For long centuries women never seem to have attempted sculpture at all.... But in our time, things have changed. — Frances Power Cobbe, p. 86
Since 1880 Miss Henrietta Montalba has been a prominent exhibitor of busts which have attracted attention from their realism and delicate force. She works entirely in terra-cotta, a substance which does not demand from women so heroic a labor as the manipulation of marble. — Edmund Gosse, p.50
Montalba produced mainly portrait busts, for example, one in bronze of the Marquess of Lorne and one of Richard Burchett, headmaster of the South Kensington Schools, which is now in the Royal Academy.... Women sculptors at the end of the nineteenth century in Britain were still a rarity compared to men. — Jo Devereux, p. 140
Biographical Material
Works
- Swedish Peasant (engraving)
- Robert Browning (engraving)
- Venetian Boy Catching a Crab (engraving)
- Venetian Boy Catching a Crab (photographs)
- The Marquis of Lorne (engraving)
Bibliography
Barnes, Joanna, and Marjorie Trusted, eds. Discovering Women Sculptors. Watford: PSSA, 2023. Review]
Beattie, Susan. The New Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
Cobbe, Frances Power. "What Shall We Do with Our Old Maids?" Essays on the Pursuits of Women, reprinted from Fraser's and Macmillan's Magazine. London: Emily Faithfull, 1863. 58-101. Google Books. Free E-book.
Gosse, Edmund. "Living English Sculptors II." The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine Vol. 31 (November 1885): 39-50 (see p. 50).
Hepworth-Dixon, M. "Henrietta Montalba: A Reminiscence." The Art-Journal (new series 1894): 215-217. HathiTrust, from a copy in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 1 August 2024. [complete text in the Victorian Web]
"Mere Gossip." The Album: A Journal of Photographs of Men, Women, and Events of the Day. Volume 2 (January 1895): 162-67.
Nunn, Pamela Gerrish. "Montalba, Henrietta Skerrett (1856–1893), sculptor." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.. Web. 1 August 2024.
Last modified 1 October 2017