Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908): Fame, Photography, and the American 'Sculptress'

Abstract

“Harriet Hosmer (1830–1908): Fame, Photography, and the American ‘Sculptress’” is a case study inspired by one nineteenth-century sculptor’s career and a rare body of photographs showcasing the artist and her work. The American neoclassical sculptor Harriet Hosmer came of age near Boston, where she began her early artistic training. In 1852, at the age of twenty-two, she moved to Rome to further her career as a sculptor. Soon after, she became the most famous woman sculptor of her period. Her friends and patrons included Anglo-American literary figures, women’s rights activists, wealthy Americans, British aristocracy, and European royalty. This study asks what, if anything, photography had to do with Harriet Hosmer’s rise to fame. Hosmer’s life and work have been subject to much scholarly commentary in recent decades, with several writers attempting to account for her unprecedented international renown as a female sculptor. None of these writers, however, has centred an investigation on photography’s intervention in Hosmer’s career. This study foregrounds the intersection of sculpture and photography as it relates to Hosmer’s rapid rise in the mid-nineteenth-century artistic firmament. A substantial part of the dissertation undertakes a careful analysis of photographs depicting Hosmer and her work, as well as related archival materials, highlighting the ways in which Hosmer joined forces with commercial photographers to engineer her career success. At the same time, it provides insight into practices of commercial photographers vis-a-vis their portrayals of sculptors and their work. The dissertation teases out a complex web of mid-nineteenth-century concerns that anticipate modern-day preoccupations, including self-fashioning, identity formation, gender roles, androgyny, tourism, the rise of celebrity culture, and the artist’s complicity with and battles against the contemporary press. Taken together, it seeks to complicate and enrich our understanding of Hosmer and her vital engagement with photography, leading to a fundamental reinterpretation of her career. Moreover, it aims to provide a model for future investigations into the complex, fascinating, and still little understood relationship between nineteenth-century sculpture and photography.%%%%PhD

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