Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside Schools — John Shaqi
Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside SchoolsBrawley, Benjamin Griffith
History
Women of Achievement: Written for the Fireside Schools
Brawley, Benjamin Griffith
African American women -- Biography; Women -- Biography
At the top of the house is a long roomy attic. This is an improvised
studio--or, as the sculptor would doubtless say, the workshop. Hither,
from the busy work of the morning, comes the artist for an hour or half
an hour of modeling--for rest, and for the first effort to transfer to
the plastic clay some fleeting transient dream.
Meta Warrick Fuller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 9,
1877. For four years she attended the Pennsylvania School of Industrial
Art, and it was at this institution that she first began to force
serious recognition of her talent. Before very long she began to be
known as a sculptor of the horrible, one of her first original pieces
being a head of Medusa, with a hanging jaw, beads of gore, and eyes
starting from their sockets. At her graduation in 1898 she won a prize
for metal work by a crucifix upon which hung the figure of Christ in
agony, and she also won honorable mention for her work in modeling. In a
post-graduate year she won a much coveted prize in modeling. In 1899
Meta Warrick (then best known by her full name, Meta Vaux Warrick) went
to Paris, where she worked and studied three years. Her work brought her
in contact with many other artists, among them Augustus St. Gaudens, the
sculptor of the Robert Gould Shaw Monument at the head of Boston Common.
Then there came a day when by appointment the young woman went to see
Auguste Rodin, who after years of struggle and dispraise had finally won
recognition as the foremost sculptor in France if not in the world. The
great man glanced one after another at the pieces that were presented to
him, without very evident interest. At length, thrilled by the figure
in "Silent Sorrow," sometimes referred to as "Man Eating His Heart Out,"
Rodin beamed upon the young woman and said, "Mademoiselle, you _are_ a
sculptor; you have the sense of form." With encouragement from such a
source the young artist worked with renewed vigor, looking forward to
the time when something that she had produced should win a place in the
Salon, the great national gallery in Paris. "The Wretched," one of the
artist's masterpieces, was exhibited here in 1903, and along with it
went "The Impenitent Thief." This latter production was demolished in
1904, after meeting with various unhappy accidents. In the form as
presented, however, the thief, heroic in size, hung on the cross torn by
anguish. Hardened, unsympathetic, and even defiant, he still possessed
some admirable qualities of strength, and he has remained one of the
sculptor's most powerful conceptions. In "The Wretched" seven figures
greet the eye. Each represents a different form of human anguish. An old
man, worn by hunger and disease, waits for death. A mother yearns for
the loved ones she has lost. A man bowed by shame fears to look upon his
fellow-creatures. A sick child suffers from some hereditary taint. A
youth is in despair, and a woman is crazed by sorrow. Over all is the
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