Florence Brevoort Kane

Florence Brevoort Kane (January 28, 1895 – November 25, 1956) was an American sculptor who was deaf starting when she was three years old, and she was a sculptor from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Early life Kane was born in New York City on January 28, 1895. Her parents were Henry Brevoort Kane, who was a descendant of two of the oldest families that settled in New York and who served several terms in the Rhode Island state legislature and Florence Hartshorne Kane. When Kane was three years old, she had contracted spinal meningitis and as a result, she became deaf. Her family went along with the prejudices of the time, and did not teach her how to speak. She was a prolific letter writer, and she would learn how to lip read in quite a few languages. In her youth in Rhode Island, she was very interested in looking over her father's books, particularly one on Ancient Greek sculpture. When she was 16, she used clay to create a figure of a blacksmith working. Her parents then decided to send her to study under Solon Borglum. She would study under Borglum for five years.

Paris 1919-1939

Kane would move to Paris in 1919 when she was 24 years old. as 1923 newspaper articles would attest.

Kane's fame increased in 1927 when the city of Aix-les-Bains when she was selected among many French sculptors to design a monument of French poet Alphonse de Lamartine. Over the next three years, she'd exhibit four works that won her praise from art critics: Chasseur Alpin, an eight-foot-tall bronze work; Buste Marbre, a woman's head in marble; Grand'mere, a bronze bas-relief; and Groupe de Polo, a bronze work that showed polo ponies and riders. The Pasadena Post article also notes that Kane had the nickname "Peggy" which she often signed her letters with. The Eisenhower bust is in the White House. On November 25, 1956, Kane died at South County Hospital in Wakefield, Rhode Island.

Legacy Kane had given substantial bequests to the Providence Art Club, and to the St. Peter's-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church in the Central Street Historic District (Narragansett, Rhode Island), which had been her family's church.

Kane's grave is in her family's plot in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y.