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DR. RICHMOND BARTHE, native of Bay St. Louis, Miss., who has achieved fame as a sculptor in Jamaica, present! a bast of Mrs. Thomas Helper, daughter of Mrs. Katherin# Wilson, librarian at Bay St. Louis who is pictured with Dr. fcarthe. One of the favorite sculptures of Dr.- Barthe is teat of St. Bernadette (inset) in which he captured the spiritual ecstasy of the child at the vision of the Blessed Virgin.
Bay St. Louis Honors West Indian Sculptor
A West Indian Negro sculptor, Dr. Richmond Barthe, who grew up in Bay St Louis. Miss., was recently presented the keys to that Mississippi city by Mayor John Scafide at a reception In his honor at St. Augustine?s Seminary.
Barthe, of Jamaica, is a distinguished sculptor. The son of a widowed seamstress, he was a yard boy doing odd jobs while In his youth in Bay St. Louis. His mother gave him paper and crayons, while the Hsrry S. Pond family of New Orleans,
home of his sister In Bay ?St. Louis, Mrs. Douglas Williams, Dr. Barthe was called upon by many citizens of the area, both Negro and white, who paid tribute to a local boy who made good.
One of his favorite works, a head of St. Bernadette, shown here. Numbers of reproductions of this piece have been struck in bronze. Working without a model, Dr. Barthe attempted to put into the image the spiritual ecstacy of the face of Bernadette when she first saw the Blessed Virgin as she
summering at Bay St. Louis when Barthe was 16. employed'appeared at Lourdes him as a butler and gave hirrn his first oil paints.	)
His first exhibit of paintingV was at a New Orleans church'I festival and his life-size painting of the head of Christ was so Impressive that the Rev. Harry Cane, of Blessed Sacrament Parish here, aided Barthe tn studying at the Chicago Art Institute. His first attempt at sculpture was in 1328 when he sculpted' the heads of two friends, which were put on exhibition In Chicago at a showing ctf'?VTJjC\ffegnri7T? Presently, his works are permanently placed in the Metropolitan and Whitney Museums In New York City and elsewhere. His-great American eagle is at the entrance of the Social Security bldg. in Washing, D. C.
Although he never went high-1 er than the seventh grade in Bay St. Louis, Barthe holds two ? honorary art degrees. Dr. 1 Barthe also holds the Audubon Artist Medal of Honor and nu-1 merous honors and citations 1 from the National Academy of Arts and Letters.	i
Dr. Barthe's equestrian stat-' ue of Jean Jacques Dessalines,1 Haitian hero of independence, ' stands before the President?s '? Palace at Port-au-Prince, Hai- ? ti. His bronze statute of Christ j was done for the Church of St. > Jude in Montgomery, Ala.
Possessing a pronounced sense of racial pride, Dr. Barthe is 1 foremost of sculptors in the in- s terpretation of the Negro. The!' sculptor, who was honored re-?l cently with a reception at Tu-! lane University, is doing an au-;' tobiography, in which one!; chapter is devoted to the white! people of Mississippi and Louisiana, to whom he is deeply! Indebted for giving him encour-' sgement ar>d a helping hand. { Like many another artist. Dr.; Barthe has suifrhod from