Emil Fuchs

Fuchs, Emil

(b Vienna, 9 Aug 1866; d New York, 13 Jan 1929).

Austrian sculptor, medallist and painter. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, and at the Berlin Akademie. He travelled to Rome before settling in London in 1897, exhibiting at the Royal Academy the following year. His sculptural oeuvre consists of large groups, portrait busts, statuettes and memorials in marble, bronze and silver. The bronze statue La pensierosa (New York, Met.) is a good example of his contemplative style, and the marble Mother-love (exh. London, RA, 1898; untraced, see autobiography, opp. p. 28) of his liking for melodramatic allegory; his memorials include The Sisters (marble; Liverpool, Walker A.G.). His paintings are mostly portraits, in a flashy style that owes much to his friend John Singer Sargent (e.g. Sir Joseph Duveen, 1903; London, Tate). Both his painted and sculpted portraits were immensely fashionable in Britain at the turn of the century, and he was taken up by the royal family, modelling a number of medals that were struck for Queen Victoria, portraying Princess Alexandra as the Princess of Pity (silver, 1900; London, BM) and executing a coronation medal for Edward VII (silver and bronze, 1902). He brought to the British medal the soft-edged decorative style then popular in Austria, to which he always remained faithful. He designed the postage stamps of Edward VII, but after World War I he moved to New York, where he continued working until his suicide.

Writings

With Pencil, Brush and Chisel: The Life of an Artist (New York, 1925) [autobiography]

Bibliography

Forrer; Thieme–Becker

M. Jones: ‘Emil Fuchs in England’, Medal, vi (1985), pp. 23–9 ( OPENURL )

The Beaux-Arts Medal in America (exh. cat. by B. A. Baxter, New York, Amer. Numi. Soc., 1988) ( OPENURL )

P. Attwood: Artistic Circles: The Medal in Britain, 1880–1918 (London, 1992), pp. 44, 47–8 ( OPENURL )

S. Miller: ‘The Medallic Work of Emil Fuchs’, The Medal in America, ed. A. M. Stahl (New York, 1999), ii, pp. 177–233 ( OPENURL )

Philip Attwood. "Fuchs, Emil." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .