Brockhoff, Dorothy. “Harriet Hosmer: Nineteenth-Century Free Spirit.” Washington University Magazine
Annual Report Issue. (Fall, 1976), 37-38.
Facts about Hosmer’s life and work are compiled in this article written at the time of the Whitney Museum’s “200 years of American Sculpture” exhibition in which the Washington University Gallery’s Daphne was shown.
Cikovsky, Jr., Nicolai, Marie H. Morrison and Carol Ockman. The White Marmorean Flock. With an introduction by William H. Gerdts, Jr. Vassar College Art Gallery, 1972.
This catalog accompanied an exhibition from April 4-30, 1972, of the work of nineteenth-century American women neoclassical sculptors. The title of the exhibition is taken from Henry James’s description of the group of American expatriate women artists in Rome in his book William Wetmore Story and his Friends, 1903.
Comini, Alessandra. “Who Ever Heard of a Woman Sculptor? Harriet Hosmer, Elisabet Ney, and the Nineteenth-Century Dialogue with the Three-Dimensional,” 17-25. In Eleanor Tufts. American Women artists: 1830-1930. With introductory essays by Gail Levin, Alessandra Comini and Wanda M. Corn. Washington D.C.: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1987.
This discussion of Hosmer and Ney examines how the careers of these two contemporaneous women sculptors developed similarly and differently.
Gerdts, William H. American Neo-Classic Sculpture: The Marble Resurrection. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
Gerdts examines the phenomena of American neoclassical sculpture through the lives, works, and patronage of the American expatriate neoclassical sculptors in Rome. Hosmer is one of the major artists highlighted in this text.
Hosmer, Harriet. Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories. Edited by Cornelia Crow Carr. New York: Moffat Yard and Company, 1912.
This is an excellent primary source containing letters from Hosmer’s correspondence and biographical commentary by Cornelia Crow Carr. Most of the letters are written to either Cornelia Crow Carr, Hosmer’s friend and the daughter of Wayman Crow, or to Wayman Crow himself. Wayman Crow was one of the most prominent patrons of the arts in St. Louis in the mid-nineteenth century and was the founder of Washington University. He played a significant role in the development of Hosmer’s career as a sculptor by commissioning several of her most important works.
Hosmer, Harriet. “The Process of Sculpture.” Atlantic Monthly 14, no. 86. (December, 1864), 734-737.
Hosmer explains step-by-step the sculptural process used by most marble sculptors in large studios in order to refute claims that she did not do her own work.
Kasson, Joy S. Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990.
Kasson examines issues of gender and power in the public personae and artwork of nineteenth-century women sculptors. Chapter six, “The Problematics of Female Power: Zenobia” focuses on Hosmer and the dichotomy of power and victimization represented in her works of ideal and mythical women.
Ketner, Joseph D. and Jane E. Neidhart. A Gallery of Modern Art: at Washington University in St. Louis. St. Louis, MO: Washington University of Art, 1994.
Includes an extensive essay on Hosmer’s Oenone, complete with important biographical facts.
McCue, George. Sculpture City St. Louis: Public Sculpture in the Gateway to the West. Photographs by David Finn and Amy Binder. New York: Hudson Hills Press. In association with Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, 1988.
This text is organized to explain the cultural legacy of public sculpture in the city. A section is devoted to a discussion of the role Wayman Crow played as patron of the arts in St. Louis. A brief biography of Hosmer is included, and three of her works are represented: the sculpture of Thomas Hart Benton, Beatrice Cenci, and the portrait bust of Wayman Crow.
Parrott, Sara Foose. “Expatriates and Professionals: The Careers in Italy of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and Artists.” Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 1988.
Parrott examines the careers of twenty American women writers and artists (including Hosmer) born between 1810 and 1850 who lived in expatriation in Italy in order to advance their careers. In particular, she explores how these women capitalized on two imaginative structures, one of which “attributed special significance to women as improvisatrici, cultural interpreters and redeemers.” The other myth positioned American women as emblems of the American ingénue.
Prieto, Laura R. At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in
America. Cambridge, Mass. And London, England: Harvard University Press,
2001.
In her investigation of how American women artists in the nineteenth century built their professional careers, Prieto writes that artists such as Harriet Hosmer, “…used gendered ideology to position themselves as professionals who could fulfill the ideal purpose of art: to uplift and morally transform the viewer, a task for which it was thought their ‘moral’ female natures gave them an affinity.” (page 42) Prieto also explores how women artists such as Hosmer used “gendered ideologies” in building relationships with male patrons (in Hosmer’s case, the father-figure Wayman Crow), and in operating within female, familial-style networks to garner popular support for their work.
Sherwood, Dolly. Harriet Hosmer: American Sculptor 1830-1908. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.
This biography of Hosmer provides detailed accounts of her significant works, along with information about the people and events that helped shape her career.
Tufts, Eleanor. American Women Artists: 1830-1930. With introductory essays by Gail Levin, Alessandra Comini and Wanda M. Corn. Washington D.C.: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1987.
This exhibition catalog includes extensive entries for the four Hosmer pieces included in the exhibition: Clasped Hands of Elizabeth and Robert Browning, 1853, Puck, 1856, Zenobia in Chains, 1859, and Sleeping Faun, 1865.
