Philadelphia Inquirer_1903

Long newspaper article with handwritten above in pencil 'Sunday Inquirer/ Dec 19-1902(or 3). Article is as follows: "Miss Meta Warrick has taken a studio 1432 South Penn Square. She has just returned from three years' study in Paris where she worked alone in her own studio. Rodin criticised her work and no one can look at the pieces she has brought back without feeling how much she has been influenced by her great master. Perhaps the best is a fine head of John the Baptist, a type of vigorous and exalted youth. A portrait study of a young girl is very pleasant. But the main interest of her work is comprised in ten or twelve small casts - groups and signle figures. These are truely Rodinesque through their intensity of thought expression. And what thoughts! One could more readily understand them in a strong man, but hardly in a young and happy girl. All violent or fantastic, they are too sugestive of a Maupassant, they show a morbidness, a lack of altruism from which one shrinks. Her "Oedipus" is an image of anquish, he has torn his eyes from their bleeding sockets and kneels, his face upturned as if with a terrible effort at sight. In another, "Death," a grizly horror leans on his staff and laughts while the wind blows his long cloak. "The Cloud" shows a fantastic group of figures. Those beneath are bent with sorrow and pain, they wring their arms and allow their streaming hair to hide the light of day, those above clasp their hands meekly or look upward with joyous countenances. They see the bright uses of the heavens whatever sorrow is under their feet. Her "Primitive Woman" is a cat-like creature, terribly near the brute, who crawls along with a strange questioning face. Rather more pleasant is one called "The Flame," an upward curling tounge of fire, which is all compact of sinuous creatures, some beautiful, some repulsive, what any dreamer might see in the fierce element. All her work has a value. Its very abandon makes it effective; with a more mature judgement and a stronger technique it would be powerful. All that she needs is technique to be the master of brute facts and make bone and muscle spring into life under her hands. That one acquired, it only means study, she might be anything she wished. The blood of the long enslaved negro runs in her veins and inspires her with weird conceptions and strange Heina-like contrasts. All the feelings of her race, the 'hants' and 'spirits' of the South, the bitter philosophy of the North may find spledid expression in her."

Eph1.41.43

Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer, December 19, 1902(or 3)

c.1902