At twenty, Lee Lawrie received his first independent sculptural commission: a life-sized bronze memorial to Father James P. McIncrow in Amsterdam, New York.
In his unpublished autobiography, Boy Wanted, Lawrie recalled the demanding process of creating the priest’s likeness. After the congregation rejected his first model, Lawrie reworked the sculpture until it met their expectations.
The monument’s history was later traced through an antique postcard and documentation from St. Mary’s Catholic Church, including photographs of the memorial, its plaque and Lawrie’s 1897 signature on the granite base.
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