POTD 2017/305. Joseph Walter's Young America

A life-size female nude strides forward, with her arms at her sides and palms outward. Her head is turned to look over her left shoulder and her hair falls loosely on her right shoulder. Also know as "Retrospective" and "Spirit of Young America," this figure by American artist Joseph Walter was done in the 1940s. Shortly after completion it was exhibited in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

This posthumous example, cast from the original model in 1989 by New Arts Foundry in Baltimore, Marlyand, was to be donated to a museum according to directions made in the sculptor's will. Through the efforts of Dr. George Gurney of the National Museum of American Art, it was donated to Brookgreen Gardens by the sculptor's widow.