THE RELEVANT QUEER: Harriet Hosmer, the Defiant First Female Professional Sculptor, Born October 9, 1830

“A great thought must be embodied in a great manner, and such greatness is not to find its counterpart in everyday things.”

TRQ: Harriet Hosmer, Born October 9, 1830

Artist and feminist Harriet Hosmer, known as the first female professional sculptor, was born in Watertown, Massachusetts on October 9, 1830. From an early age, through the course of her artistic career, Hosmer’s life bore little resemblance to society’s acceptable roles for women. A feminist, Hosmer turned to mythological figures and themes that embodied and related to her beliefs.

As a child, Hosmer lost her mother and three of her siblings to tuberculosis. Her father was a physician who wanted to protect his daughter from the disease, and encouraged her to partake in typically masculine activities like physical training, rowing, and riding.

Hosmer dressed in a masculine way, and her outgoing personality and casual demeanour scandalized her social circles. She was flirtatious and formed intense relationships with her female friends. Hosmer travelled without chaperones, visited native Americans, and explored landscapes and mines. Mt. Hosmer near Lansing, Iowa, is named after her after she won a race up the bluff against male competitors.

Hosmer’s father encouraged her artistic interests, supported her sculpting, and helped guide her study of anatomy. She studied anatomical instruction first at the Missouri Medical College, and then in Boston, and practiced sculptural modelling at home. One of her early works, Hesper, The Evening Star (1852), caught the attention of Charlotte Cushman, a lesbian actress in Boston known for playing male roles. Hosmer and Cushman became lovers, and the two moved to Rome in November 1852.

In Rome, Hosmer apprenticed under sculptor John Gibson from 1853 to 1860. She could study live models for the first time. She completed Daphne in 1853, which showed her increasing mastery of line and neoclassical form. For her next piece, Medusa, Hosmer caught a live snake on which to model the Gorgon’s snake-like tiara. Gibson’s praised her “unsurpassed” skill in capturing the roundness of flash.

Unsurprisingly, Hosmer faced professional misogyny as her career progressed. Her success under Gibson fuelled baseless rumours that he was responsible her work. Later, through a series of successful lawsuits, Hosmer refuted art magazines’ accusations of plagiarism.

She was very peculiar, but she seemed to be her
actual self, and nothing affected or made up; so
that, for my part, I gave her full leave to wear what
may suit her best, and to behave as her inner
woman prompts.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne (1858)

Hosmer socialised with writers and artists like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederic Leighton, Thomas Crawford, George Eliot and George Sand. She spent salon evenings in Florence with Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning at Casa Guidi.

Hosmer associated with a group of female artists described by Henry James as a “sisterhood of American ‘lady sculptors’.” This included Anne Whitney, Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis, Louisa Lander, Margaret Foley and others. Whitney and Lewis found a role model in Hosmer, who showed a marked impatience for the rigid rules of polite, ladylike behaviour.

In 1857, at age 27, Hosmer was the first American to sculpt for an Italian tomb. Her Tomb of Judith Faconnet is permanently installed in S. Andrea delle Fratte Church in Rome. It is considered an artistic triumph.

In 1859, Hosmer continued paving the way for female sculptors by establishing her own studio and becoming a member of the Accademia de’ Quiriti. She engineered machinery and pioneered manufacturing processes converting limestone to marble, and sculpting methods that used plaster and wax in novel ways.

In the 1860s Hosmer met suffragist Phebe Hanaford, with whom she shared a passion for women’s rights. Hosmer shared a romantic relationship with Louisa, Lady Ashburton, a widowed Scottish noblewoman for over 25 years. Hosmer refereed to herself as Ashburton’s “wedded wife” with whom she shared finances. Ashburton provided her a studio at Albert Gate Studios in William Mews in Rutland Gardens.

The Daughters of Isabella and the Queen Isabella Association commissioned Hosmer for a full-sized Queen Isabella I for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Hosmer’s last important work, Queen Isabella of Castile was exhibited again at the California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894.

I honor every woman who has strength enough to step
outside the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies
in another; strength enough to stand up and be laughed
at, if necessary.

— Harriet Hosmer

On February 21, 1908, Hosmer died in Watertown Massachusetts from a fatal respiratory ailment. Refusing to abandon her Neoclassical aesthetic, Hosmer had long given up sculpting and spent the last several years of her life penniless.

Today, her statues are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the London Academy. The Hosmer School in Watertown and the World War II ship SS Harriet Hosmer were named in her honor.

About the Authors:

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and he is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore.

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Sources:

GLBTQ Archive

Britannica

A Woman’s Spirit: More Meditations for Women

Encyclopedia