Shell of Mystery" exhibited   in the Women's Building, 1893 Exhibition

Psyche in the Realm of Mystery-- close-up of statue on the left.

French sculptor Hélène Bertaux underwent her initial training in the studio of her father (Hebert), a minor ornamental sculptor, followed by later studies with Augustin Dumont.  She frequently exhibited and was particularly successful in attaining the support of government officials and the imperial household which opened doors of opportunity for her.  She also played a major role in getting women's artistic advancement recognized in the late 1800s; she instituted the Union of Women Painters, Sculptors and Engravers in 1881, was editor of its monthly journal, established the first sculpture school for women, set up several monetary awards for women artists, and worked to force the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to open its doors to women.  Bertaux was the first woman member elected to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1896. (NOTE: The records for the 1893 Exhibition badly misspell her name as "Bortanae" and "Bertaut.")

Working the System: Hélène Bertaux and Second Empire Patronage--biography; several images included.

Caroline (Shawk) Brooks (1840 - 1910)
 

The Dreaming Iolanthe--exhibited in
the Fine Arts Palace, 1893 Exposition
 

Lady Godiva, Lady Godiva Returning, and
Vanderbilt Group (images unavailable)--
exhibited in Fine Arts Palace, 1893 Exposition

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Caroline S. Brooks is sometimes described as a self-taught sculptor, but other sources say she was a student at the Art Institute of Chicago under Lorado Taft.  Although her exhibitions at the 1893 Exposition were all in marble, she was more popularly known as the "butter lady"  as she demonstrated her method of molding in butter before sculpting in more traditional mediums.  Her Lady Godiva statues were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.  She was married to San Francisco painter Samuel Brookes.

Marie (Guillet) Cazin (1844 - 1924)
 

Jeune Filles--exhibited in the
Women's Building, 1893 Exposition

Marie Cazin was born in Paimboeuf, France and received some early training from Juliette Peyrol-Bonheur and later with her husband Jean-Charles Cazin, a painter and ceramicist. Although she did some early work with decorated ceramics and was known for her paintings, she annually exhibited her sculpture at the Salon for thirty years.

Camille Claudel (1864 - 1943)
 

Cacountala-- representative work

Bust of M. Rodin--exhibited in Fine Arts Palace, 1893 Exhibition

Born at Fère-en-Tardenois, Aisne, Camille Claudel studied at the Académie Colarossi in Paris under the sculptor Alfred Boucher (women were not allowed to enroll in the École des Beaux-Arts) and later under the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin.  For fifteen years, Camille was Rodin's muse, model, confidante, and lover.  The commercial success she attained in her post-Rodin period ended in the early twentieth century with signs of her deteriorating mental condition which caused her to destroy many of her works.  She lived out her final years in a mental asylum.

Katherine M. Cohen (1859 - 1914)

The Isralite--representative work
 

Bust of Abraham Lincoln (1898) --
representative work
 

Bust of Henry Souther (image unavailable)--
exhibited in Fine Arts Palace, 1893 Exposition.

Katherine M. Cohen was born in Philadelphia and studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the New York Art Students League, and the Académie Julian in Paris.  She was a painter as well as a sculptor.

Laure (Martin) Coutan-Montorgueil (1855 - 1915)
 

Sirius--representative work

La Fortune--representative work

Monument to André Gill--
representative work
 

Spring (image unavailable)--exhibited in
the Women's Building, 1893 Exhibition

French sculptor Laure Coutan-Montorgueil was born at Dun-sur-Auron, Cher and studied under Alfred Boucher.  Her work includes monument sculptures and busts of public people like the astronomer Leverrier, Prince Napoleon, General Boulanger, and the Countess de Choiseul.

Fraulein Finzelberg ( ?? - ?? )
Possible ID: Lilli Finzelberg Wislicenus (1872-1939)
 

[Title unknown]--representative work
 

The Rape of Europa--representative work
 

"Ihr Kinderlein kommet, Oh 'kommet nach all,' zur Krippe herkommet."--
representative work
 

Brother and Sister--exhibited in the
Women's Building, 1893 Exposition

The Fraulein Finzelberg who exhibited at the 1893 Exposition is possibly Lilli Finzelberg Wislecenus, although she would have only been 21 years old at that time. At any rate, Lilli Finzelberg's father was a prominent chemist in Berlin, but evidently Lilli lived in Duesseldorf with her uncle, the painter Hermann Wislicenus.  Lilli studied at the Technical University in Charlottenburg and married her cousin, the painter Hans Wislecenus in 1896.

Mary R. Grant (1831 - 1908)
 

Diana--exhibited in Women's
Building, 1893 Exposition.

Mary Grant was the daughter of a Scottish laird.  She studied first in Paris, Rome, and Florence, then in London under J. H. Foley.  Using her family connections (her artist-uncle Sir Francis Grant was President of the British Royal Academy, for instance), Grant managed to obtain many commissions to create busts of important figures like Queen Victoria and Charles Stewart Parnell.  She often exhibited at the British Royal Academy.

Harriet Hosmer (1830 - 1908)

Daphne--representative work
 

Puck--representative work

Sleeping Faun--representative work

Hosmer on stepladder next to
her Senator Hart sculpture.

Queen Isabella 1893 [my scan]--
LARGE IMAGE HERE.
Exhibited  in the California Building, 1893 Exposition.
Click here to see Queen Isabella on display
(at end of the hall) in the Palace of Fine Arts at
the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition

Harriet Hosmer was probably the most well-known and successful American woman sculptor of the Nineteenth Century. Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, she began her studies in Boston with Stevenson and with her physician-father who taught her anatomy. In 1852, she went to study in Rome where she remained for most of her adult life as the leader of a group of American women artists expatriates. Hawthorne immortalized her as Hilda in his Italian novel The Marble Faun, and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning became her good friends. Her neo-classical statue of Queen Isabella of Spain was commissioned for the 1893 World Fair by a group of activist women, known as as the Chicago Isabellas, who believed the Queen deserved as much recognition as did Columbus whose "discovery" of America was being honored at the Fair. A bronze replica of Queen Isabella was sold to the Pope. The plaster model, which was sent the following year to San Francisco for display, disappeared, but no one seems to know how, where, or when.

Biography
Harriet Goodhue Hosmer--biography and two images available
Biography/photo
Expatriate Sculptor Harriet Hosmer--her career and lifestyle
1894 Midwinter Fair: Women Artists--read the story of the controversy over Hosmer's Queen Isabella statue.
Harriet Hosmer--This source says Isabella was commissioned by San Francisco City and exhibited 1894.
Zenobia--image; full-length Zenobia--image.
Oenone--image.
Beatrice Cenci--excellent image.  Beatrice Cenci--scroll down to excellent image
Sleeping Faun --click on image to enlarge it; Waking Faun.
Two images--click on Medusa and Sleeping Faun; excellent Medusa here
Three images-- Puck; Sleeping Faun; Will o' the Wisp
Puck--image (alternate source here); Puck and Owl--image
4 bas reliefs--images; Night Rises with the Stars--image
Night rises with the stars --bas relief; Falling stars --bas relief
19th Century Slides--scroll down to ten images of statues by Hosmer
Medusa

Vinnie Ream Hoxie (1847 - 1914 )

The West 1893--exhibited in Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.

America 1893-- exhibited in Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.

Sappho--representative  work.

Abraham Lincoln--representative work.

Born in a frontier town in Wisconsin, the largely self-taught sculptor Vinnie Ream Hoxie was the talk of Washington, D.C. when, at age 19, she became the first woman and youngest artist to ever receive a commission from the United Stated Government for a statue. That statue of Abraham Lincoln stands today in the U. S. Capitol Rotunda. She also received other major government commissions for statues of American heroes and male dignitaries, but at the 1893 World Fair, her female statues (shown above) resembled more the beauty and dignity of her Sappho statue which resides today on her tombstone.

Biography
Biography/5 images--find out why else she was the talk of the town.
Artworks by Vinnie Ream--9 images
Vinnie Ream Hoxie-- Two images included.
Vinnie Ream Hoxie at Iowa and Elsewhere--more on her career and social life
Vinnie Ream--short biography; 2 excellent images of her important D.C. statues
Lincoln and Sappho--images; another Lincoln--image
Governor Kirkwood--image/commentary; another Governor Kirwood--image; another Gov. Kirkwood
Sequoyah--image/commentary; another Sequoyah--image; another Sequoya

Mme. Clovis Hugues ( ?? - ?? )
 

Le Comtesse de Die--
representative work
 

It is unclear which work Hugues
exhibited at the 1893 World's Exposition

Mme. Clovis Hugues was a French sculptor.  No more information is available online.

Jeanne Itasse-Broquet (1867-1941)
 

Mademoiselle Marie Salle, "la Terpsichore française" 1887--
representative work
 

Statues [title unknown]-- representative work

Egyptian Harpist 1891--exhibited in Fine Arts Palace, 1893 Exposition

Bacchante--representative work
 

Head of an Old Woman (image unavailable)--
exhibited at the 1893 Exposition

Jeanne Itasse was born in Paris and studied with her sculptor-father Adolph Itasse.  She won many prizes, including a medal at the Chicago Exposition 1893.  Her bust of the danseuse Marie Salles was purchased by the Government for the Opera, and her "Egyptian Harpist" won her the "travelling purse" for 1891 and an invitation from the Viceroy of Egypt.  Her married name was Broquet.

Adelaide (Sarah Adeline) Johnson (1859 - 1955)

Bust of Susan B. Anthony 1893--
exhibited in the Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.

The Portrait Monument or here-- [left to right]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,  Susan B. Anthony,  Lucretia Mott.
Exhibited individually in Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.
Now exhibited in the U. S. Capitol Building, 1990s.
Read a history and description of this statue.

Born on a farm in Illinois, Adelaide Johnson became known as the "sculptor of the women's movement."  She studied in the St. Louis School of Design, but desiring to become a sculptor, she traveled to Rome to study under Monteverde and Altini. She made busts of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all of which were on display at the 1893 World Fair. A decade later, Johnson secured a national commission to create for the United States Capitol building a sculpture called "The Women's Movement" or the "Portrait Monument" (its current name). Financed by the National Woman's Party, this seven-ton marble statue contained copies of the earlier busts of Anthony, Mott, and Stanton. Dedicated in 1921 on Susan B. Anthony's birthday, it is the only national monument to the woman's movement.

Biography
Two images: Monument to the Women's Movement, and Susan B. Anthony
Letter from Susan B. Anthony--comments on the suffragist busts and Johnson's unusual wedding.
Women of Achievement Exhibit Hall: The Portrait Monument--read details about the symbolization of the Woman's Movement sculpture and its later history. A number of good images included.
Women of Vision, Women of Courage--find out more about the controversies surrounding the The Portrait Monument and the lives of the three women suffragists.
The Saga of the Moving of the Statue --news article on the history of this statue. Good image included.
Biography of Alice Paul--refers to the National Woman's Party commission and the title of Johnson's statue.
Women's Work Remains Unfinished--controversy over the Suffrage statue in the 1990s.

Mary T. Lawrence (Tonetti) (1863 - 1945)
 

Figure of Columbus planting the Spanish flag
 in the New World--exhibited in front of the
Administration Building, 1893 Exposition.

Mary Lawrence Tonetti was born in New York and became an assistant in 1888 to the famous sculptor Saint-Gaudens who was in charge of selecting sculptors for the public statues at the 1893 Exposition. He chose his former pupil Lawrence to create the Columbus statue (although Saint-Gaudens co-signed it). Eventually she had a studio of her own and married French sculptor Francois Tonetti.

General John A. Logan Monument, 1894-97

(Mary) Edmonia Lewis (c. 1848 - after 1911)

Sleeping Infants--representative work

The Death of Cleopatra--exhibited
at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
View large Smithsonian image of Cleopatra here.

The twelve-foot sculpture The Death of Cleopatra by Edmonia Lewis was on display in Chicago in 1892, but not at the Women's Building or anywhere in the "White City" at the 1893 World Fair. Instead, it was on the wrong side of town--in a saloon--and then lost soon after. A sculptor of mixed heritage (part-Black, part Chippewa), Lewis was born in New York and, although largely self-taught, achieved some international recognition of her work by 1876; however, by the 1890s, her remarkable statue had been sold, presumably to meet storage costs, and was not recovered until nearly 100 years later. Lewis's statue is included here for two reasons: 1) It is one of the most remarkable statues of the 19th Century; and 2) The 1893 World Fair was criticized for being too "white." This statue shows that outstanding sculpture by a minority woman was available--right there in Chicago.

Edmonia Lewis --biography and image of Hagar
The Object at Hand--loss and restoration of Cleopatra;
Testament to Bravery--more on the loss and restoration of Cleopatra
Edmonia Lewis--biography and several images of her other statues.
19th Century Slides--scroll down to two more images of statues by Lewis.
Edmonia Lewis--short biography; differs in some details from the above one.
Defiant Women: Edmonia Lewis --more detailed biography, but differs in some details from the above ones. Several good images of her statues are included, plus several good links to other information.
Edmonia Lewis--biography and links to four images of her statues at the Smithsonian.
Image Gallery: Edmonia Lewis--click on seven images of her statues
Forever Free--good image; Forever Free
Marriage of Hiawatha--image; Old Indian Arrow Maker & His Daughter; Indian Hunter--scroll down to image.
Cleopatra and two other good images
3 images--Free at Last; Pompeian Girl; Old Arrow-Maker; three more images here.
4 images
Bust of a Woman
Hagar in the Wilderness

(Mary) Evelyn Beatrice Longman (Batchelder) (1874 - 1954)

Head of Bacchante (Margaret French Cresson) 1903--
representative work
 

Ceres statue at 1915 Exposition--representative work

It is unclear which work(s) Longman
exhibited at the 1893 World's Exposition

Evelyn B. Longman was born in a log cabin in rural Ohio and, while studying at the Chicago Art Institute, became one of Larado Taft's "white rabbit" assistants working on sculpture for the 1893 World's Exposition.  Later in New York, she worked closely with the famous sculptor Daniel Chester French on projects like the Lincoln Memorial until, in her forties, she married and moved to Connecticut.  Throughout her career, Longman received many important commissions and was the first woman sculptor elected a full member of the National Academy of Design.

23 images, plus biography
Biography and 6 images

Carol Brooks MacNeil (1871 - 1944)
 

Dancing Woman statue-- scroll down the page.

Water Baby-- representative work

It is unclear which work(s) MacNeil exhibited
in Fine Arts Palace, 1893 World's Exposition.

Born in Chicago, Carol Brooks MacNeil studied sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago and assisted Lorado Taft in creating statues for the 1893 World's Exposition.  She continued her studies in Paris under the famous sculptor Frederick MacMonnies and, in 1894, married sculptor Herman A. MacNeil.  She exhibited and won awards at later expositions.

Adelaide Manan (? - ?)
 

Sappho (scroll down page)--exhibited
in the Women's Building, 1893 Exposition.

No biographical information on Adelaide Manan is available online.