Studio: international art (47.1909)

Sculpture by Mrs. Vonnoh

“BABY” (bronze) BY BESSIE POTTER VONNOH

marks the Land’s End, and the “Wolf” flares
from his lonely tower to the south. The fishermen
push out in their small craft, launching themselves
on their fateful calling; soon their riding lights
will twinkle on the darkling waters and the world
ashore settle down to sleep, save that half a mile
down underground and extending a mile and a
quarter beneath this terrible sea, other lights are
glimmering in shafts and galleries where men pick
and hew the very foundations of the deep to gather
a living for wives and children in the upper air.

N. G.

s

OME SCULPTURE
VONNOH.

BY MRS.

There is a decidedly personal note in
the work which is being done by Mrs. Bessie
Potter Vonnoh, the American sculptor. She looks
at her art with a certain clearness of conviction
and frankness of intention, which can be welcomed
as expressive of her sincerity as a worker, and as
revealing her belief in important fundamental prin-
ciples upon which all the details of her practice are
founded. She works, too, it can be seen, under the
influence of a sentiment which is characteristically
dainty, which has delicacy without weakness and
tenderness without sentimentality.

But one of the greatest merits of her production
is its essential femininity—its freedom, that is to
say, from that affectation of the masculine manner
which spoils so much of the work for which women
artists are responsible. Many women, indeed,
seem to be under the misapprehension that to
allow their feminine outlook to become perceptible
in their art is to stamp themselves as lacking in
aesthetic understanding, and to admit a kind of
artistic inferiority. They do not try to develop
the characteristically feminine side of their inspira-
tion, but seek to put forward their ideas in what
they imagine would be the man’s way. Mrs.
Vonnoh fortunately does not commit this mistake.
Her sculpture has genuine feeling, and it has, too,
just the degree of technical power needed to make
this feeling properly persuasive. Its vigour and
certainty of handling are unquestionable, but it
has none of that demonstrative robustness which
would have resulted from an attempt to convey an
impression of masculine audacity; rather is it con-
vincing in its gentle restraint, its reticence and
simplicity, and above all, its charm of womanly
sympathy.

That the artist has looked closely at the Tanagra
terra-cottas is plainly suggested in most of the
statuettes illustrated—in The Young Mother, for

“MILDRED” BY BESSIE POTTER VONNOH

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