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An acclaimed sculptor in his day, Moses Jacob Ezekiel was born in Richmond, Virginia, 8 October 1844. In 1862, Ezekiel became the first Jew to enter the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. As a cadet, he fought in the Battle of New Market on 15 May 1864. He graduated from VMI in 1866 and returned to Richmond where his family struggled to make ends meet in postwar Richmond. Ezekiel worked in his father's shop while studying anatomy at the Medical College of Virginia to better his skills as a draftsman. In 1868, Moses joined his family in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ezekiel soon abandoned his idea of becoming a painter and began his study of sculpture under Thomas Dow Jones. His first work, "Industry", depicted a young girl (his younger sister Sally) knitting a pair of socks and studying her lesson. In May 1869, Ezekiel went to Berlin where he entered the Royal Academy and began to study under sculptor Rudolf Siemering. In 1873, Ezekiel became the first foreigner to win the Michel Beer Prize, which funded two-years' study in Rome. He received his first major commission from the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith in 1874. The resulting sculpture, "Religious Liberty", was displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. Soon after, Ezekiel accepted a commission for a series of statues honoring famous artists for the facade of the original Corcoran Gallery (now the Renwick Gallery) in Washington, D.C.
Moses made his home in Rome. His studio in the Baths of Diocletian was a meeting place for the literati of Rome for more than thirty years. His works included portrait busts, religious statues, funerary sculpture, and monumental statues. Among his public commissions were a statue of Christopher Columbus for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892); a statue of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise for Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (1899), and "Southern" for the Confederate cemetery at Johnson's Island on Lake Erie (1910). "Virginia Mourning Her Dead", begun in the studio of Professor Albert Wolff during Ezekiel's study in Berlin, was dedicated in 1903 to the VMI cadets who died in the Battle of New Market. In 1912, "New South", commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery. His last commission was his seated Edgar Allan Poe for Wyman Park in Baltimore (1915).
Ezekiel received the Cavalier's Golden Cross of the House of Hohenzollern from Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany, in 1893. In 1906, King Victor Emmanuel II gave Ezekiel the honorary title of Cavaliere Ufficiale della corona d'Italia. Ezekiel died in Rome on 27 March 1917; his body was reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery on 30 March 1921.
Ezekiel's monumental bronze sculpture of Thomas Jefferson, commissioned in 1899 by Isaac and Bernard Bernheim, of Louisville, Kentucky, was unveiled at the Jefferson County courthouse on 10 November 1901. Unlike other sculptors whose statues showed an older Jefferson, Ezekiel modeled his Jefferson as a young man of thirty-three, the age when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
There are three replicas of the Kentucky statue. A small one was given to the Virginia Military Institute in 1901. Ezekiel presented another small replica to either Rosewell Page or his brother Thomas Nelson Page before 1910. Ezekiel wrote in his memoirs that Thomas Nelson Page saw the life-size model of the monument in the studio and told Ezekiel that it should go to the University of Virginia in 1910 through funds donated by Page, Joseph Bryan (whose gift was made in memory of a Jewish friend), and others, some of whom were not alumni. The Library of Virginia receive this replica from Mr. and Mrs. Rosewell page in 1924.
Considered to be one of Ezekiel's most successful statues, the composition features Jefferson standing on a replica of Philadelphia's Liberty Bell. Use of the Liberty Bell as a base was a novel idea that Ezekiel had planned to use in his Religious Liberty monument of 1876 but later abandoned. Jefferson holds the Declaration of Independence as he prepares to read it to the Continental Congress. Around the base of the bell are four winged female figures representing the Jeffersonian ideas of Brotherhood, Justice, Equality, and Liberty. The figure of Brotherhood holds a scroll referring to Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom, passed in 1786. Ezekiel explained in a letter that he had included the names of deities of all nations, such as Brahma, Atma, Ra, Allah, and Zeus, to show that under the American government, all the names "are all God -- and have no other meaning and have each an equal right and the protection of our just laws as Americans." Justice is blindfolded; originally she held a sword in her left hand and a balance in her right. Equality tears up the laws of primogeniture and stands on those laws Jefferson listed as grievances with King George III and the British Parliament. Liberty thrusts her arms back and breaks the chain of bondage; like Justice, she also originally held a sword in her left hand. |