Bonnie MacLeary

Bonnie MacLeary (sometimes McLeary, which is how she signed her work ) (January 2, 1886 – February 2, 1971) was an American sculptor. Some sources give her date of birth as 1890, 1892, or 1898.

Early life MacLeary was born in San Antonio, Texas, the youngest of four children of James Harvey MacLeary and his wife, Mary; at six she began creating sculptures with clay from the banks of the San Antonio River. At her parents' divorce she was taken in by her grandparents, Valentine and Helen King, who took her to New York City in 1901. She began studies there with William Merritt Chase before traveling to Paris, where in 1903 she was studying with William Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julian. She also studied miniature painting in Siena before returning to New York. There she began studies with James Earle Fraser at the Art Students League of New York in 1912, choosing to pursue her career as a sculptor. Around 1910 she met Ernest Kramer while visiting family in Waco, and soon thereafter they married; they would live in Dallas, St. Louis, and New Mexico over the next few years, and visited her family in Puerto Rico, where many of them had moved, many times. When Kramer went to fight in World War I, she established a studio in New York City. MacLeary rarely depicted male figures, although she did create a few memorials to men during her career. These include Benjamin Rush Milam (for the Texas Historical and Landmarks Association), A. Joseph Armstrong (at Baylor University), and Luis Muñoz Rivera (at the University of Puerto Rico). Also in Puerto Rico is a World War I memorial, Victory; other public commissions include Free Ireland (1923), in Dublin, and the Rotan Memorial at the Antoinette Memorial Home. The San Antonio Museum of Art is home to two of her works, Blessed Damozel and Fountain Figure of a Water Nymph.

Death She died at Lakeland General Hospital in Lakeland after a short illness. Her cremated remains were interred in Oakside Cemetery in Zephyrhills.