Nellie Verne Walker, “Working Model for Her Son,” Plaster, c. Before 1909

Sculpture

This depicts a mother in a crouched kneeling position, with one arm around her standing son. Both are barefoot. Most of the boy’s weight is on his right foot, which is forward. The mother’s right hand is curled around the son’s right elbow. She wears a Marian-style robe and covered head. The son wears a knee-length tunic with a banded waist. The mother is looking at the son who is gazing into the distance with one hand over his chest. They pose on two stacked circular slabs. The top slab is of a smaller diameter than the bottom slab.

10 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 16″

(1874-1973)

Nellie Verne Walker was born in Red Oak, Iowa. Her father sold real estate and carved tombstones. At age seventeen, Walker had a statue of Abraham Lincoln featured in the Iowa Building at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. At that time, she could not afford to study art. She returned to Iowa and worked as a secretary until 1900 when she had saved up enough money. Then, she enrolled at the Art Institute and studied with Lorado Taft. She was a member of the group of students who worked out of Taft’s Midway Studio.

Walker has work in Chicago, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Colorado. Her statue of James Harlan (Iowa senator, and Secretary of the Interior under Andrew Johnson) was in Statuary Hall, Washington D.C. until 2014 when it was moved to Iowa Wesleyan University.