Life-Changing Art: Joseph Sheppard

What piece of art changed your life? How did it affect you? I was taught by Jacques Maroger (a painter and the technical director of the Louvre in Paris) and he always told us how wonderful Peter Paul Rubens was. In this country, though, most of the people with the means to purchase art bought religious paintings or landscapes; they were afraid of nudes. So it was a remarkable experience when I first saw Prometheus Bound, with its greater-than-lifesize male nude, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For the first time I was able to experience for myself what Rubens was all about. (The eagle in the painting is actually by Frans Snyders, and it is beautifully executed, as well.) I was standing face-to-face with this incredible masterpiece of drawing, painting, and technique, and it was completely overwhelming —a  tour de force. I was a second-year art student at the time, in the early 1950s, and it gave me a target to aim at—a level of mastery to which I could aspire. Joseph Sheppard is an internationally-acclaimed painter and sculptor. He created the bronze sculpture for Baltimore's Holocaust Memorial. Earlier this month, the Leroy Merritt Center for the Art of Joseph Sheppard opened at the University of Maryland University College.