In Quest of a Venus.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 23, 2 December 1908, Page 47

In Quest of a Venus.

"Miss Kuhne Beveridge, the American woman sculptor, has travelled 25 003 miles in quest of a perfectly beautiful woman as a model for her Venus, and she has returned to her starting point, t e United States of America, with the firm conviction that the American woman reaches as nearly to the standard of Greek perfection as our present civilisation permits. Miss Beveridge has expressed the opinion that the mixture of races and the untrammelled open-air life of children are the causes of the American woman’s superiority in beauty over all other races. She claims that the American woman passes through her most perfect state between the ages of fourteen and twentytwo years. Two terrible dangers, however, threaten well-to-do women in the United States, □’lie first is over-indulgence in athletics—• for too much muscular development, Miss Beveridge declares, will surely destroy both their grace and beauty. Their shoulders will become square, their faces hard, their walk awkward and ungainly, and the gentler graces will be completely lost. The second evil is one that has already begun to tell on the races of rich American women—the universal habit of allowing ignorant operators to give them face massage. • Miss Beveridge’s remarks on English women are interesting: — “The beauty of English women,” she says, “is so remarkable that it requires an acquired taste to appreciate it. What they lack in form they amply make up for in complexion, hair, and, above all, in exquisite voices.” The beautiful, well-bred English woman is ‘‘lovely, indeed.” Miss Beveridge claims that for startling, .magnificent, physical beauty no place can equal California, but she admits that the Southern States can show the highest type of beauty. A French woman, according to the American sculptor, “is a veritable fairy, for even with indifferent physical mi-

ferial she manages to outshine all other women —dressed. In wit, in vivacity, in adaptability, in conversation, she remains unexceljed, but she is more suited for a dressmaker’s than a sculptor’s model.” If the German race could be deprived of potatoes and beer, they. Miss Beveridge thinks, would Iwcoino a handsome people. She found the young Italian and Spanish women more picturesque than stat iie-que, and they have one charm that American women do not possess —repose. In Turkey. Bulgaria, ami Rouniania she found that the lazy life and sedentary existence ruined the forms of otherwise beautiful women. In Russia Miss Beveridge found only two types—the plain and the perfect; unfortunately, the former predominates. It is only in the highest circles that the beauty of Russian women develops, and these women are naturally unattainable as models. The Hungarians were found to be too voluptuous for sculpture, and among the Scandhiavians Miss Beveridge found that the men wore f ir snnericr to the women were killed and 5138 injured.