Pioneer

One way to judge the true value of art is to have a group of laymen vote on it, which is the system selected by E. W. Marland, President of the Marland Oil Co., in determining the best "Pioneer Woman in America," as conceived by twelve competing sculptors, exhibited for the past fortnight at the Reinhardt Galleries in Manhattan.

His plan includes asking all those who view the statues to cast a ballot for the one thought to be the best. The twelve frontiers-women will now tour the U. S., votes being taken everywhere on their value as art. The final winner will be reproduced on an heroic size scale and erected on the Cherokee Strip near Ponca City in Oklahoma at a cost of $350,000.

The list of competitors for the distinction of having made the best of the women furnishes many famed names from the ranks of U. S. sculptors. There are, for instance, Jo Davidson, Maurice Sterne, H. A. MacNeil, Alexander Sterling Calder, and many another.

Mr. Davidson's statue shows the influence of "The Covered Wagon" motif and hence will no doubt be popular in the balloting. His tall spare woman leans forward as she scrutinizes the prairie horizon for her Dan'l, who is probably delayed during a storm at Faro Pete's Saloon. The character might well be stolen from Fannie Hurst. She is not so vivid as his famed "Call To Arms" figure which everyone remembers as the woman with her feet planted flat, her arms upraised, mouth wide in battle call to France. Mr. Davidson, born and reared in Paris, has breathed prim New England into his model.

Mr. Hermon Atkins MacNeil, who was born in Massachusetts, has molded his frontierswoman with all the solidity and heavy figure of a muscular St. Gauden's French peasant. She strides forward with breasts uptilted, an ax in her hand, a babe on her hip. It is apparent that she is about to hew something. She won place in the balloting in Manhattan.

Mr. Maurice Sterne, came from Russia to the New York East Side where he absorbed his early art training as a bar boy on the Bowery. He is obsessed with the tragedy of the loss of the art of the ancients. It is not therefore odd that his depiction of the frontierswoman should resemble a Byzantine cowgirl, shotgun in hand, fearlessly facing whatever the gods may send. Her figure, stately as a cigar store Indian, might almost be expected to be worm-eaten, so true is it to the technique of the early Renaissance.

Mr. Alexander Stirling Calder, Philadelphia born, has created his model pink with Dutch health. Her full face and bosom are redolent of Holland tulips. In her arm she holds a fat baby and in her other she grips a rifle. She is robust but beautiful.

Mr. Bryant Baker, the winner in the initial balloting in Manhattan, has chosen for a model for his typical pioneer woman a Manhattan actress. He is an English man; has been in the U. S. twelve years; has received a commission to model a head of President Wil son to stand in the League of Nations Building at Geneva. He completed his bronze within a month from the time he learned of the contest. His depiction shows a beautiful and shapely young woman striding into the American dawn, a Bible in hand, a wideawake boy trotting at her side, who appears mightily absorbed by the new life unfolding about him.

Others of the clay frontierswomen are as frail as Lillian Gish (F. Lynn Jenkins'), as strong as Abe Lincoln (James Fraser's), cute as Ann Pennington (Mario Korbel's), homely as Will Rogers (Mahonri Young's), expressionless as the Venus de Milo (Arthur Lee's).

Visitors from the West flocked to the exhibition, and almost without exception their choices were different from those of the New Yorkers who had voted. They voted for the two maturer women, marked by toil and strife.