About ten minutes north of downtown Austin, in historic Hyde Park, stands the castle-like Elisabet Ney Museum. The Museum holds a surprising treasure of portraits of some of the most famous 19th-century European intellectuals, statesmen, and artists, not to mention two kings, as well as portraits of a veritable who’s who of turn-of-the-century Texans.

Built in 1892, the Museum is the former Texas studio of European portrait sculptor Elisabet Ney (1833–1907). Portraits in the collection include 19th-century notables Arthur Schopenhauer, Jacob Grimm, Otto von Bismarck, and King Ludwig II of Bavaria, rendered by Ney during her European career (1855–1870). Also displayed are Ney’s portraits of famous Texans, created during the sculptor’s last years in Austin. These works include posthumous full-length portrayals of Texas heroes Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, together with her portraits from life of Texas governors, senators, educators, and dear friends.

For those interested in architecture, the 102-year-old building is an interesting combination of classical and romantic elements, utilizing natural materials. There is even
a crenellated tower with a hidden door.

Ney’s works are also in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the United States and Texas state capitols, the Texas Governor’s Office, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Her works are included in the holdings of European museums, universities, and royal palaces.

The Elisabet Ney Museum offers a particularly personal context within which to appreciate Ney’s works, because they are displayed, together with the sculptor’s personal belongings and mementos, in the studio she designed and built for herself on the Texas frontier. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of visiting the Museum is the opportunity it provides for insights into Elisabet Ney’s life that was, in many ways, lived as a work of art itself, in both traditional and unconventional ways. The Museum, like the better artists’ museums, does not “just honor the dead, [it] coaxes a vanished world back to life,” says New York Times art critic Deborah Solomon.

Born in 1833 and raised in a devout Catholic family, Ney defied family expectations and entered art school to become a celebrated sculptor known on two continents in her day. She married physician-scientist Edmund Montgomery, and they immigrated from Germany to America in 1870. Their union lasted for more than 40 years and produced two sons, one of whom they lost to diphtheria. After arriving in Texas, she put sculpting aside and spent the following 20 years raising her remaining son and working their ranch in Hempstead. At the age of 59, she resumed her career in Austin, sculpting until her death in 1907.

During her years in Austin, Ney helped encourage an awareness and appreciation of the arts in the frontier capital, when Congress Avenue was a dirt road and the population numbered 15,000. Her studio, which she called Formosa (beautiful), with a stream, lake, and stable, was located on what was then the edge of Austin. It became the setting of legendary gatherings that attracted young men and women, drawn both to the celebrated “Miss Ney,” confidante of European intellectuals and royalty, and to the discussions of art, politics, and philosophy that took place on the grounds of the studio.

Inspired by Ney’s “revolutionary” idea that art and beauty can be powerful forces in shaping a state as well as a nation, these young Texans would found the Texas Fine Arts Association (now Arthouse), The University of Texas Art Department, and the Texas Commission on the Arts, as well as the Elisabet Ney Museum, all institutions supporting the arts in Texas that continue to this day.

The Elisabet Ney Museum is a National Historic Landmark and a National Trust Associate Site. It is one of only five 19th-century sculptors’ studios in the country to be preserved and opened to the public, and the only studio-museum of a 19th-century professional woman sculptor working in America. The Museum has recently been designated an Official Project of the Save America’s Treasures program, which is supporting a comprehensive restoration and preservation of Elisabet Ney’s former studio.

The Elisabet Ney Museum offers lectures, guided tours, and exhibits throughout the year. It is open to the public Wednesday–Saturday 10–5, and Sunday noon–5. Admission is free. The Museum is located at 304 East 44th Street in Hyde Park. For further information, please call 512-458-2255. The Web site is www.ci.austin.tx.us/elisabetney.

Solomon, Deborah. “For Individual Artists, Museums All Their Own.” New York Times, March 28, 1999, Art/Architecture section.

Thanks to Elisabet Ney Museum for the article.