Sculptor Enid Yandell came of age during the 1890s, a time when women were beginning to take advantage of new economic opportunities available to them—and continuing the push for the right to vote.

Yandell was the daughter of a well-to-do Louisville surgeon who had been a Confederate medical officer. Her mother encouraged her art, and she studied at Hampton College in Louisville and the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she graduated in 1889. She built a life as a respected sculptor, worked abroad in Paris, and in 1898 she was the first female inducted into the National Sculpture Society.