Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 150, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1915 — RENSSELAER TO PARIS BY MISS WASHBURN [ARTICLE]

RENSSELAER TO PARIS BY MISS WASHBURN

Success of Rensselaer Woman Receiving Recognition—lndianapolis Paper Adds Praise. The success attained by Miss Mary Washburn, daughter of the late I. B. Washburn, was the subject of illustrations and the appended write-up in The Indianapolis News of Wednesday. Old friends will recall that Miss Washburn graduated from the Rensselaer high school in the latter eighties and that she was an unusual student and although very small in stature was possessed of an indomitable will. During -the senior year she suffered a severe attack of typhoid fever that almost cost her life, and she recovered from it just in time to complete the senior course. Later she took the teachers’ examination in Chicago and received a life licenes to teach, although still but a young girl. She then took up painting as a profession and was very successful. She then took up sculpture 'and her success has been quite remarkable during the fifteen years she has been engaged in that line of work. The full article from The Indianapolis News is here published. It bears a Rensselaer date line: “From Rensselaer to the Paris salon is a long way, but it has been traveled by Mary Washburn, in her search sion with me. I have no interest, or quired fifteen years of hard work, inexhaustible energy and indomitable will to make the journey is now of no consequence—Mary Washburn, her friends say, has arrived. She was educated at Butler college, Irvington. Rensselaer, -the pretty little seat of Jasper county, was Miss Washburn’s real home until her work made it necessary to establish her residence elsewhere. Going abroad for the third time in 1912, she spent a year in Paris, studying under Sawyer. In 1913 she exhibited “Consolation,” a statuette in bronze, at the Paris salon. This work, representing two children clasped in each other’s arms, and epitomizing childhood’s griefs, was much admired and won for the artist unstinted praise. Recently, at the joint exhibition held by Miss Washburn and Frederick Webster, of Evanston, a painter of miniatures and pastels, at Matzene’s studio, in Chicago, Miss Washburn’s work received much favorable attention. Among the pieces exhibited were: “Innocence,” “Purity,” “Miss Bosen,” the statuette of “Mrs. Moore,” which approaches the Greek ideal in the simplicity of its lines; and the statuette of “Philip Paul,” which is distinctively modem, and demonstrates the artist’s success in grasping the elfin personality of childhood, of which she has made a special study, and is depicting it in sculpture. This success is further shown in her bust of a baby called “Flowers,” an idealistic work, modeled from a two-months-old Hoosier baby, so that, as Miss Washburn suggests, it should really have been called a “Hoosier Flower.” This bust is one of the pieces sent to the Panama-Pacific exposition. The artist’s low relief work is marked by simple austerity of outline. Two of the most notable examples of the latter, which were shown at Matzene’s, were a plaque of the artist’s mother, and a relief of Mr. and Mrs. Webster, with their exquisitely wrought medals in bronze. These were among the features of the exhibit. One of the most admired of Mr. Webster’s pastels was “The Sculptress,” a portrait of Miss Washbum at work in her studio. Since her return from abroad Miss Washburn has made her home in Chicago, where she has a studio. She herself is a most delightful person. Small and graceful, with blue eyes and brown hair, she possesses a droll whimsicality that is very amusing. “Was the knowledge of your ability to express yourself in the plastic of quick revelation or had you previously known of it?” she was asked. “Really,” she laughed, “I think like Topsy, I jus’ gTowed.” That is the art side of me. If I ever grew physically, no one noticed it to speak of. Do you know,” she continued. “I used to hide my school books whenever a teacher appeared, because in idle moments, seemingly without volition, my fingers drew figures of men and women, heads, hands and feet all over the margins of the books. But whatever I drew it was always form. That has ever been an obsession with me. I have no inteerst, or very little, in reproducing anything from nature.” After leaving Butler college, Miss Washburn went to Cincinnati, where she studied drawing in blade and white. Later she engaged in commercial work with much success. However, she never relinquished her ambition to do something really worth while. To satisfy this desire she entered the Chicago Art Institute,

where she resumed her study of drawing. One evening she passed a door in the great school usually kept closed. She stood looking in, fascinated. It was a modeling class, and students were working in clay. A strange scene, weird and untidy; lights shining on ugly wet clay figures and heads, half wrapped in cloths; the workers standing on clay-tracked floors, their aprons wqt and clayey. But to Mary Washbum it was an inspiring scene. “For,” she says, as I gazed through the half opened door, I knew that at last I had found the one thing in life that I wanted to do, and that the unsatisfied desire of my heart was to be realized in clay modeling.” . . . .. .. Miss Washburn is an indefatigable worker, and the keystone of her success has been to learn, as she says, “More and more, and still more.” Her largest work is the heroic statue of General Milroy at Rensselaer. Other works are a bust of Dr. Byron Rob* inson, in the library of Rush Medical college; a low relief of Lincoln, made for Marshall Field, and one of Susan B. Anthony, made sos the suffrage cauAe, a copy of which is owned by the Illinois Suffrage Association. In all Miss Washlurn has sent eight pieces to the Panama exposition. Four are medals and plaquetteg- four more are m the Indiana women’s exhibit, three being statuettes, and one is “Flowers,” the bust previously mentioned Several Chicago papers have been referring to this Indiana artist as a “Chicago woman.” Mary Warfiburn ia a Hoosier, first, last and always—and is pro ad of it. Mrs; Robert Strong, of Chicago, is the member of the art committee who requested Miss Washburn to send examples of her work to the fair.