He was also one who was known to pursue art for art's sake. A piece of sculpture or painting purely for its artistic qualities than for any other purpose. This is best exemplified by the marble head of the boy that he did when he was in Florence, after graduating from the school in 1928. He visited Europe, partly funded by the school, and attended the Academie De la Chaumiere in Paris which was the school that Rodin had been and worked under Bourdelle, a noted pupil of Rodin. He then went on to Florence Academy where he did the marble head of the young boy.

This young Italian boy lived next door to his pension. Father felt that his features were exquisite and convinced the boy to sit for him. He started with a block of marble and did all the rough chiseling and cutting himself rather than entrusting this to a stone cutter. During that time, he took a trip to the Isle of Capri in 1928 and on the crossing between Naples and Capri, he became quite sea sick. Therefore he stayed longer on the island and thus missed his boat to Sorrento. This was a stroke of fate that brought my parents together. In those days you could not go up to a young lady and simply introduce yourself, if you were trying to strike up a conversation and so he bought some ice cream which in those days was quite rare to come by and treated a young boy to the ice cream and somehow it turned out that this young boy was the youngest brother of the Signorina. He was able to convince her that she could have a Bas-relief made. The sitting, somehow, lasted for 2 months. Obviously, he was not on any tight schedule, but was able to have her sit for this on a daily basis. During this time, she had various suitors that came to the door and she basically said that she wasn't interested in this person or that person and, at that rate, she was going to become an old maid. He mentioned that if she became an old maid, he would come back and marry her, to which she replied why wait until then, I will marry you now, as a joke, so my mother told me. This, she regretted saying because he lit up in such a fashion that she knew he was dead serious. He went and proposed marrying her by approaching our grandmother. She wisely said, as they did not know him, that  he would need to send references and, secondly, that he would need to leave for 2 years, come back as a Catholic and, if at that time, she still wanted to marry him, they could have her blessing. We are quite sure that grandmother made these conditions thinking that he would not really come back to this, but he did. He went back to Boston, gave a show at the museum, as well as at the Myles Standish Gallery here in Boston and was very well received by the critics. Mr. F.W. Coburn wrote that, in quality, the marble head of the boy was a masterly work of the age. He also had a very good showing at the Museum of Fine Arts, together with his teacher Mr. Hale's work, as well as another sculptress, Katherine Lane (Weems).

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