A BLIND SCULPTOR.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 82, 11 February 1879, Page 2

A BLIND SCULPTOR.

A writer in Le Temps lately gave si very interesting account, which we find copied in a recent number of L'Art, of a young French sculptor named Vidal, who has attained high distinction in his art, and who yet, sad to relate, has been blind over since the ago of twenty-onol Before this ago Yidal had been a pupil in the atelier of Barye, and had learnt the technicalities of sculpture, when quite stid/Jenly he was struck with blindness. All-his hopes of fame for a time loomed oveiybut with a resolution which no misfortune could shake, he persevered in the profession he had adopted, and after some months of patient labor, found tlmt he could really make his fingers do the work of eyes. _ His touch has, in truth, become'- ' so sensitive that by means of feeling his model in every part he is enitblod to re-, produce it with an exactitude not often gained by those who merely seo it, Ho generally takes animals for his subjects—lions, stags, panthers, hares, horses, etc,, and his skill in modelling their forms in parious attitudes is so great that it gained him a medal at the Salon of 1861. The State also has purchased several of his marbles and bronzes. One of the most remarkablo things related about Yidal is that he can judge, not only of his own work, but also of that of others, by the touch, as was proved during a recent visit to the Universal Exhibition, when he showed himself a very good critic of the sculpture there exhibited.