Doris Porter Caesar, a sculptor of bronze figures, was once described by John I. H. Gauer as "an expressionist in the northern tradition. She owes an obvious debt to Lehmbruch and Barlach, and like them traces her sculptural ancestry back to the romantic elongations of . . . north Gothic art".

Porter was born in a fashionable neighborhood in Brooklyn. Her mother died when she was twelve, but she was very close to her successful and brilliant father, a lawyer with wide-ranging interests who took her with him on leisurely trips to Europe. He strongly supported her desire to be an artist, and by the age of sixteen she was already dividing her time between mornings at the proper Spence School for girls and afternoons in the bohemian atmo...