T

'HE sculptor's art is seldom associated with womankind. The inherent ruggedness and force of sculpture seem to suggest the work of man. In the remoter past there were almost no women sculptors. Among the 225 sculptors mentioned in Taft's "History of American Sculpture," only nineteen are women. Not over three or four of these have achieved any degree of success. There were only seven women mentioned among the members of the National Sculpture Society, in its 1906 catalogue. Moreover, of the women who

have made a reputation for themselves there are some very poor sculptors. It is only during comparatively recent years that women sculptors have been able to produce work that is entitled to praise in the annals of American art.

It is significant that among the few women sculptors who have won recognition for themselves, a large proportion are from the West. Even among the earlier group, Harriet Hosmer came to St. Louis to study, and Mrs. Vinnie Ream Hoxie, whose works may be found in the Capitol at Washington, was born in Mad

seven women members of the National Sculpture Society, the only distinctive artist organization devoted to the promotion of American sculpture, four may be regarded as western artists; three of them were trained in Chicago's art school and the other at one time occupied a Chicago studio.

Possibly the woman who - at least in late years has gained for herself most distinction as an American sculptor is Miss Evelyn Beatrice Longman, who, if she now calls her home New York, made her first serious attempts to perfect herself in the work of a sculptor in the Art Institute. It is unfortunate that the Institute students, well trained as they have proved themselves to be, do not find in Chicago that abundance of opportunity to prove their ability which at present appears to be obtainable only in eastern cities. Although in the West the patronage of the sculpture branch of art is steadily, if slowly, growing in quantity, it is not as yet sufficient to attract the

THE MODEL FOR THE COLOSSAL "VICTORY" Which surmounted the dome of Festival Hall at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis

ison, Wisconsin. Mrs. Bessie Potter Vonnoh, wife of the well-known painter, whose "figurines" of mothers and babes, of children and maidens, are most charming examples of the modeler's art, was a former student of Lorado Taft at the Chicago Art Institute. The same helpful master, in the same splendid school, inspired Mrs. Julia Bracken Wendt, as well as several others, who, if they have not yet reached a position where they may truthfully be proclaimed as great sculptors, are at least turning out good work and may win renown later on. Of the

THE WELLS MEMORIAL Erected in Tennessee marble in the cemetery

at Lowell, Mass.

sculptors who naturally ought to find there a permanent home and a generous share of work.

Miss Longman was born near Winchester, Ohio, whither the family had removed from Evanston, Illinois. She is next to the youngest of a group of six children. Her father is of English extraction, her mother was EnglishCanadian. She must have imbibed some love of the beautiful from her father, who was a musician by profession and who also occasionally amused himself with painting. Who knows, too, whether the fact that the Longmans were once French Longmain the name was does not account for the love of art inherited from a nation of artists?

Can any good in art come out of the Nazareth of a Chicago environment? Granted all the influence of inherited bent toward art, yet the life of a family in most moderate circumstances in Chicago is not conducive to an art-loving and an art-producing future. The young girl was obliged to leave school when she was only fourteen years of age and to begin to earn her own living. She worked as a clerk for a large wholesale house for several years. It must have been that within the would-be sculptor's heart the vital spark was surely lighted or she could not have kept alive the fire which smoldered through childhood and was not extinguished by the drudgery of a down-town office. For even while her head and her hands were weary with the tasks of a long business day, she had the courage and the ambition to spend her evenings in the night school of the Art Institute. She soon found, however, the double strain too great, and the art education had to wait. But only for a time, for she began to save the littles from her modest salary until she had accumulated $265, an amount which to the ambitious maiden must have seemed a veritable Carnegie foundation. In any event, it was enough, for that little hoard was the beginning of her career. With it she was able to study drawing and painting for a time in Olivet College, Michigan. Here, too, she made her first immature and almost undirected attempts at modeling.

It is just as disheartening to be unappreciated to-day as it was during the Renaissance. The young artist of New

York or Chicago is as uncomfortable when living on lunch-counter sandwiches as was the underfed Millet in Paris when he was waiting for Fortunatus in the disguise of customers to knock at his attic door. Yet, somehow, as we read the stories of the early struggles of the old masters, we see a glint of romance on their lives which we do not seem to discover when we hear about the apparently prosaic efforts of some as yet "mute, inglorious Milton" of our own day.

Whether or not the struggles and hardships and disappointments which accompanied Miss Longman's early efforts to perfect herself in her chosen profession, were touched with the high lights of romance, they were exceedingly real. They did not end when the $265 fortune gradually melted away. She came to Chicago in 1899, where she began seriously and industriously to study sculpture, paying for her tuition by work in the Institute library at night. Her only "income" was derived from occasional "odd jobs," which, while they were indeed "pot-boilers, it may be assumed were conscientiously done. The more than two years at the Institute were followed by a period of teaching in the summer school and again, in the autumn, in the regular classes.

Then, in 1901, Miss Longman made the hazardous venture of removing to New York. Almost like the youthful Franklin, she came into the great city munching her rolls only her buns were in her pocketbook and it contained just $40. She was fortunate enough to obtain work in the studio of another Chicago artist since become famous Hermon A. MacNeil, and later, for a short time, assisted Isidore Konti. The little pile of money, although husbanded by strictest economy, dwindled away. Even when one's most lavish expenditure for meals is limited to a fifteen-cent course dinner, so large a sum as $40 will disappear - and it did. Fortunately, just as in the traditional lives of artists, at this crisis came an offer of work as assistant in the studio of Daniel C. French, to-day one of America's greatest and most successful sculptors. From that hour, in the congenial atmosphere of this kind and helpful artist's studio, the sky began to brighten. There she steadily toiled for three years,

easier.

For the last five years Miss Longman has had a studio of her own. Two years ago she spent three months in Italy and that same year Olivet College conferred upon her the honorary degree of M.A. From that studio have come such works as are reproduced in the illustrations which accompany this article, works which have brought reputation, generous praise and recognition among the sculptor craft, possibly more prized even than the silver medal awarded to her for the figure "Victory," which in colossal size surmounted the dome of Festival Hall, of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis. Miss Longman has won recognition in every important competition in which her work has been entered. In the first she carried off the third prize, in the second the second award, and on two subsequent occasions the first prize.

One

Miss Longman's art is noticeable for its refinement and strength, characteristics infrequently found together. The figures which she creates are admirable in composition and charming in detail. feels that beneath the delicate draperies of, for instance, the angel and the sorrowing woman of the Wells memorial --erected in Tennessee marble in the cemetery at Lowell, Massachusetts there are bodies, modeled with the precision and sureness of one who is master of her art. What an inspiring piece of statuary is the "Victory"! It was admirably adapted by its significant virility to the spectacular position it occupied at the St. Louis Fair, and it is so graceful, too, in the smaller size that the Union League Club of Chicago secured a bronze copy of it to adorn its reception hall. The portrait busts she

sight into character and decided vigor in execution.

Two years ago, in a notable competition in which many of the best sculptors of the country were represented, Miss Longman was awarded, by a jury of eminent judges of works of the kind, the commission for the great bronze doors of the memorial chapel for the Naval Academy at Annapolis, an honor which might well be coveted by any artist. The accompanying reproduction of the sketch for this monumental work makes public for the first time, it is believed, the general scheme employed. Doubtless before the doors are swinging upon their hinges in their final place of distinction, the artist will have altered some of the details shown in the sketch. But such alterations, if they shall be made, will not modify any of the significant features of this remarkable production. Here may be discovered lofty sentiment and high ideals, expressed in the language of sculpture, but language so beautiful and rhythmic that the whole must affect one as an epic in bronze. Daniel C. French has indicated, especially in his doors for the Boston Public Library, that it is not always necessary to follow the precedent of Ghiberti's bronzes in Florence. Fewer figures, in low relief, may after all be as effective as numerous "pictures in bronze." In any event, whoever sees the design which Miss Longman has produced for Annapolis can not but be impressed with its dignity, its appeal to the higher emotions, on the side of sentiment and relation to its environment; and its beauty of line and form, its admirable balance of composition, its sane adaptation of sculptural means to esthetic ends, on the side of artistic accomplishment.