WOMAN IN ART
matter, Governor Roberts called her from her retirement to visit him at the mansion for a consultation about plans for the state capitol about to be erected. One result of her visit was that she built her studio in Hyde Park and immediately began to interest such congenial minds as she could find among the men and women of Austin in a project for establishing a School of Liberal Arts in conjunction with the State University. The plan was heartily endorsed and put into effect, and instruction given in decorative and domestic arts as well as the finer arts, including the leading features of Pratt Institute of Brooklyn and Drexel Institute of Philadelphia."
The pioneer who founded Austin soon stood life-size in marble in the new studio, and of it some said, "You could say that even the ancestors of the artist must have been Texans to enable her to realize so perfectly in stone the true idea of the first Texan." While studying the work one was heard to say, "I do not ask, I do not care whether this is how Austin looked, I only know this is how he should have looked, for it is the perfect realization of the Austin whom history portrays."
The same may be said of the other great Texan, Sam Houston. An array of governors and generals of our South and West now add historic and art value to the state, because of the vital interest and genius of Elizabet Ney-Montgomery.
The artist was indeed feminine, and on a date not given had married a remarkably fine-looking husband, but her art claimed her own name. The fact that Dr. Edmond Montgomery was educated in Germany may have brought them together, but the real romance of their lives does not appear in the recital of Elizabet Ney's art. Of their two sons, the first died in infancy, the second lives in Texas.
Her last work—left unfinished—was Lady Macbeth, of which Mr. Lorado Taft has said, "It is one of the most expressive and eminently sculptural conceptions among recent American ideals." Mr. Taft has also conceded that "her sketches and compositions are admirable, so are her virile yet simply-handled heads of the forceful sons of Texas. Her work is full of life in expression—an easy mastery of form which is unknown to the majority of sculptors."
Her marbles of Austin and Houston are in Statuary Hall in Washington, D. C.
The artist died in her home June 25, 1907 (born in 1834). She was one of the greatest sculptors of modern times.
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