Viewing page 102 of 154

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

THE GEORGE WALTER VINCENT SMITH ART GALLERY
BULLETIN for November, 1938
Volume 5 Number 2
SPRINGFIELD MASSACHUETTS 

CORNELIA VanAUKEN CHAPIN, SCULPTOR
"The stone in which I carve is icy cold. Yet the reality of art is to transform into the warmth the image carved direct from life." This is Cornelia Chapin's own statement relative to her work, work which, because of its very nature, is unique. For Miss Chapin uses no preliminary sketches, does no modelling in soft, pliant clay, but chisels direct from the block of marble, granite, wood, or other hard substances, the form which ultimately emerges in the beautiful simplicity which characterizes all her work. She studied with the great Spanish sculptor, Mateo Hernandez, who, with his pupil, may be numbered among the few living sculptors who have adopted the sculptural technique of the ancient Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese, a technique which some authorities maintain is the only legitimate one for sculpture in wood or stone — direct carving without recourse to the modelled sketch. Hernandez describes this method as the "most powerful means, among all the methods employed by sculptors, to reveal with vigor the true personality of the artist."

Cornelia Chapin was born in Waterford, Connecticut. She is a wood engraver as well as sculptor. Her work is included in private collections in Paris, London, New York, and Philadelphia. She has received the Second Anna Hyatt Huntington prize for Sculpture, 1936; Second Grand Prize for Stone Sculpture, International Exposition of Art and Technique, Paris, 1937; and was the only foreigner and only woman to be elected to the Societaire Salon d'Automne, Paris, 1936.

Her visit to Springfield has a double interest as she is a direct descendant of Deacon Samuel Chapin, who is commemorated in the St. Gaudens statue, the "Puritan," which was presented to the citizens of Springfield by her great-grandfather, Chester W. Chapin, a lifelong resident of this city and a director of the City Library Association, of which we are a member. This is another in the series of lecture-demonstrations dealing with art techniques which we have been presenting in this museum during the last two years.