Mrs. Rose as a Child

The idealized profile and bust format of this delicately carved portrait medallion recall the influence of neoclassical art, which the Munich-born sculptor Elisabet Ney absorbed in Europe during a highly successful international career. Ney had already sculpted portraits of folklorist Jacob Grimm and King Ludwig II of Bavaria before she and her Scottish-born husband immigrated first to Georgia and then to Waller County in Texas in 1872. One of the first professionally trained artists to work in the state, Ney became a leading figure in late 19th-century Texas art and civic life. Her life-size statues of Sam Houston and Stephen Austin still stand in the State Capitol in Austin.