National Register Listing

Ney, Elisabet, Studio and Museum

a.k.a. Formosa

304 E. 44th St., Austin, TX

The sculptress Elisabet Ney (b. Munster, Germany, 1833, d. Austin, Texas, 1907) designed the building as a sculptor's studio and supervised its construction in 1892, at which time she was beginning to receive substantial commissions in Austin.

Although the artist more than doubled the building's size by adding a half story and tower in 1902, the studio portion remains intact and could, even today, serve its original purpose. (The entire building remains essentially as it was in the artist's lifetime and the same is true of its setting.)

Having become a United States citizen in 1884, Elisabet Ney's status as an outstanding European artist (court sculptor to Ludwig II of Bavaria and also recipient of numerous Prussian and Hanoverian state commissions) gradually became known in Texas where she and her husband. Dr. Edmund Montgomery, had purchased the plantation, "Liendo", a National Register property, near Hempstead, in 1873. Virtually all her productive life as an American artist transpired at the Austin studio which she called "Formosa" after a villa she once occupied in Madera.

The Building of the Austin studio was part of an under-taking by which she eventually attracted notice at the national level. Her career in Austin began with her com-mission by the Committee for the Texas Pavillion in 1892 to execute statues of Stephen F. Austin and of Sam Houston for the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Those two works were the first from the Austin studio, and in 1905 they were permanently placed in Statuary Hall of the National Capitol/ A duplicate pair cut under the artist's supervision were placed in the state capitol. A substantial body of works was produced in the meantime, all from the Austin studio where the artist worked until her death. Her first Texas commission had been an American counterpart of her two earlier works shown in the Prussian exhibit at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, busts of Bismark and Garibaldi. A chronology of the artist's works, European and American reveals that the latter half were created at "Formosa". Most notable of all, a "Lady Macbeth" on permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian collection, has received substantial scholarly and critical commendation.

The studio is well-known and has long been associated with the artist. The building was mentioned in Lorado Taft's History of American Sculpture in 1903, and it served as a nucleus in 1911 for gatherings and organizational activities leading to the founding of the Texas Fine Arts Association. In its charter that group defined as one of its objectives "the preservation of the memory and the art collection of Elisabet Ney." The building has been a museum since 1909 and belongs to the city of Austin whereas the collection, though permanently housed at the studio, actually is the property of the University of Texas. Elisabet Ney's often-expressed desire and sense of mission to foster the fine arts in Texas, where the state university had no art department in her lifetime, has, to a significant extent, been carried forward in the building which was her studio. She left no will, but her widower and friends made possible the preservation and eventually the public custodianship of the grounds, the building, and the collection of her works.

It is evident that the studio represents standard European norms and practices in its makeup and facilities. Its design by the artist no doubt reflects her formative experience of the European half of her career. That she was able to bring about the construction of such a facility without an architect's assistance in a place where there had been no precedent for it was indeed a pioneering accomplishment. Its lasting effects are evidenced by the respect in which the establishment has always been held and by the survival and success of the Texas Fine Arts Association which traces its origins to the example and influence of Elisabet Ney. Legends grew up about her long before her death, and their survival as local folklore add to the significance of the building.

Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1968.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1972.