WOMAN IN ART
bust of William T. Bull, of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, 1909; a sun dial for Oliver Harriman, 1900; the Emma Willard Memorial at Albany, New York; Chancellor Garland, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; the Hogan Fountain, Louisville, also the Daniel Boone Monument. Each year she produces new work.
The states of our southwest have opened more slowly to the influence of cultural arts than have those of the northwest, owing in large measure to the topography and climatic influence of that section of the country. Art is affected by these, both in the activities and in the subjects for art. Aside from interests in, and work of, railroad construction, thanks are due to the enterprise and inspiration of pioneer painters whose art, pictorial of scenes, Indians and their habitats, broadcast a translation of primitive America to modern civilization, such art serving as a record for the future.
Julia Bracken was born in Illinois, but from early childhood the sun, the wind, the freedom and broad stretches of mountain and plain have surrounded her, wooed and won her as completely as did the great landscape painter whose name is irrevocably linked with hers. Her studies were at the Art Institute, Chicago, under instruction of Lorado Taft. She had two inherent gifts that have made her the artist she is—the power to see, both objects and opportunity, and the power to use them, to make them her own.
She was only twenty when the Columbian Fair began to spring up all over Jackson Park; when water channels began to form islands and fairy-like bridges spanned the lagoons, and steel skeletons began to grow their outer covering of staff. Then it was that the young woman saw her opportunity and took hold, saw in the mass of material and scaffolds possibilities which her co-workers did not dream her capable of putting forth. However, her masters were quick to discover the mental gift that guided her hands, and she was given every opportunity to exercise her ability to the fullest degree of execution. It was her idea of placing against the pilasters on the upper balcony of the Woman's Building carved figures typifying the attributes of woman, and it was she who carried it into execution, even to superintending the raising of those great caryatids to their high pedestals when the workmen were baffled at the great difficulties. Another important World's Fair group by this young woman was "Illinois' Welcome to the Nations." This fine conception now stands in the State Capitol at Springfield.
For the St. Louis Fair of 1904, this sculptor was commissioned the
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