Oscar Nemon
Born 13 March 1906
Died 13 April 1985
Active: 1923 - 1982
Country of birth: Yugoslavia
Country of death: England
Sculptor
Born in Osijek, Croatia. Nemon began modelling in clay at a local brickworks and exhibiting locally (1923-4) whilst still at school. After a brief stay in Vienna where Nemon worked in a bronze foundry owned by his uncle, he was awarded a scholarship by his home town to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1925).
Nemon stayed in Brussels after completing his studies and was given a one man show at the Palais des Beaux Arts (1932) of his portrait heads. In 1931, through a contact made in the 1920s in Vienna, Nemon was commissioned to make an over-life sized portrait of Sigmund Freud (Fitzjohn's Avenue, London). Over the following decades he made a number of other portraits of the founder of psychoanalysis.
The rise of Fascism led Nemon to settle in England in 1938. He was the only member of his family to survive, the others all died in the Holocaust. Settling initially in Oxford, Nemon moved to Boars Hill (1941) where he established a studio. He married in 1944 and became a British subject in 1948.
Nemon established his practice in England with the support of Sir Karl Parker, keeper of the department of fine art in the Ashmolean Museum and Albert Rutherston, Ruskin master of drawing at Oxford, who introduced him to his brother, John Rothenstein, director of the Tate Gallery.
In the early 1950s, after creating a bust of Elizabeth II (now at Christchurch, Oxford) Nemon was given a studio at St James's Palace. There Nemon made numerous portraits and his sitters included (among many others): Lord Beaverbrook; General Lord Freyberg; President Eisenhower; the Queen Mother (Grocers' Hall, London); Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery (Whitehall, London); Air Marshal Lord Portal (Victoria Embankment, London) as well as a series of monumental effigies of Sir Winston Churchill. He completed many further commissions, such as 'Humanity', a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Osijek, and 'Per Ardua ad Astram', the Canadian Air Force memorial in Toronto. Nemon died in Oxford.
This record includes information submitted by the artist's daughter, Aurelia Young, and from http://www.oscarnemon.org.uk/index.html (accessed 21 August 2010)
Wealth at death: £40,000 0s. 0d.
Probate date: 7 October 1985
Works
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Professor Sigmund Freud
1941 (Presumed)
Exhibitions, Meetings, Awards and other Events
Exhibited at Exhibition of Works by Allied Artists (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts / Manchester City Art Gallery), 1942
'Professor Sigmund Freud'
Exhibited at Exhibition of Works by Allied Artists (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts / National Museum of Wales), 1942
October 1942
Exhibited at The Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts (Summer Exhibition), 1768-
1953
Exhibited once, one work
Sources
Catalogue of the Exhibition of Works by Allied Artists, 1942
1942
Cat. No. 194, p. 12
Catalogue of Works by Allied Artists
1942
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
2004
Gerald Taylor, ‘Nemon, Oscar (1906–1985)’, rev. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 ;online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31492, accessed 21 Aug 2010]
Citing this record
'Oscar Nemon', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib5_1233772905, accessed 08 Jun 2023]
