From Muenster to Liendo Plantation: A Sculptor Comes to Texas (Jul 14, 2024)
by Scott Sosebee
If you visit Austin and stroll the State Cemetery or take in a tour of the state’s marvelous pink granite Capitol, some of your most vivid memories will be of a few stupendous marble sculptures. You will probably stare in wonder at the rendering of Texas Revolutionary soldier and Civil War general Albert Sidney Johnston in repose on top of his tomb and at the stately depictions of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston in the Capitol building. The artist responsible for all of these statues was Elisabet Ney, who made her way from Germany to Texas to become perhaps the state’s most celebrated artist.
Born Franzisca Bernadina Wilhelmina Elisabet Ney in Muenster, Westphalia, on January 26, 1833, Ney would become a sculptor renowned and celebrated in Europe and the United States. She began to learn her craft watching and helping her father, a stone cutter, as he worked. She demonstrated great ability as a potential artist and wanted to train to become a sculptor, a path that her parents opposed. Frustrated by their lack of acquiescence, the young Ney went on a week-long hunger strike in an attempt to change their minds. Finally, after the intervention of the local parish priest, her parents agreed to let her pursue her studies as an artist. She surprised everyone when she became the first woman to ever attend the previously all-male Munich Academy of Art. She graduated in two years and then traveled to Berlin to begin to apprentice under Christian Daniel Rauch in 1854.
Ney learned quickly and opened her own studio in 1857. She quickly made a name for herself and, through the late 1850s and early 1860s, sculpted critically acclaimed pieces of Jacob Grimm, Italian independence leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, and composer Richard Wagner. She also did a bust of Prussian Otto Von Bismarck and a full-length statue of Bavarian King Ludwig II. Elisabet Ney was on a path to becoming the most acclaimed European sculptor of her time and perhaps the most praised woman ever in the field, but love changed her career path.
While traveling in Scotland in 1853, Elisabet met Scottish physician/scientist Edmund Montgomery. Ney, who was anything but a “traditionalist” of the 19th century, viewed marriage as nothing short of bondage for women, so while she enjoyed Montgomery’s company, she also refused his numerous proposals of marriage. Edmund Montgomery was obstinate in his pursuit of Ney, and she finally relented and married him in 1863—although she still refused to take his last name. She left Berlin and moved first to Scotland, and then she and Edmund left for the U.S. state of Georgia in 1871. The couple (Elisabet was pregnant with their first child when they left Scotland) settled in Thomasville, Georgia, where Ney gave up her life as an artist to raise a family. She had two sons during their brief life in Georgia, but in late 1872 Montgomery purchased the Liendo Plantation in Waller County, Texas, so the couple moved to Texas. However, life in Texas did not turn out exactly as Elisabet had likely imagined. Edmund, who was not quite the type to button down and work at a craft, may have purchased a working plantation, but he evidently did not intend to actually “run” one. Instead, he contented himself with performing scientific experiments, and thus it fell to Elisabet to run the plantation and care for the house and family. While she was not particularly happy about the situation, necessity meant that she had to perform whatever tasks were needed.
A life as the manager of a plantation enterprise might have become Ney’s “lot in life” if not for a chance opportunity. Ney had suspended her artistic career for over twenty years while she married, raised a family, and operated the plantation, but her reputation as an artist continued. When Texas governor Oran Roberts learned that Texas had such a celebrated artist within its borders, he invited Ney to Austin in 1882, where he commissioned her to sculpt his bust. She finished the work in 1885 (after Roberts had left office) and, feeling reinvigorated by the project, decided to resume her career. Although she continued to live part-time at Liendo with Montgomery, she built a studio and house for her work in Austin and began to receive commissions from both private citizens and the state legislature. It was during this period that she completed a number of busts, and also the life-size statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, as well as the memorial to Albert Sidney Johnston, which many consider her seminal work.
Ney’s reputation became invigorated, which made her in demand. She began to hold exhibits and receive commissions from throughout the U.S. Her depiction of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth was hailed by critics as a masterpiece, a piece that currently resides in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American Art. Already revered in Europe, this “second phase” of her career led her to become one of the most celebrated and in-demand artists in the United States. Despite her growing fame and the outward appearances of difficulty, she and Montgomery’s love and affection for each other was deep. She had also come to cherish her Liendo Plantation home. Thus, for the remained of her life, she continued to divide her time between Austin and Liendo until she died in 1907. She was buried in the family plot at her home, where Edmund joined her after his death in 1911.
When she died, Montgomery sold her studio to Ella Dibrell, but he deeded all of the contents of the home to the University of Texas, but with the stipulation that they were to remain in the building his wife used as a studio and part-time home. That led Dibrell, with the help of patrons, to establish the Texas Fine Arts Association in Ney’s honor. Ney’s former studio is now under the management of the City of Austin and houses the Elisabet Ney Museum, a fitting tribute for one of Texas’ most accomplished artists.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.