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Harriet Hosmer Biography

Harriet Hosmer Image

HOSMER, Harriet (1830–1908). An American sculptor. She was born in Watertown, Mass., and studied drawing and modeling in Boston and anatomy in the St. Louis Medical College. Her first important instruction in art was received in the studio at Rome of the English sculptor, John Gibson (q.v.), with whom she worked for seven years. There she modeled, her original heads "Daphne" and "Medusa," executed for Samuel Appleton, of Boston; "Beatrice Cenci," in the public library of St. Louis; and "Œnone" (1855), her first full-size figure. Her spirited and original statue of "Puck" was esteemed so successful that 30 copies were ordered, among others by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Hamilton. Her most ambitious work is a colossal statue of "Zenobia in Chains," completed in 1859. Her bronze statue of Thomas H. Benton is in Lafayette Park, St. Louis. The "Sleeping Faun," exhibited in Paris in 1867, is one of her best works. Its companion is called "A Waking Faun." A fountain in Central Park, New York, and the heroic statue of Queen Isabella of Castile, unveiled in San Francisco in 1894, are by her, as are also the "Queen of Naples" and the "Heroine of Gaeta." She invented several technical processes in connection with her art and, like her master John Gibson (q.v.), was a "classicist." Nathaniel Hawthorne described her picturesquely in his Italian Notes and in his Marble Faun alludes to her "Clasped Hands of the Poet Robert Browning and his Wife." For personal anecdotes and letters, consult Carr, Harriet Hosmer (New York, 1912).