This is an orginal plaster sculpture by Belle Kinney from her barn in Boiceville, NY. It is a sculpture of George Washington that must have been a working model for a large sculpture because it has lots of writing and dementions on it (see second photo). It does have lots of condition issues including chips, breaks and repairs. Even still, nice looking peice. Measures 15.5 inches high, 5 inches wide and 5.5 inches deep. Belle Marshall Kinney was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1890. Kinney is best known for her bronze outdoor sculpture that adorns public parks in several states. She was often inspired by classical sculpture, as were many monumental sculptors in the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps her greatest achievement was the re-creation in Nashville, Tennessee of the pediment sculptures of the Parthenon, the pinnacle of classical sculpture. In the early 1920s Kinney and her husband Leopold Scholz were hired to study and sculpt the pediment figures of the Parthenon for the full-scale replica of that ancient temple. This replica of the Parthenon remains in Centennial Park in Nashville today. Kinney displayed sculptural talent at a very early age. At the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897 she was awarded a prize for a bust of her father, Captain Daniel C. Kinney. At age 17, Kinney received her first professional commission. She was hired to create an eight-foot bronze statue of Jere Baxter, the organizer of the Tennessee Central Railroad. This statue has been moved from its original location, but still stands in Nashville in front of a public school named for Baxter. Just before this commission Kinney won a scholarship to study sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago in the academic years 1905 and 1906. While at the AIC, she studied under the famed American sculptor Lorado Taft. At times, Taft's influence can be seen in her work of larger-than-life heroes of the past. The bronzes created by Kinney are often monuments to the heroes of the Confederacy. Perhaps her father's military career provided connections to win war-themed commissions. Two wonderful examples of her war memorials stand very close to each other at Nashville's War Memorial Plaza. In 1909 she was commissioned to build a monument to the women of the Confederacy. She was the only woman out of 80 submitting artists. This commission promised not one monument to Confederate women, but ten, all from the same mold. The United Confederate Veterans proposed to erect a monument in each southern state to the women of the Confederacy remembering "Our Mothers, Our Wives, Our Daughters, Our Sisters" on the inscription. The location of only two of these statues is known today: Nashville and Jackson, Mississippi. Just across the War Memorial Plaza from Monument to the Women of the Confederacy in Tennessee (1926) stands Kinney's monumental Victory (1929). This nude classical warrior is an imposing 14 feet tall with Nike, goddess of victory, in his hand. The architecture of War Memorial mimics the portico of the Parthenon and Victory stands tall inside the colonnade. Kinney and her husband, Leopold Scholz, collaborated on this statue as well as others. Their dedication to public sculpture spans several decades. Leopold Scholz moved to the United States from Hungary in 1916. He married Belle Kinney in 1921 after they had studied and worked together for two years. Around the time of their marriage, the couple was hired to recreate the pediment sculptures of Nashville's Parthenon. Their plaster maquettes of the east and west pediment statues are on display in Nashville's Parthenon today. Kinney died at 9:30 PM on August 28, 1959.

Sculpture