Elisabet Ney

Born in 1833 in Westphalia, one of the Germanic kingdoms to unite in the 1870s under Bismark, was one Elisbeth Ney. Her father worked stone engravings for grave stones and similar fare. The Ney family was a famous German family, with a proud tradition dating to the Marshal Michel Ney, a great general of the seventeenth century. Famous and important as the Ney name was, it compelled Elisabeth to keep it even when she got married in 1863, strange at the time.

I had never heard of Elisbet Ney, or even Elisabeth Ney, until Corrie found a gallery and small museum sitting in a quiet neighborhood here in Autin.



Elisbeth Ney was allowed to watch her father work, and eventually picked up the craft, and before long she discovered in herself the skills of a prodigy sculptor. She wanted fame and fortune, to study in Berlin under the Prussian master, and to meet all of the "world's great men" that would undoubtedly be in Berlin.

Her parents were not so keen on that, since it was the 1850s and all, and we're talking about a girl, an entity that had no place in many of nineteenth century Europe's highest echelons of art or power or intellectual life.

Their bishop in Munster, upon seeing the young girl's talent, convinced her to try first at the sculpting academy in the nearby kingdom of Bavaria's most important city, Munich.

She agreed, and eventually became a friend and confidant of King Ludwig II, the young king who spent much money on his castles, Neuschwanstein being the most famous now a days. There she finally got to hob-knob with the Bavarian elite.

Eventaully she was admitted to the grand sculpting academy in Berlin that she'd always wanted to attend, all the while becoming the first woman to do so. At first the skeptical art critics (men) thought that her admittance was a gimmic, or a result of some amorous instigation on her part, but she soon enough rose to the top of her class, even with the added pressure.

Elisabeth met the famous philosophers and "great men" she'd hoped, and one important German feminist, who's own name change, from Rachel to Rahel, prompted Elisabeth to become Elisabet. In Heidelberg she met Edmund Montgomery, a Scottish physician, and the two, both rebellious iconoclasts, fell in love and married.

In her time in Europe she sculpted Otto von Bismarck, King Ludvig II, Schopenhauer, even Jacob Grimm.

Elisabet and Edmund emigrated to the US, at the behest of fiends in Georgia. They lived for a time in Georgia, then moved and eventually settled in Texas, on a plot in Hempstead. Needing to be around "important people", they purchased a plot of land in Texas' capital, Austin, but only after being commissioned to sculpt two important Texans, Stephen Austin and Sam Houston, for the 1893 World's Fair. They needed that commission money.

In her time in Texas, Elisbet was successful in creating the Texas Commision of the Arts, helping to found the University of Texas' Art department, and the Texas Fine Arts Association. Through her connections in the state house, Elisbet befriended the legislature, and even had every state representative over to her house for a dinner party. Even in Texas, she was surrounded by "important people".

Elisabet was a trail blazer in Texas for equal rights for women in the arts as well, but that could almost be said about her in general throughout her lifetime.

In the museum here in Austin photography wasn't allowed. I didn't know this until I had already taken a few pictures. So, here is King Ludwig II from Bavaria, before he was, um, disposed of by his, uh, trusted circle of lawmakers.



I'm not sure who this guy is, but it looks cool, and is visible in old pictures from Germany on the walls.



Here is a gallery of busts. Present, starting on the left is Jacob Grimm, who, along with his brother Wilhelm, are best remembered for their colletion of colloquial tales that are the basis of our modern "fairy tales"; next is German philospher Arthur Schopenhauer, who stressed that surrounding the populace with beautiful things will lead to a happy populace; then in the back we have Wholer and Liebig, two German chemists; and the front, on the left we have Garibaldi, famous Italian uniter and merchant; and on the right is Chancellor Bismarck.



Elisabet Ney, like Mary Wollstonecroft, was an early champion and inspiration for women everywhere.