The Little Shepherdess & Her Dog

This artwork was created by artist Lew Wagy (1884-1968). The limestone figure stands at 40” high.

Hidden almost from sight on the walk to the Mansion from the Main Parking Lot, stands this unpretentious little stone Shepherdess and Her Dog, which Robert Allerton had Lew Wagy, a Monticello gravestone carver, adapt from an eight-inch-high German porcelain figurine in the house.

The figure is conceived two-dimensionally, much as a tombstone relief might be, and for the spectator standing off to the side, the broad-visaged lady and her alert dog very nearly evaporate into space.

From A Guide to Art at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign, Robert Allerton Park, and Chicago by Muriel Scheinman. Copyright 1995 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission from the University of Illinois Press.