DGHM 110: Introduction to Digital Humanities

Philadelphia Press_1914

Long newspaper article with a photograph of a sculpture with a woman and a man emerging from a tree. There is writing in ink down the far right edge "Phila. Press. Sunday Jan 18 - 1914" The title of the article is "In Memory of Emancipation". There is also pencil above the image stating 'Start her(e)" with an arrow pointing to the title. The article is as follows: ""Emancipation," the statue, almost heroic in size, which the Emancipation Exposition which was opened this fall in New York, is to be cast in bronze, that it may have the longest life man can give such work. The sculptor who is to receive such honor is a colored woman who is becoming rather used to seeing her work singled out for pointed appreciation, ever since, as a girl, a graduate of the public schools, she began the development of her talent in the School of Industrial Art, of the Pennsylivania Museum, Broad and Pine streets. Meta Vaux Warrick is a name that became quickly known to art-loving Philadelphians when she gave her first exhibition of note at the school at the end of three years' work. In all, five years of hard study found her competent to earn the scholarships which sent her to Paris, where she studied with the best maters in the best studios, and came directly under the influence of Rodin and St. Gaudens. She had made copies of Rodin's statues before going to Paris, and some of her exhibition pieces were well-known, that she had made after this master. When she returned from her studies abroad she began work again at the school, instead of modeling taking up work on stone. This caused great advancement in her art, and she was soon called on to make groups of 150 figures in miniature, representing the porgress of the negro race, from the landing of the first slaves at Jamestown, to the present day, for the Exposition at Jamestown. Much of the sculptor's art shows the influence of her study of Rodin, and this latest and biggest of her productions still suggest this mater. The sculptor, for some time since, Mrs. Fuller, with children about her knee at home, was called on to make this piece for the exhibition and was requested to copy again a thing she had been most successful with, Rodin's "Man Eating His Heart," or something as striking, entitled "Emancipation." Mrs. Fuller, after consideration, agreed to do the work. After settling in her mind what it was that she wanted to express, she was sentenced to a time in the hospital, where she underwent an operation and had to spend quite a long while idle in convolescing. The figure "Emancipation" was done, in time, nevertheless, and she has herself described what she meant by the figures, which are slightly heroic in size. As the negro race in this country is one of much mixed blood, having in different parts of the country mingled with several other races besides the whites, she has made her symbolic figures of mixed blood, and has made them children, because [end first section] [start of second section] the race, in its development, is still a childish [ish is crossed out in pencil] race. Behind them is a third figure, that of Humanity, who hides her face, at the thought of what the pair must meet, but who wisely urges them on now that she has loosened them from the greedy grasp of the restraining hand that represents the bondage of the race, first in slavery, then in ignorance. Empty-handed and scantily clothed, the two figures of the boy and girl are stepping out buoyantly to meet whatever the future of freedom may hold. The bronze statue when completed is to be set up permanently on a public site still to be selected. Mrs. Fuller has chosen to consider the bondage from which the loosened race steps forth in the light of the tree, with ten restraining branches or fingers, because she says that there are ten drawbacks that they have to contend with, though, she names only two - race-hatred and lynchings. She has made her home of late years with her husband in South Framingham, Mass., and it was there that her work on this statue was done."

Eph1.41.120

"In Memory of Emancipation," Philadelphia Press, January 18, 1914

January 18, 1914