Willa Cather Statue Oct 2023

All Glory is Fleeting. And yet all these years later a statue of Willa Cather is erected Thursday, 12 Oct 2023 at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) due to the efforts of Sculptor Littleton Alston and by the donation from Marjorie and David Lewis.

The statue unveiled at the MSV is a casting of one created by Alston that was installed in June in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., representing the state of Nebraska. A third statue is provided to the Willa Cather Foundation, a Nebraska-based nonprofit devoted to preserving historical settings and archival material related to Cather’s life and writings.

Who was Willa Cather?

She was nationally known.

She was really well known.

Hollywood made movies of her stories.

Implications that she was gay at a time of harsh societal standards continue to be discussed, especially about her relations with some other high powered pioneering women, such as Louise Pound and her living with Edith Lewis for 39 years.

See source of that picture above here.

Ancestor Jeremiah Smith

Click or Touch to enlarge. See link in this blog.

But why is Willa Cather featured here on a website about Fort Loudoun and the French and Indian War?

Her ancestor was Jeremiah Smith.

He was known as the "old pioneer" in Colonel George Washington's time leading the Virginia Regiment in this area. Jeremiah Smith was largely successful with his militia company beating back an Indian Attack around Lost River near Wardensville WV.

Jeremiah Smith's forted home held a depot and stopping point on the road the Virginia Regiment traveled to Fort Edwards in today's Capon Bridge WV.

In fact, Willa Cather's two childhood homes still exist in close proximity to Jeremiah Smith's forted home and his gravesite on the west side of Great North Mountain and Back Creek.

You can dive deeper in to those connections here.

Pulitzer Prize Winner

On Monday 5/15/2023 in Winchester Star's Monday series,"Out of the Past . . .", Willia Cather was awarded Sunday night of 13 May 1923 a Pulitzer Prize.

Famous Authors talk of Willa Cather

Her golden years of fame included sharing the spotlight with Sinclair Lewis and Mark Twain who she wrote criticism against.

She was also a contemporary of Stephen Crane who wrote, The Red Badge of Courage.

HL Mencken said Willa Cather should have won the Nobel Prize in Literature instead of Sinclair Lewis. HL Mencken also praised her specifically on one novel: “No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as MY ANTONIA.”

Even a movie was made later of it in 1995.

See an NPR look at this story "Critic H. L. Mencken thought MY ANTONIA to be the most accomplished and, reviewing it in 1919, shortly after it was published, he wrote, “Her style has lost self-consciousness; her feeling for form has become instinctive. And she has got such a grip upon her materials. … I know of no novel that makes the remote folk of the Western prairies more real … and I know of none that makes them seem better worth knowing.”"

After writing The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald lamented that in comparison to My Ántonia, it was a failure. See source of quote..

Willa Cather is best known for her stories of Nebraska and the pioneers of western prairies, such as O Pioneers! . But her last story took her back to Gore Virginia, Sapphira and the Slave Girl .

That's it.

That's our lead story.

There's always more.

Skip around.

Read bits and pieces.

Compiled by Jim Moyer 10/15/2023, researched in Feb 2021, updated 10/18/2023

The Sculpture

Winchester article

By MICKEY POWELL The Winchester Star
Oct 16, 2023

Statue of novelist, Frederick County native Willa Cather unveiled at MSV

WINCHESTER — In a sense, Willa Cather has come home to stay. A permanent bronze sculpture of the Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and Frederick County native was unveiled Thursday along The Trails at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) on Amherst Street.

Created by Littleton Alston, a Virginia native and professor of sculpture at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, the statue is approximately 7½ feet tall and set on a large limestone rock discovered on the MSV property. It depicts Cather around age 40, strolling across the Nebraska prairie, grasping a walking stick in her right hand. A pen and papers are in her left hand. Her signature is on the statue’s base, and her handwriting appears on the papers in the form of a passage from one of her novels. Born in Gore on Dec. 7, 1873, Cather moved with her family to Nebraska when she was 9 years old. After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1895, she worked as a high school English teacher and magazine editor in Pennsylvania before eventually settling in New York City, where she spent the majority of her life. She died on April 24, 1947, at age 73, and is buried in New Hampshire.

Her novels include “O Pioneers!,” “The Song of the Lark,” “My Ántonia” and ”One of Ours,” for which she received a Pulitzer Prize in 1923.

An effort to preserve her Frederick County birthplace is currently underway.

PHOTO by Jim Moyer is of that first childhood home was taken 10/17/2023. This is not part of the Winchester Star article. On Wednesday 5/17/2023, a story appears about Kathy Solenberger buying Willia Cather's childhood home to give towards groups dedicated to historical preservation.

Nancy Huth, deputy director of arts and education for the MSV, described Cather as being “one of America’s most beloved authors.”

The statue unveiled at the MSV is a casting of one created by Alston that was installed in June in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., representing the state of Nebraska.

A donation by longtime MSV supporters John and Marjorie Lewis of Clarke County enabled the acquisition and installation of the local Cather statue.

“It was his idea from the get-go,” Marjorie Lewis said of her husband. “He’s always felt that Willa Cather needed a presence here.”

John Lewis called Alston “an artistic genius” for his ability to capture intricate details of Cather’s appearance in the sculpture. Alston told more than 100 people who attended the unveiling that he hopes his “humble efforts” ring true to “the people of her original community.”

CAPTION FOR PHOTO ABOVE

“It looks outstanding,” Clarke County resident Adeela Al-Khalili said of the statue.

Al-Khalili wrote an article, “Setting History Straight: Josephine School Community Museum and ‘Sapphira and the Slave Girl,’” published in the ”Willa Cather Review” in 2021. That novel, her final one, was set in antebellum Virginia, although Cather’s most noted works were set amid the Great Plains.

The Cather statue represents “a positive view of women being part of the American frontier,” said Al-Khalili, adding that she likes the forward movement it depicts.

John Lewis said he’s pleased with the likeness of Cather because it depicts “one of her outdoor walks in the meadow.” “Her favorite place to write was in the meadow,” Marjorie Lewis said, noting that Cather frequently carried her typewriter there.

The statue is installed along a new trail section behind the MSV’s galleries building and near the entrance to the Wetlands Boardwalk.

In the coming weeks, the immediate area surrounding the statue will be seeded with wildflowers. Blooms of Black-eyed Susans, wild bergamot and three kinds of goldenrods are anticipated to sprout next spring, according to Perry Mathewes, the museum’s director of gardens.

The trails are open to the public for free between 7 a.m. and dusk daily. Julie Armel, the MSV’s deputy director of marketing and communications, said she hopes people will come to see the Cather statue and be inspired to read her novels and learn more about her life.

Having a statute of Cather is “so exciting to us,” Armel said. “Hopefully, we can introduce a new generation to her works.”

A program, “Willa Cather: Life & Literature,” is scheduled for 3-4 p.m. Oct. 22 at the museum located at 901 Amherst St.. Ashley Olsen, executive director of the National Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, will discuss how Cather’s early years in Frederick County and the remainder of her youth in Nebraska influenced “Sapphira and the Slave Girl” and “My Ántonia.” Call 540-662-1473, ext. 240 for registration and ticket information.

— Contact Mickey Powell at mpowell@winchesterstar.com

Source:

https://www.winchesterstar.com/winchester_star/statue-of-novelist-frederick-county-native-willa-cather-unveiled-at-msv/article_d7954e76-5cba-5921-897f-1cbdb5996d15.html

More on Willa Cather

Willa Cather and Jeremiah Smith posted May 17, 2023 https://jimmoyer1.wixsite.com/fortloudounva/single-post/willa-cather-and-jeremiah-smith

Lord Fairfax and Willa Cather posted Feb 25, 2021 https://jimmoyer1.wixsite.com/fortloudounva/single-post/lord-fairfax-and-willa-cather

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willa_Cather

Interesting picture and good article on Willa Cather

https://medium.com/@junereynolds/willa-cather-cultural-heroine-literary-wordsmith-b4e5fc6066ce

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All Glory is Fleeting

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Artist: Winchester having Cather sculpture 'makes complete sense'

By MICKEY POWELL The Winchester Star
Oct 16, 2023

Sculptor Littleton Alston (from left) of Nebraska with Marjorie and John Lewis of Clarke County at Thursday’s unveiling of a Willa Cather statue at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester. Cather was born in Frederick County in 1873 and moved to Nebraska when she was 9 years old. She went on to become one of America’s great novelists.Photo by Ginger Perry for the Museum of the Shenandoah Valle WINCHESTER — Now that the community has a statue of Willa Cather, her life has come full circle, Littleton Alston believes. Alston, associate professor of sculpture at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, created the bronze work unveiled Thursday outside the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV). He and the late novelist have something in common: They’re natives of Virginia who eventually moved to Nebraska. To his understanding, Cather considered herself more of a Nebraskan than a Virginian. Still, “It makes complete sense” for Winchester to have a Cather statue, said Alston, “this being her hometown.” The statue is one of three castings of the sculpture being sited in different places. In 2019, Alston was chosen from among 70 artists to create a sculpture of Cather to represent Nebraska in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol. The June 7 unveiling of the sculpture made Alston the first African American artist to have a sculpture there. “The dedication,” he commented, “was one of the rare beautiful moments” in Washington when politicians get together without showing political partisanship. He said the statue at the MSV is an exact replica of the one at the Capitol. The third is being provided to the Willa Cather Foundation, a Nebraska-based nonprofit devoted to preserving historical settings and archival material related to Cather’s life and writings. However, the MSV’s casting is special because it’s the only one being placed outdoors, mentioned Alston’s wife, Anne. Alston, who is originally from Petersburg, became a fan of Cather’s upon reading her books while growing up. “She speaks plain, simple and clear,” he said. “... carrying you through the lives of people (characters) in a way that you easily understand” the motives behind their thoughts and actions. Cather’s literary legacy is largely regarded as portraying challenges pioneers faced in moving to the Great Plains and settling in. The sculpture includes a portion of a wagon wheel, intended as recognition of those struggles. “Many lives were lost,” Alston recalled, as people journeyed by wagon through harsh weather and rough terrain. Not just Americans, he pointed out, but people from all over the world. “They were people trying to make a better life for their children,” said Alston. He thinks many people don’t give much thought to that when examining the history of pioneers, he added. Records show Cather died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1947, yet she also battled breast cancer during her later years. Alston, a soft-spoken man, said he sees her as being “a strong woman ... (and) so composed.” “She held her own,” he said, and as a historical figure, “she still does to this day.” Alston believes that he incorporated those traits into the sculpture well. He chose bronze because it shows “warmth in its rich browns,” he said. When outdoors, he continued, a bronze sculpture also is able to evoke different feelings among those who view it, depending on when and how it’s seen. For instance, a person may interpret it differently when it’s shrouded in snow or surrounded by fog than when it’s fully visible. How sunlight shines on it, such as at dawn or dusk, can affect perceptions, too. “It will be very interesting to see how people relate to it over time,” Alston said. Alston has created many other sculptures of famous people, from African American scientist George Washington Carver to abolitionist Frederick Douglass and St. Louis Cardinals baseball player Bob Gibson. Sculptures are unique in terms of the work that goes into capturing a person’s personality and significance. Therefore, Alston isn’t able to specify a favorite among all of the ones he’s created. But in terms of its quality, he said, “I think Willa is the high point” of his artistic career, or at least one of the pinnacles. Alston is so fond of the sculpture that he personally drove it approximately 1,200 miles from Nebraska to Winchester, rather than having it shipped to the MSV. He’s especially impressed that the museum chose to prominently display it alongside one of its walking trails instead of rendering it “plop art,” using it simply to fill a vacant space. “That makes me happiest,” he said, smiling. — Contact Mickey Powell at mpowell@winchesterstar.com