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You are here: Home / Psychology / Oscar Nemon: Sculptor of Freud & Friends (Including Dogs)

Oscar Nemon: Sculptor of Freud & Friends (Including Dogs)

December 3, 2013 by Edie Jarolim 6 Comments

My discovery of Oscar Nemon — probably the most famous sculptor that almost no one has ever heard of — started with a comment I received the other day on an earlier post, Richard Tauber: “How Can I Be a Jew?”:

Oskar Nemon and Freud, real and sculpted
Oskar Nemon and Freud, real and sculpted

Congratulations on an informative and amusing blog.

As you mention Richard Tauber I thought you or one of your readers might be interested in my quest to find out if my father sculpted the singer.

My father was a Jewish sculptor, born Oskar Neumann, in Osijek Croatia in 1906. He studied in Vienna when he was 18 and sculpted many of the leading singers of the day including Domenico Borghese and Leo Slezak. Arnold Schoenberg advised him to leave Vienna after a year so he went to Brussels and changed his name to Némon. He was summoned back to Vienna to sculpt Sigmund Freud in 1931. Némon also sculpted many of Freud’s disciples including Sandor Ferenczi, Ernest Jones, Paul Federn, Princess Marie Bonaparte and Rene Laforgue.

I’m emailing you because I have just read a 1927 press report about Nemon’s 1927 medallion of Charles Lindbergh which also says that Nemon sculpted Richard Tauber and Tino Pattiera. Many of my father’s papers have been lost during his many moves from country to country. His mother, brother and grandmother were murdered in the Holocaust.

This only hints at some of the famous people Nemon sculpted. But I’ll get to that.

I immediately googled Nemon and found a Wikipedia listing that turned out to be riddled with errors. What tipped me off was this statement:

While in Vienna, [Nemon] met Sigmund Freud and made a sculpture of Freud’s dog Topsy. He also made a sculpture of Princess Marie Bonaparte.

Although I didn’t know anything about the sculptor’s life at this point, I did know quite a few things about Freud’s dogs. And I knew that Topsy  belonged to Freud’s friend and benefactor, Princess Marie Bonaparte, not Freud.

Princess Marie Bonaparte sitting on Oscar Nemon's Sculpture of Topsy, Paris, 1961
Princess Marie Bonaparte astride Oscar Nemon’s Topsy, Paris, 1961

I then emailed Aurelia Young, who posted the original comment, and said I did not want her fascinating information to get lost on the bottom of an older post. I asked if she would be willing to provide a bit more information — and to send some pictures of some of her father’s sculptures:

I am particularly interested in his connection to Freud, of course, given my family’s (much less august) connection to him. I’m tickled to think that your father would have seen Siegmund Kornmehl’s butcher shop on the ground floor of 19 Berggasse when he came to see Freud.

Wikipedia has a great picture of your father sculpting Freud that I would love to post, with your permission.  The Wikipedia listing also says your father sculpted Freud’s dog, which it calls Topsy, incorrectly. Freud’s most beloved dog was named Yo-Fi; Topsy was the name of the dog of Princess Marie Bonaparte, who helped get the Freud family out of London — and who your father also sculpted, according to Wikipedia. Freud and his daughter, Anna,  translated a book Marie Bonaparte wrote about Topsy.  But whether it is Freud’s dog Yo-Fi or Marie Bonaparte’s dog, Topsy, I would love to see a picture of the sculpture your father made.

It turned out I was writing to someone who knew far more about the dogs (and people) in Freud’s circle than I did — and had the pictures to prove it. Indeed, it was not Freud’s dog that Nemon sculpted but, rather, Princess Marie Bonaparte’s Topsy.  I learned that Tatoun, the Princess’s other dog, was also immortalized by Nemon.

Real Topsy and Faux Topsy, Paris, 1938
Real Topsy and faux Topsy, Paris, 1938

The sculpture of Topsy is next to the title of this post; the original is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The other pup photos are distributed throughout: the Princess sitting outside her house in Paris, where Nemon sculpted her and her dogs; Topsy posing next to her image; and Tatoun gazing at Nemon’s work (approvingly? critically?). They’re all wonderful in their own way; I can’t decide which I like best.

Real Tatoun looking at faux Tatoun, 1938
Tatoun the art critic, Paris, 1938

There will be more, much more, here about Oscar Nemon and Freud and the other thinkers and musicians and artists that Nemon sculpted in Vienna. I also hope to help Aurelia Young in her search for some missing busts and for the identity of some of her father’s subjects. But I wanted to start with dogs, since they have been much on my mind. I have been largely AWOL from this blog because I have been writing about the passing of my own beloved Frankie.

I will leave you with a link to a piece in The Telegraph about Oscar Nemon, The Only Man Who Could Get Winston Churchill To Do As He Was Told, including information about his daughter, Aurelia, whom I might have been too intimidated to contact had I known about her title and the company she keeps. Luckily, I didn’t — and she has been a most delightful and helpful correspondent, as future posts will show.

Filed Under: Psychology Tagged With: dogs in Freud's circle, Princess Marie Bonaparte, Sigmund Freud, Topsy the Golden-Haired Chow

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Pamela | Something Wagging This Way Comes says

    December 3, 2013 at 10:50 am

    Loved the Telegraph article. It appears charm runs in the Nemon family. Perhaps it rubbed off from spending time sculpting dogs. 🙂
    Pamela | Something Wagging This Way Comes recently posted..3 Stories About Edie Jarolim And Why Knowing Them Will Help DogsMy Profile

    Reply
    • Edie Jarolim says

      December 3, 2013 at 11:45 am

      I agree! I would love to have some information about whether his canine subjects were as cooperative — or more cooperative — as his human subjects.

      Reply
  2. ANDREW PARKIN says

    May 14, 2014 at 11:30 pm

    I enjoyed this amusing piece very much. I wish I could have heard Lady Young’s lecture on Oscar Nemon as Freud’s sculptor. But I am pleased to have the privilege of hearing her speak on her father as Churchill’s sculptor.
    As a poet and critic I find all the human and canine connections waggishly welcome as a little but effective antidote to the tragedy of Europe during the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

    Reply
    • Edie Jarolim says

      May 15, 2014 at 6:02 am

      Thanks for coming by; I’m glad you enjoyed the piece. I am very much looking forward to Aurelia Young’s upcoming talk on Freud in Vienna.

      Reply
  3. lisa micallef says

    September 25, 2018 at 3:47 pm

    Just beautiful, they look so real.

    Reply

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