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To the Ladies
BY PRINCESS ALEXANDRA KROPOTKIN
LINGUIST, TRAVELER, LECTURER, AND FASHION AUTHORITY

READING TIME * 4 MINUTES 37 SECONDS

Art has given this lady the arm of an Amazon, in the eye of an eagle. She is Cornelia Van Auken Chapin, American sculptress now internationally known for her splendid animal figures carved by hand out of hardwood or solid stone. Her prize-winning granite frog weighs a ton- so you can see why her work requires athletic prowess as well as artistic talent. Her accuracy of vision is remarkable, too. She can measure a true yard by snap judgement, guessing right every time within a sixteenth of an inch.
Miss Chapin told me some interesting things about the different animals she has used as models.
Pigs, she said, learn very quickly to pose, and they seem to like it. By the fourth day her model pig would take his position voluntarily, then stay perfectly quiet for two hours- but he expected to be petted after each sitting.... Her prize frog had to be cajoled with dead flies for two months before he would understand that she wanted him to sit still on his rock.... Her elephant was her most contrary model, refusing to take art seriously.... Birds she found strictly punctual. Working on per pelican portrait at the Paris zoo, she had to keep regular hours, because all the pelicans sat down promptly at 8.15 every morning to mediate until 8.40, then they got up and walked around until 10.45.
From her Paris studio, Cornelia Chapin brings her finished pieces home to America for exhibition- brings them as personal baggage. One steamship line wailed pathetically, "A life-sized statue of a full-grown bear, madam, in solid stone, madam, seems scarcely suitable as an article of ladies' luggage!"

Liberty. May 21. '38