This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  A female sculptor able to support herself with her allegorical figure work, Evelyn Longman was highly prolific and did numerous commissions for monuments, memorials, public buildings, and expositions. She was the first woman sculptor elected a full member of the National Academy of Design*.
She was born in a log cabin on a farm near Winchester, Ohio, one of six children, and had to pay for her own art education. She worked during the days at a wholesaler in Chicago and took night classes at the Chicago Art Institute* where she graduated with top honors.
She then had teaching positions and worked with noted sculptors Isodore Konti, Herman MacNeil, and Lorado Taft. Her work caught the attention of Daniel Chester French, sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, and she became his only female assistant while continuing to do her own pieces. Victory, an allegorical figure, was her biggest success, and it was installed in Festival Hall in St. Louis for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904* where it won a silver metal. A replica is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
She continued to get many important commissions including bronze doors at Wellesley College and the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. She was the only sculptor for whom Thomas Edison, inventor of the telegraph, agreed to sit.
In 1920, she married Nathaniel Horton Batchelder, and they moved to Windsor, Connecticut, where he was headmaster of Loomis School. She continued to sculpt after her marriage and died in 1954 at age eighty on Cape Cod.
Source:
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Artists
* For
more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary
http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx
| |
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  The following information is from Cheryl Schaab
Subject: News article on Evelyn Longman by Don Mahoney
Comments: Source: UPI article in The Arizona Republic dated 10/16/83:
"Golden Boy gets new home in skyscraper"
A
landmark statue, dubbed Golden Boy and believed to be the second
largest architectural figure in New York City, was unveiled Sept. 27 in
its restored form in the lobby of the new American Telephone and
Telegraph headquarters.
The 24-foot-high statue, officially
named The Spirit of Communication but nicknamed Golden Boy, was
placed in 1916 atop the old AT&T headquarters and removed for
cleaning and renovation in 1980. The winged male figure, poised upon a
globe with its arm catching lightning bolts, was created by Evelyn
Beatrice Longman, and symbolized the company on telephone directories.
The 16-ton work of art is the second largest single architectural
figure in the city, topped only by the Statue of Liberty which stands
151 feet from heel to torch, said company spokesman.
Golden Boy's new home is a 21-foot, black, Swedish-granite base in the lobby of the skyscraper.... |
Biography from Butler Institute of American Art:
| (Mary) Evelyn Beatrice Longman was born at Winchester, Ohio, on November 21st 1874. After a hard struggle to earn enough money for an education, she entered Olivet College, where she discovered her true vocation. Two years in Lorado Taft's classes at the Art Institute of Chicago* laid the foundations of her career.
In 1900, she went to New York where she worked with Herman MacNeil and Isodore Konti, and became an assistant to Daniel Chester French in 1901. In 1904, Victory for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904*, which in statuette form has been adopted as a trophy for the Atlantic Fleet, marked her appearance as an independent sculptor. Two years later came a visit to Italy and an honorary degree from Olivet College. She won the contract for doors for the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, and this honor was followed by another for doors at Wellesley College Library.
For the Panama-Pacific Exposition*, in collaboration with the architect Henry Bacon, she designed the Fountain of Ceres. About that time she began to model the ideal figures, which are among her most personal creations. Consecration, and The Future, won for her the Julia A. Shaw Prize* at the National Academy of Design* in 1918.
She repeated her early success with Victory in the male figure, Electricity, surmounting the American Telephone and Telegraph Building in New York.
On June 28th, 1920, Evelyn Longman married Nathaniel Horton Batchelder, head master of the Loomis Institute, Windsor, Connecticut, where she has since had her studio. Throughout her busy life she has done many public and private memorials and portrait busts*, including that of the painter Ivan Olinsky, which won the Julia A. Shaw Prize in 1926.
She was the first woman sculptor elected to full membership in the National Academy of Design.
* For
more in-depth information about these terms and others, see AskART.com Glossary
http://www.askart.com/AskART/lists/Art_Definition.aspx
| Source:
From a Brookgreen Gardens pamphlet
"Sculpture by Evelyn Beatrice Longman" published by them in 1937.
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Evelyn Longman is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exhibition 1915
|
|
|