Katherine M. Cohen, 1859 – 1914

Katherine M. Cohen was born in Philadelphia on March 18, 1859 to Jewish parents of English descent. Her father, Henry Cohen of London, manufactured stationery, and his thriving business allowed him to provide an upper-middle-class life for his wife and five children. Not only were Katherine and her siblings afforded ample educational resources, but they were also able to pursue careers in the arts. In her adolescence, Katherine was educated by a private tutor and at the Chestnut Street Seminary. She then studied at the School of Design for Women with Peter Moran, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Thomas Eakins, at the School of Industrial Art with John J. Boyle, and at the Art Students League in New York with Augustus Saint-Gaudens. All the while, she remained active in her local religious community, chairing the Congregation Mikveh Israel choir in 1879. Cohen cultivated her skills in media as diverse as china painting, watercolors, and design, but she eventually decided to pursue sculpture as her primary form of expression. Cohen opened her studio in Philadelphia in 1884. Soon after, she illustrated “A Jewish Child’s Book” for kindergartners, which was published by the Jewish Publication Society. It was one of the first Jewish children’s books to be printed in color in the United States. 

In 1887, Cohen sailed to Paris to train with sculptors Antonin Mercié, Denys Puech, and Frederick William MacMonnies. Cohen was able to cultivate a thriving career both in the United States and in Europe. In 1893, she exhibited a bas-relief plaster portrait of Mademoiselle Katherine Lemcke at the Salon des Artistes français in Paris and also spoke at the Women’s Pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Her lecture, “Life of Artists,” reveals how Cohen romanticized the bohemian Parisian life, which was justified by and for art. In a published record of the speech, she states: 

In Paris, to be an art student is to have but one aim and one purpose – to do good work and use your time to the best advantage... You will rise at half-past six on Monday morning, and breakfast at seven, so that you may be at the great school belonging to Julian or Colarossi or Delacluse [sic] before eight and so get your choice of a seat for the week, late comers having to take what is left. At twelve, having worked four hours from the living model, you will go to a queer little restaurant, the outside of which gives you a shudder, but which serves you a fairly good meal, and where you meet the other students. You will spend the afternoon either in painting or modeling in your own studio or in going to the Louvre or Luxembourg galleries; or, if it is spring, at the salons, and you can either take your work to a great artist and get his criticism upon it, or, if it is sculpture, he will come to your little studio, and glorify it with his presence, and say enough in ten minutes to make you wish you had ten pairs of hands and five heads, as one set is not nearly enough for you. In the summer you will go with other students into Brittany or Holland, or where you will, and study outdoors – by the sea or in the country – and have wonderful adventures (Cohen 428-429).

Cohen even references the American Girls’ Art Club, where she stayed for an unspecified period of time during her extended sojourn in Paris. She attributes the growth of the institution to Mr. and Mrs. Newell as well as Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, then describes the environment, explaining that “there is a reading-room and a piano, French classes and afternoon tea, a good light and fire, all immensely appreciated by many students who cheerfully do without such luxuries in their own rooms that they may have money to pay for their instruction” (430). 

Perhaps spurred on by her recent acceptance to the heralded competition, Cohen asserts that the Salon dominates the dreams of the “many thousand art students of Paris…” and goes on to detail the nerve-wracking process of submitting and awaiting the final decision (Cohen 430). She ends her extended narrative with a call-to-action to nurture the American art scene, arguing that “if we encourage our boys and girls to cultivate their artistic tastes instead of scoffing at them as impractical and never likely to make them rich,” then American artists will finally stay home to study, “just as the French have done” (Cohen 430). 

Cohen continued to achieve professional success throughout the 1890s. In 1895, she exhibited “A Western Maiden,” at the fourth annual American Woman’s Art Association (AWAA) exhibition, the replica of a pre-existing work that was subsequently praised by The New York Herald (December 7, 1895, 4). The following year, her sculpture “The Israelite” was accepted to the Salon des Artistes français. When she moved back to the United States in 1897, she exhibited the same sculpture at that year’s Philadelphia Salon. In an article published in The American Jewess soon after the exhibition opening, “The Israelite” is described as the “typical, true Jew, the face of a thinker and a martyr, backed by strength, determination and faith” (52). The author claims that the sculpture would “undoubtedly find a high place in art if its temporary plaster were changed into everlasting marble.” Cohen’s busy exhibition schedule persisted, with showings at the National Sculpture Society in New York City in 1898 and the Art Club of Philadelphia in 1899. 

Cohen also succeeded at commissions and competitions. After responding to an open call in 1897, she was chosen to complete a portion of the Smith Memorial Arch, a monument celebrating Pennsylvania’s naval and military heroes of the Civil War. She created the statue of General James A. Beaver which still stands today at the gateway to West Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. In 1898, Cohen chiseled two bas-relief sculptures to illustrate Henry Berkowitz’s book “Kiddush; or, Sabbath sentiment in the home.” Her pieces are printed on two full pages at the start of the text. Although the exact execution dates of the following works have been lost, she also designed the seal for Gratz College, created busts of prominent Jewish Philadelphians like Judge Mayer Sulzberger, and carved a series of bas-reliefs for the Union Haggadah.

In 1903, Cohen moved back to Europe. This time, she studied under Friedrich Beer in Florence. Never one to miss out on an opportunity to show her work, she traveled to Paris in the same year and exhibited two small busts in the AWAA annual exhibition at 4 rue de Chevreuse. 

Little is known about Cohen’s later life. She returned to Philadelphia at some point after 1903 and is recorded as a vehement opponent of Futurism and Cubism, having described the movements’ abstract styles as “some sort of horrible distorted fish” (Gutmann 48).  

Katherine M. Cohen died in her home city in 1914 at the age of 55.