Part of the American History & Genealogy Project

Eva McDonald Valesh 1866 ~ 1954

Eva McDonald Valesh

Has recently come into prominence through the execution of work for Wellesley College. She has already done some of the handsomest bronze work in this country. Her work for Wellesley is a set of bronze doors and transoms for the Wellesley Library Building, in memory of the late Professor Eben Norton Horsford, who died in 1893.

Miss Longman's education was acquired entirely in America, chiefly at the Chicago Art Institute. Most of her works have been portrait busts and works of a similar nature. Three years ago, however, she made her first bronze doors, and the circumstances surrounding her first selection for her first commission, placed her at once as the most successful young woman worker in bronze in America.

This commission, she received through competition held for a pair of bronze doors and a transom for the entrance to the chapel at the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis. It was open to all American sculptors and conducted under the auspices of the National Sculpture Society. A jury of five men was selected to pick the winning design. The identity of the competitors was kept strictly a secret and the judges had no means of knowing whose work they were considering.

Miss Longman won the award by unanimous decision on the first vote, over thirty-seven competitors. She is rapidly forging to the front as an artist in bronze. She is a member of the American Numismatic Society, the American Federation of Arts, and the National Sculpture Society, and is one of the few women associates of the National Academy of Design.

Women of America

Source: The Part Taken by Women in American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.