Hosmer, Harriet

Harriet (1830-), an American sculptor. She was born in Watertown, Massachusetts. She showed skill in modeling in clay at an early age, and for that reason was given a course in anatomy at a St. Louis medical college. Her first work was a reduced copy of Canova's Napoleon. In 1852 Miss Hosmer studied in Rome under John Gibson, the English sculptor. Her most important works are Puck; Oenone, a life sized figure; ideal heads of Daphne and Medusa; statues of Beatrice Cenci, Zenobia, Lincoln, and Benton; the Sleeping Faun and the Waking Faun.