Moses Jacob Ezekiel: Jewish, Confederate, Expatriate Sculptor

How is it that the prolific nineteenth-century sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel is largely forgotten today? Ezekiel was the first renowned Jewish American artist and one of the most popular artist-celebrities of his day. In terms of drama, his life story rivals Alexander Hamilton’s. Ezekiel fought for the Confederacy at the Battle of New Market as a teenager and was friends with Robert E. Lee. After the war, he established himself as an artist in Rome, where he was honored by European royalty and enjoyed friendships with the likes of Franz Liszt, Queen Margherita, and Kaiser Wilhelm II. Ezekiel created well over one hundred sculptures, but his hotly contested Confederate works have since obscured his other major accomplishments. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Moses Jacob Ezekiel resurrects this complicated artist’s life and work and presents the fascinating details of how his sculptures were commissioned and made. Samantha Baskind shows how Ezekiel’s sculptures shed light on a range of issues, including the modernization of American Jewry, radical changes in the art world concerning style and patronage, and Civil War commemoration. The conflicting allegiances that motivated Ezekiel’s statues—his conservative Confederate leanings alongside his liberal views on peace, Judaism, and religious liberty—make him an intriguing lens through which to understand nineteenth-century transatlantic culture and history. This compelling book provides a complete picture of Ezekiel’s oeuvre and his renowned home studio, which drew international visitors. It will appeal to readers interested in art history, Jewish studies, Civil War studies, American studies, and public monuments.

About the Author :
Samantha Baskind is Distinguished Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University. She is the author of six books, including The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture and Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America, both published by Penn State University Press.

Review :
“How do art historians write about problematic subjects? In Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Samantha Baskind offers a thoroughly researched and evenhanded account of a nineteenth-century celebrity artist whose statues and monuments are considered especially incendiary today. Rather than pigeonholing Ezekiel, Baskind skillfully grapples with the contradictions and consequences of artistic identity, then and now.” —Erika Doss, author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America and Spiritual Moderns: Twentieth-Century American Artists and Religion “Samantha Baskind’s long-awaited, richly illustrated volume critically illuminates major aspects of Moses Jacob Ezekiel’s career, deftly interprets his most important sculptures, uncovers little-recalled aspects of his oeuvre, and places his contested Confederate sculptures in historical context. . . . This splendid book explains why Ezekiel mattered to contemporaries and why he still matters today.” —Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History “A tour de force of archival research, Samantha Baskind's ambitious study engagingly illuminates Virginia sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel’s work and life.” —Leo G. Mazow, Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts “Samantha Baskind has crafted a compelling and revealing portrait of the working life of the sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s art comes to life as Baskind explains the motifs that animated his work, the milieus in which he lived and worked, and the unlikely background of this once renowned—but now largely forgotten—artist.” —Adam Mendelsohn, author of Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army “Amid current controversies about what constitutes history and can be taught, this fascinating study of a talented public sculptor raises concerns about what one man’s career can and must tell us about our own history and identity. Moses Ezekiel compels our interest for his accomplishments but also for his commitments as a Jew, Confederate, expatriate, and patriot, which, Samantha Baskind insightfully reveals, complicate attempts at censorship and promote a sense of American history as alive and present today.” —Larry Silver, author of Europe Views the World, 1500-1700