Moses Jacob Ezekiel (b. in Richmond, Va., 1844), the sculptor, now residing at Rome, is probably the greatest Jewish artist that this country has produced. He was educated at the Virginia Military Institute, from which, after serving as a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, he graduated in 1866. He then studied anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia, and in 1868 removed to Cincinnati, going from there a year later to Berlin, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Art. He was admitted to membership in the Berlin Society of Artists for his colossal bust of Washington, which is now in the Cincinnati Art Museum, and he was the first foreigner to win the Michael Beer prize. During a visit to America in 1874 he executed in marble the group representing “Religious Liberty”—the tribute of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith to the centennial celebration of American independence. The statue was unveiled in 1876 in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia (see the frontispiece). Upon his return to Rome Ezekiel leased a portion of the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian (Emperor of Rome, 284–305) and transformed them into one of the most beautiful studios in Europe. He has been elected a member of various academies and received other distinctions. Among his best known productions are: busts of Eve, Homer, David, Judith and Liszt; the Fountain of Neptune, for the town of Neptune, Italy; the Jefferson Monument, for Louisville, Ky.; Virginia Mourning Her Dead, at Lexington, Va., and a dozen heroic statues (of Phidias, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Rembrandt, etc.), which are placed in the niches of the Corcoran Art Gallery at Washington.
Ephraim Keyser (b. in Baltimore, Md., 1850) is another prominent Jewish-American sculptor. He was educated at the public schools and the City College of Baltimore, and later studied at the Royal Academies of Fine Art in Munich and Berlin. He maintained a studio in Rome from 1880 to 1886, lived in New York from 1887 to 1893, when he settled in his native city as instructor in modelling at the Maryland Institute Art School, and also (since 1902) at the Rhinehart School for Sculpture. Among his best known works are the statue of Major-General Baron De Kalb, erected by the United States Government at Annapolis, Md., the tomb of President Chester A. Arthur at the Rural Cemetery, Albany, N. Y., and portrait busts of well known men.
Isidore Konti (b. in Vienna, 1862; a. 1890) executed the most important of his works after he came to the United States. He did much decorative, monumental and ideal work for the Chicago Exposition in 1893, for the Dewey Arch, the Buffalo Exposition of 1901 and the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, having made for the latter more than twenty different groups. Among his other works are a marble fountain at Yonkers, N. Y., where he resides, and a group representing South America for the building of the International Bureau of American Republics in Washington. Konti received numerous medals for his work here and abroad, and is a member of various societies of artists, numismatists, etc.
Victor David Brenner (b. in Shavly, Russia, 1871; a. 1890), the medallist and sculptor, is now best known to the general public as the designer of the “Lincoln penny.” He received awards from the Exposition and the Salon in Paris, 1900; from the Buffalo Exposition of 1901 and the World’s Fair of St. Louis in 1904. He has works in the Paris Mint, Munich Glyptothek, Vienna Numismatic Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Julius Butensky (b. in Novogrudek, Russia; a. 1905) is another sculptor and medallist of the younger generation who did his best work since he came to this country, of which the best known is the statue at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York representing “The Beating of Swords Into Plowshares”; and a medal presented to Henry Rice (b. in Germany, 1835) on his retiring from the presidency of the United Hebrew Charities of New York. Joseph Davidson, also a native of Russia, who came here as a child and developed his talent in New York, is one of the youngest sculptors whose work has attracted favorable attention.
Henry Mosler (b. in New York, 1841), the genre painter, occupies a prominent position among American artists. He was taken to Cincinnati when a child, and began to study art there at the age of ten. In 1863 he went to Europe, where he continued his study of art, first in Dueseldorf and later in Paris. He came back to Cincinnati in 1866, but returned to Europe in 1874, and spent the following twenty years in Munich and Paris. A picture which he exhibited in the latter city in 1879 was afterwards purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg gallery, being the first work so purchased from an American artist.
Constant Mayer (b. in Besancon, France, 1832), the French painter, who arrived in the United States in 1857 and lived here more than a generation before he returned to his native country, was among the best known artists of his time here. Herman Naphtali Hyneman (b. in Philadelphia, 1849), who studied for eight years in Germany and France, and George D. M. Peixotto (b. in Cleveland, O., 1857), eldest son of Benjamin F. Peixotto, are recognized as masters among American portrait painters, the latter also having done notable work as a mural decorator. Other well-known Jewish artists are: Max Rosenthal (b. in Turek, Russian-Poland, 1833; a. 1849), who was artist for the Government during the Civil War, making illustrations for reports of the United States Military Commission, and who afterwards etched many historical portraits and painted a considerable number of pictures; Albert Rosenthal (b. in Philadelphia, 1863), widely known as etcher and painter of portraits of famous Americans, his son and pupil; Max Weyl (b. in Germany, 1837; a. 1855), best known as a landscape painter, and Toby Edward Rosenthal (b. in New Haven, Conn., 1848), who won medals in Europe and America, a genre and portrait painter, who resides in Munich, Bavaria; Louis Loeb (b. in Cleveland, O., 1866; d. in New York, 1909), a painter and illustrator; Miss Katherine M. Cohen (b. in Philadelphia, 1859), a well-known sculptor and painter.
Among the caricaturists or cartoonists of the day deserve to be mentioned Frederick Burr Opper (b. in Madison, O., 1857); Henry (Hy) Mayer (b. in Worms, Germany, 1868; a. 1886) and Reuben Lucius Goldberg (b. in San Francisco, 1883).
The number of Jews who achieved distinction as musicians, composers of music, musical directors, etc., is very large, and only a few of them can be mentioned here. Dr. Leopold Damrosch (b. in Prussia, 1832; d. in New York, 1885) came to New York in 1871 as conductor of the Arion Society, and soon became very successful, both as a violinist and as conductor of his own compositions. He was successively director of the Philharmonic Society, of the Symphony Society and of the Metropolitan Opera House of New York. His older son, Frank H. (b. in Breslau, Germany, 1859), who was director of music of the New York public schools for eight years, is (since 1905) at the head of the Institute of Musical Art in that city, which was founded by a bequest made for that purpose by the late Solomon Loeb. A second son, Walter Johannes Damrosch (b. in Breslau), the composer and director, married Margaret J. Blaine, the daughter of the great American statesman, James G. Blaine, who was a candidate for the presidency in 1884. A daughter of Dr. Damrosch is married to David Mannes, the director of the New York Music School Settlement.
Among the eminent Jewish musicians who frequently visit the United States are the pianist, Joseph Gabrilowitsch, a native of Russia, who married the only surviving daughter of the great American humorist, Samuel L. Clemens (1835–1910, better known as “Mark Twain”), Joseph Hoffman, and Mischa Ellman, the violinist, likewise a native of Russia.