William Jennings Bryan
The Politician
William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois in 1860. Despite being born and educated in the state, Bryan relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1887 where he would become heavily involved with the state’s Democratic Party. He served in the House of Representatives and would go on to run two (unsuccessful) presidential campaigns against William McKinley in 1896 and 1900.
After his third presidential campaign against William Howard Taft in 1908, Bryan decided to instead support Woodrow Wilson’s campaign in 1912 and would consequently become Wilson’s secretary of state.
William Jennings Bryan also presented an interesting blend of religious fervor and political progressiveness. He supported women’s suffrage and believed in the rights of workers, farmers, and laborers alike. Simultaneously, however, Bryan led a campaign to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools.
The Artistic Subject
In the early 20th century, before Elisabet Ney’s death in 1907, William Jennings Bryan sat for a bust that later would be used in the home of William and Mary Bryan in Miami, Florida. After Bryan’s death, it is possible the bust fell into the possession of his daughter, Ruth Bryan. The plaster copy that Elisabet Ney created as the template for her marble bust, however, still rests inside the walls of the Elisabet Ney Museum, her Formosa, in Hyde Park.
Letters in the Archive
The archive contains a few documents related to Elisabet Ney and William Jennings Bryan, including a log of sittings for the politician's bust and a letter from Bryan's son to the Elisabet Ney Museum's first curator, Mrs. Willie B. Rutland.
