RISE TO FAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 139, 15 June 1938, Page 12

RISE TO FAME.

QUITE ACCIDENTAL. AUSTRALIAN SCULPTOR. NOW LEADING ART FIGURE (From Our Own Correspondent.) BRISBANE, June 8. The rise to fame as a sculptor of Mr. E. F. Kohler, who was born in Queensland, and who won the Commonwealthwide competition for Brisbane's memorial equestrian statue of King George V., was quite accidental, for he never attempted a piece of sculpture till he was 38. Mr. Kohler went to the war in 1915 and was wounded. Later he became assistant records officer to the Imperial War Graves Commission, an appointment he hcid till 1928. At Malo-les-Bains in 1929 while watching a sand modeller at work two children asked him to model something in the sand. He had never tried to model anything before, but when the children asked him to model a soldier, he began. A crowd soon gathered, and when he had finished a newspaper interviewer asked him about his career in art. He had none, said Mr. Kohler. Next day the local newspaper published an article about his skilful modelling, and soon 'there was another in an art magazine. This opened the way for him to the Lille Academie des Beaux Arts, and later he spent several months studying with and assisting the Belgian sculptor, Pierre de Soete. Since then his rise in the world of art has bee.* meteoric.