Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch

Exploring the career and legacy of the artist Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, whose sculptural figures embody her uncompromising sovereignty over her work and life. This book offers a nuanced and comprehensive presentation of the life and work of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890–1960), whose figural sculptures in wood, marble, and bronze combined the aesthetic concerns of modernism with the beaux-arts tradition. An artist of African American and Narragansett ancestry, Prophet was the first known woman of color to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. Though she studied portraiture, she produced a body of evocative sculpture conveying atmosphere and emotion rather than depicting individuals.