MERICAN
SCULPTURE
CAFF IN
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AMERICAN MASTERS OF SCULPTURE
By the same author :
AMERICAN MASTERS OF PAINTING
PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FINE ART
THE SHERMAN MONUMENT
By Augustus Saint-Gaudens
AMERICAN MASTERS OF
SCULPTURE
BEING
BRIEF APPRECIATIONS OF SOME AMERICAN
SCULPTORS AND OF SOME PHASES
OF SCULPTURE IN AMERICA
BY
CHARLES H. CAFFIN
Author of ' ' American Masters of Painting ' '
Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1913
Copyright, 1903, by
Doubleday, Page 8c Company
INTRODUCTION
'T^HE year 1876, the date of the Centennial
■■■ Exhibition, is a landmark in the progress
of American sculpture as it is in that of American
painting. Not to be fixed too definitely, and
yet serving approximately as a starting-point
of new conditions which have transformed what
had been a sporadic and largely exotic product
into a lusty, homogeneous and thoroughly accli-
matised growth. I speak of the gradual improve-
ment and spread of taste in the community;
the steady trend of students to Paris and the
habit of American sculptors to make their own
country the scene and inspiration of their labours.
The earlier tendency had been toward Italy;
to Rome and Florence, especially, where American
colonies existed. Here the student adopted the
Canova tradition of sweetened classicism, or the
infusion of naturalism into the classic vein,
represented in the work of a few romanticists;
and, having learned his craft, remained in Italy
to practise it. His sources of instruction had not
been of the best and he worked in an atmosphere
tainted with artistic and political decadence.
vi INTRODUCTION
It is not surprising that much of the sculpture
of this period, though considerably admired in
its day, strikes us now as coldly and pedantically
null, unconvincing and grandiloquent or, at best,
innocuously sentimental. Only once in a while
is there a statue of such moment as "The Greek
Slave," by Hiram Powers, which very closely
follows and attains to the purity of Canova'a
style. The more memorable works of this period
came chiefly from those sculptors who, although
living abroad, kept in touch with home. Of these
the most distinguished was William Henry
Rinehart ; yet his classical pieces will not compare
in force and dignity with his sitting statue of
Chief Justice Taney at Annapolis, reproduced in
Mount Vernon Square, Baltimore, which still
remains one of the most impressive monuments
in this country, In like manner Thomas Craw-
ford's best works were the bronze doors for
the Capitol, illustrating events in the Revolution,
the colossal " Liberty " which crowns the dome and
an equestrian statue of Washington at Richmond.
Equally it was in another equestrian statue of
Washington, the one which stands in the Boston
Public Gardens, that Thomas Ball reached his
best achievement. But it is inferior in ease and
dignity to the same subject executed by Henry
Kirke Brown, whose equestrian statue of General
INTRODUCTION vii
Scott at Washington also stands out conspicuously
among the best we have. Brown, too, studied
in Italy, but with the conviction that Americans
should occupy themselves upon American subjects
returned home and established his studio in
New York. It would be going too far to attribute
the excellence of these two statues to the fact
of their having been conceived and executed in
the American environment, the more so as Brown's
work was uneven in quality and did not in other
subjects reach the dignity of these. Yet his
deviation from the custom of the time was the
outcome of a very individual force of character,
and the influence of the latter upon his work
may very well have been reenforced by the
environment. At any rate, his action was con-
sidered notable in his own day and has always
been remembered since, and undoubtedly marks
the beginning of the reaction against self-
expatriation.
It will not, however, escape the thoughtful
student of this period how natural such self-
expatriation was. A stout heart, indeed, was
needed to bear up against the dearth of artistic
incentive at home. Necessarily the time was
devoted mainly to material expansion and building
up, especially calling for the heroic qualities of
brain and muscle, and accompanied inevitably
viii INTRODUCTION
by a spirit of materialism. It was not until the
conscience and soul of the nation had been re-
awakened by a great moral question and chastened
by the stern discipline of a tremendous struggle
that it began to return to the higher enthusiasms
of its youth. Hero-worship was reborn — or,
rather, took a nobler, more spiritualised form —
for a nation will always have its heroes. But now,
instead of the hero of the market or the stump,
whose service to the public is subordinate to self-
aggrandisement, there had sprung up in every
State — indeed, from every village and most fire-
sides — heroes of sacrifice. The hero-worship which
ensued was bound up with a fuller, deeper sense
of national life, eager to express itself. It found
vent in the spoken and written word, it sought
to free itself in visible, tangible expression. As
the birth of the Republic had been identified with
the erection of noble buildings, so the rebirth of
national conscience and soul found in a revived
architecture the means of expressing its national
state and civic pride, and in sculpture its worship
of heroes. And it is a remarkable coincidence
that the beginning of this esthetic demand fitted
in with the appearance in America of a band of
trained artists, returning from their studies
abroad. The Centennial Exhibition opened the
eyes of the country to the wonders of foreign art,
INTRODUCTION ix
and here were Americans on the spot trained in
those foreign schools.
With only a few exceptions all our sculptors
of the present generation have acquired their
training, either wholly or in part, in Paris; that
is to say, in the best school in the world. For
France, ever since the Middle Ages, has never been
without a succession of great sculptors. When
the Gothic spirit had spent itself, that of the late
Italian Renaissance was imported; and the art,
continually adjusting itself to the changing
conditions of national life, has been held in
uninterrupted honour to the present time. It
is in this branch of the fine arts that the French
genius has found its most individual expression.
Corresponding with the maintenance of fine
traditions is the excellence of the system of
teaching. The Institute and the Ecole des Beaux
Arts perpetuate a standard, characterised by
technical perfection and elegance of style, while
the tendency to academic narrowness is offset by
the influence of independent sculptors ; for there is
not a thought-wave in modern art that does not
emanate from or finally reach Paris. It is the
world's clearing-house of artistic currency.
The attractions of a city so rich in artistic
resources, so generous to artists, have allured
many to extend their sojourn there beyond the
x INTRODUCTION
years of studentship, and Paris has been in these
days, only in a still greater degree, what Florence
and Rome were half a century ago — a resort for
self-expatriated Americans. But, with a few
exceptions, the sculptors have escaped this
tendency; not so much perhaps from inclination
as from circumstances. For commissions have
been plentiful in America, and the need of being
on the spot in order to secure them drew the
sculptors home — on the whole to the betterment
of their art. For it is the same with Paris, a
university of the arts, as with Harvard, Yale or
any other university of letters and science. The
atmosphere is most congenial to the quick develop-
ment of student years ; but, for the further, more
gradual development that grows out of the stuff
which a man has in him, not to be compared to
the rough-and-tumble contact with the larger
world.
For there are some elements of technique
which can be imparted; others, however, are of
personal growth. It is a distinction largely of
manners and feeling. Manners can be imparted
and acquired; feeling, at best, mainly guided.
Its finer manifestations are the outcome of self-
development. Thus in the matter of modelling,
in which the Parisian student usually excels,
the hand can be trained to express with exquisite
INTRODUCTION xi
precision and delicacy the surface of flesh and
fabric, the form and texture of each; and the
feeling for the esthetic charm of these things
can be aroused and refined. So, too, can that
larger feeling for the construction of the form and
the organic relation of its parts, up to the point
at least of securing accuracy and truth to nature.
But the still larger feeling, which finds in the
structure and organic arrangement an expression
of emotion and manifests itself most amply in
composition, cannot be taught. To certain
general principles the student may be directed,
just as any school of manners may lay down
rules of conduct, which will be admirable in
securing propriety and decorum. So far can
feeling be instilled and regulated; but the freer,
deeper, really significant feeling has its origin in
character, in the moral and mental ego of the
individual, to be further deepened and broadened
by the experiences of life. In sculpture this
significant feeling manifests itself appropriately
in the large field of the general design; in the
weight, stability and harmonious unity of the
mass, which make the composition monumental;
and in the manifestation of character and senti-
ment, sustained through every part of the whole,
which renders the composition expressional.
For convenience one separates the disposition of
xii INTRODUCTION
the form from the expression, but really they
are one and the same act, the sculptor composing
his plastic material as the musician does his
chords and harmonies, to give expression to the
character or sentiment that supplies the theme
of his work.
Now, given this natural gift, the reenforcement
of it must come from the theme itself, from the
degree to which it has laid hold of and possessed
the sculptor's imagination. And it is for this
reason that, when he is executing American
themes, the true environment for him is America.
It ought to give him direct incentive, and, even
if it does not, should at least save him from being
enticed into a more specious attitude of mind.
For I think one may note traces of this speciousness
in the sculpture of Americans working in Paris;
a parti pris for the smaller elegancies of design
as opposed to the salient and the large.
On the other hand, the working upon American
themes in the American environment can draw
nothing out of the artist that is not in him ; and
this higher mastery over form and composition,
being a gift of the gods, is necessarily rare.
Perhaps only in a few American sculptors, as
only rarely in other countries, will you discover
it ; while skill in modelling, elegance of design and
a generally sensitive taste will be found more
•••
INTRODUCTION xm
diffused through American sculpture than through
that of any other country except France. The
reason, unquestionably, is the peculiar aptitude
of the American to impressions and his study in
the best of modern schools.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Thanks are due to the Sculptors, to the Century
Company and to Charles Scribner's Sons, whose
assistance has made possible the inclusion of the
illustrations in this edition.
CONTENTS
Introduction ....
V
I.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
I
II.
George Grey Barnard
19
III.
John Quincy Adams Ward
37
IV.
Daniel Chester French
53
V.
Frederick Macmonnies
7i
VI.
Paul Weyland Bartlett ,
87
VII.
VIII.
Herbert Adams
Charles Henry Niehaus
97
117
IX.
Olin Levi Warner .
129
X.
Solon Hannibal Borglum
147
XI.
Victor David Brenner .
163
XII.
The Decorative Motive
173
XIII.
The Ideal Motive
Indsx . . . . " .
209
*33
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE SHERMAN MONUMENT. By Augustus
Saint-Gaudens ..... Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
GRIEF. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens ... 8
A Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington,
D.C.
THE LINCOLN STATUE. By Augustus Saint-
Gaudens ........ n
RELIEF PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN-
SON. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens . . .16
PAN. By George Grey Barnard . . . .28
THE HEWER. By George Grey Barnard . . 29
TWO FRIENDS. By George Grey Barnard . . 34
A Memorial Monument.
THE GREELEY STATUE. By John Quincy Adams
Ward .........
46
THE BEECHER STATUE. By John Quincy Adams
Ward 47
DEATH AND THE SCULPTOR. By Daniel
Chester French 60
The Milmore Monument in Forest Hills Cemetery
near Boston.
DETAIL OF THE CLARK MONUMENT. By
Daniel Chester French 6!
Forest Hills Cemetery.
ALMA MATER. By Daniel Chester French . 68
Columbia University.
DIANA. By Frederick Macmonnies . . ,76
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— CnnnuiJ
FACING PAGE
BACCHANTE. By Frederick Macmonnibs . . 7T
MICHELANGELO. By Paul Weyland Bartlett . Q2
Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
MADONNA. By Herbert Adams .... I0 4
Tympanum for St. Bartholomew's Church, New
York.
PORTRAIT-BUST. By Herbert Adams . . .105
BUST OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE. By Herbert
Adams ......... no
THE DRILLER. By Charles Henry Niehaus . I22
From the Drake Monument, Titus ville, Penn-
sylvania.
THE HAHNEMANN STATUE. By Charles Henry
Niehaus 123
From the Hahnemann Memorial, Washington, D. C.
BUST OF DANIEL COTTIER. By Olin Levi
Warner 136
CUPID AND PSYCHE. By Olin Levi Warner . i 37
DIANA. By Olin Levi Warner .... 144
COWBOY MOUNTING. By Solon Hannibal
BORGLUM ........ 152
LOST IN A BLIZZARD. (Marble.) By Solon Han-
nibal BORGLUM 153
TAMED. By Solon Hannibal Borglum . . . 160
PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTON By Victor
David Brenner . 168
RECUMBENT FIGURE. By J. Massey Rhind . 192
From the Tomb of Father Brown in the Church of
Saint Mary-the- Virgin, New York.
PUMA. By A. Phimister Proctor .... 193
From Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
CHARIOT RACE. By F. G. R. Roth . . .202
BUST OF A CHILD. By Birtley Canfibld . . 314
THE STONE AGE. By John J. Boylb . . . ais
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
TF we value the gift of imagination in an artist
over that of technique it is not because
we undervalue the latter. Without technique
a work of art is not to be thought of; it is as
essentially the visible expression of the inward
grace as the human form is the casket of the
human spirit. But the quality in man or woman
of purest delight and most enduring significance
is less the body and its acts than the thought
that animates them. And is it not so with a
work of art?
It is as an artist of superior imagination that
we regard Saint-Gaudens ; as one who can give to
the facts of our knowledge a fresh form and sig-
nificance, attracting us toward the idea contained
within the actual, the idealisation of character
or of sentiment. And such imagination in an
artist must have a twofold working. It fills him
with a fine idea and it discovers to his hand a
fine manner of embodying it; it penetrates
his technique.
3
4 AMERICAN MASTERS
To appreciate fully a sculptor's worthiness in
this respect one should realise the peculiar rela-
tion in which he is placed with regard to facts.
While the painter has a wide range of resources
for creating an illusion the sculptor is limited to
a comparatively strict and naive realism. Even
if he introduces an ideal figure, such as that of
an angel, he is compelled to give it the clear-cut
contours, substance and actuality of a distinctly
visible and tangible form. His only means of
idealising are the abstract beauty of line and
form, the character of expression in face and
gesture and the general feeling of nobility and
sweetness that he can impart to his work through
the degree to which the thought that is in
him inspires his hand. He may, indeed, attempt
a more obvious trick of idealising, as when
Greenough represented Washington in the role of
Olympian Zeus by the device of baring the body
and placing a mimic thunderbolt in the hand.
But to modern taste, at any rate, such a pro-
cedure seems ridiculous. The truth is, that the
highest form of imagination — indeed, the only
tolerable one to the modern mind — is that which
illumines the facts of our common knowledge and
expression ; in a word, which bases itself on facts.
But this demands of the sculptor a very high
degree of creative imagination, in all probability
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 5
a proportionately higher one than the painter's;
for if the latter is confronted, for example, with
a subject of ill-made coat and trousers, he can by
merging the costume in atmosphere and by toning
it with the background so gloss over its inartistic
appearance as to produce a handsome ensemble.
But, compared with the sculptor's problems, this
is an evasion of the difficulty. To repeat, the
sculptor is limited in his presentment to the actual
facts. But, though it may seem to be a paradox,
it is almost a truism in art, that the limitations
of a medium are its most characteristic sources
of power — at least, when knowingly and coura-
geously admitted. And, I believe, it can scarcely
be doubted that the quality in Saint-Gaudens's
imagination which has most conduced to his great-
ness as an artist is this: it is kindled by contem-
plation of the facts, and it finds in the facts its
keenest and truest impulse.
Moreover, it has been his good fortune to be
confronted with large and impressive facts. The
panorama of American civilization, and especially
one episode of tremendous import — the Civil
War — has spread itself behind his work; and the
latter, as in the case of one of his own reliefs,
has grown out of and in harmony with the
background. Other sculptors, also, have had
the same high incentive, but many have failed to
6 AMERICAN MASTERS
respond to it. Saint-Gaudens has had the force
of imagination which could not only grasp the
magnitude of his opportunity but interpret its
impressiveness.
The conditions in America have demanded that
his work should be largely of a memorial character
— monuments to those that are honoured in public
or mourned in private, and in both directions
his achievements have placed him in the foremost
ranks of modern sculptors. This was demon-
strated at the Paris Exposition of 1900, where
he was represented among other works by the
statue of General Sherman and the "Shaw
Memorial." A comparison of these, respect-
ively with Dubois's "Joan of Arc "and with
Bartholomews "Monument to the Dead," helped
one to divine the special qualities of Saint-
Gaudens's style.
He himself had a Paris training. Son of a
French father and an Irish mother, brought to
this country when a child, he displayed early an
aptitude for art, and in course of time went
through the usual regimen of a student in Paris.
Thus he came under the influence of the best
academic traditions and of the modern natural-
istic movement, and imbibed both to the degree
that his own temperament and the conditions of
his inspiration demanded.
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 7
So in the direction of tradition — that is to say,
of more or less consecutive descent from an original
classic type — we may compare his "General
Sherman" with Dubois's "Joan of Arc"; both
equestrian statues, monumental in design, full of
decorative dignity yet so different in character.
The latter, noble in every particular, has a choice
propriety of feeling that separates it by an ocean
of motive from the freer spirit of the other. It
is at once mannered, more consciously correct
and studiously discreet and has an air of hauteur
and aloofness, as becomes its aristocratic descent
in the direct line from Verrocchio's "Colleoni."
The "Sherman," however, is of only collateral
descent, modified by a larger environment and a
fresher inspiration. The typal form has yielded
to the individual, abstract dignity to the force of
character, the fundamental suggestion to that of
vivid, immediate actuality.
In its naturalistic tendency and expression of
profound emotion the "Monument to the Dead,"
by Bartholome, is at one with Saint-Gaudens's
work; but I found myself comparing it with the
latter's figure of "Grief" in the Rock Creek
Cemetery, near Washington. Then its degree of
naturalism is found to be less. It shows some
influence of the classic tradition in the use of nude
figures and in their elaborate disposition along
8 AMERICAN MASTERS
the background of masonry ; while the single figure
by Saint-Gaudens is draped and presented with
an unaffectedness of arrangement and with an
intimacy of appeal that is at the same time more
naturalistic and more poignant.
So may we not deduce from these comparisons
one quality inherent in Saint-Gaudens: that of
daring to be free from conventional restraint, or
rather the daring to adapt, with a freedom only
limited by his sense of artistic fitness, the academic
traditions which his early life experienced? For
the means by which he has wrought out his free-
dom are in no sense revolutionary. He does not,
for example, go as far as Rodin in the latter' s
disregard of symmetry in composition. His own
have always a monumental character, studied for
their effect in the mass, as seen from various points
of view. Moreover, they are always extremely
reserved: as far as possible removed from the
floridness indulged in by many students of the
academic traditions. A similar reserve con-
trols his naturalistic tendencies. Evidently it is
not naturalism of itself which attracts him;
indeed, all his leaning is primarily toward the
sculpturesque side of sculpture, as a self-contained
mass, proportionately impressive, equable in
outline, decorative and structural in ensemble.
These principles of technique are at the service of
GRIEF
By Augustus Saint-Gaudens
orial in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D. C.
THE LINCOLN STATUE
Bv Augustus Saint-Gaudens
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 9
—perhaps it would be truer to say that they have
been adapted to — an imagination, which rever-
ences the character in man and can picture and
suggest the individual in relation to the larger
issues of his time; with a capacity of emotional
expression that has the added poignancy of
compression. It has been, indeed, continually
reenforced by the grandeur of the themes that
have confronted him, and the result upon his
technique is a gravity of distinction which repre-
sents the finest kind of style. In that smaller
kind of style which is limited to the actual tech-
nique of modelling it would be possible to mention
sculptors who far excel Saint-Gaudens ; but in
those qualities of broader and deeper reference
wherein brain and sensibility cooperate with hand
for high creative and poetic ends I doubt if he
has any superior among modern artists.
Let us trace the gift of idealising as it appears
in several of his works, selected because they
represent a descending scale from the purely ideal
to the idealised fact. And first the statue of
"Grief" in the Rock Creek Cemetery. I made
the pilgrimage from Washington one sunny
autumn afternoon with a companion. The gate-
keeper directing us, we threaded our way along
the labyrinth of paths, among the chaos of
conflicting monuments, so many of which testify
io AMERICAN MASTERS
to impotence of taste. Finally a glance behind
a hedge of cypress — we are indeed on holy ground !
Within the little enclosure of solemn greenery a
bench, marble and of Greek design, invites to sit ;
the world is all outside, and here before us,
raised upon a slight pedestal, enough to lift it
above the level, but not too high for close and
intimate communion, is the Presence: a woman's
seated figure, wrapped about in coarse drapery
that shrouds her head and falls in long, loose,
heavy folds at her feet. We have heard the story :
That a husband, robbed of his wife with shock-
ing suddenness, called upon the sculptor to express
in plastic shape the void in his life, enjoining him
to ignore all symbols of hope and to give utterance
only to the consuming hopelessness of loss. And
here before us — in the isolation of the figure, in the
uncompromising sternness of the drapery, in the
majestic agony of the face, the eyelids lowered in
pain, the lips full and set in the effort of endurance
and also in a protest as proud as it is despairing —
there is expressed a universality of grief that
sums up the sorrow of the modern world, as well
as the eternal question of the why and to what
end. Under the spell of it a wife and husband
sit on into the golden afternoon, chastened, puri-
fied, elevated, drawn closer to each other by the
realisation of the mystery of grief, and with a
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS n
renewed sense of the sanctity of happiness ere the
shadow falls. Here indeed is an idealisation,
complete and absolute ; no helping out with wings
and symbols, but the rendering of a simple, natural
fact — a woman in grief ; yet with such deep and
embracing comprehension that the individual is
magnified into a type. The emotional appeal is
universal.
In this statue the sculptor could give free rein
to his imagination. Observe how in the "Shaw
Memorial" he meets the problem of an actual fact
of history ; the youthful leader riding forth to war
with his marching regiment of Negroes. What a
boundless zest he displays for the realism of the
scene ! He portrays the humble soldiers with
varying characteristics of pathetic devotion,
and from the halting uniformity of their move-
ment, even from the uncouthness of their ill-
fitting uniforms, from such details as the water-
bottles and rifles, secures an impressiveness of
decorative composition, distinguished by virile
contrasts and repetitions of line and by vigorous
handsomeness of light and shade. Mingled with
our enjoyment of these qualities is the emotion
aroused by the intent and steadfast onward move-
ment of the troops, whose doglike trustfulness
is contrasted with the serene elevation of their
white leader.
12 AMERICAN MASTERS
Behind this group looms up the tremendous
issues of the war ; they were present to the imagi-
nation of the sculptor and he has suggested them
to ours. Hence the work is big with fatefulness,
with a reference reaching beyond the fate of the
personages represented to the fate of a nation
trembling in the balance. Ah ! it is a great gift,
this power to touch upon the fundamental, the
essentially and genetically vital aspect of a
matter, and by means so simple and of common
knowledge. As he worked upon the memorial
it would seem as if Saint-Gaudens distrusted
somewhat his possession of this faculty, for to
increase the idealisation he has introduced a
figure of Victory floating above the head of the
leader. It was not necessary and is scarcely in
accord with the rest of the composition, intro-
ducing into the energy and concentration of the
whole a somewhat quavering note. Yet, to
judge by my own experience, the sense of jar
yields to indifference; one loses consciousness of
this figure in the grandeur and elevation of the
whole. But, if this is the experience also of
others, it tends to prove how unnecessary was
its introduction ; and, further, one is inclined to
resent it as partaking of the obviousness which
would occur to a smaller sculptor.
A similar attempt to reenforce the ideal sugges-
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 13
tion contained in the realistic parts of the group
with the direct introduction of a symbolic figure
reappears in the equestrian statue of General
Sherman. But the figure in this case is more
intrinsically a part of the general design in perfect
harmony of character and feeling, and the group
as it stands, while almost the latest, is probably
the most completely grand example of Saint-
Gaudens's art. Sherman leans a little forward in
the saddle with a handling of the reins that
keeps in control the impetuosity of his big-boned,
powerful charger, an action of the hands very
characteristic of an accomplished horseman. His
head is bare and his military cloak floats from his
back in ample folds. Victory moves ahead of his
left stirrup, palm branch in hand, her drapery
buoyed up with air; the horse's tail streams
behind; throughout the whole composition is a
single impulse of irresistible advance. From
every point of view the mass is compact with dig-
nity, ornamental in line and bulk, alive with ele-
vated and inspiring energy. At closer range one
may discover the big simplicity and pregnant
generalisation of the modelling, also the meaning-
fulness of the characterisation. The horse in
build and gait is a serviceable beast, bred for
courage and endurance; the rider, a man of iron
purpose, indomitable in face and carriage; while
i 4 AMERICAN MASTERS
the woman's figure in the grand spirit of the
flowing lines and in the lofty sadness of her mien
touches a chord of triumph and pathos, of the
glory and the tragedy of victory.
I compared this statue with Dubois's "Joan of
Arc," and found it so much less mannered, so far
IT.
more vital in the immediateness of its import;
or, shall we state it in this way: less consciously
a work of art, more spontaneously the expression
of an overpowering sentiment. This, if I am not
mistaken, contains the gist of Saint-Gaudens's art.
While traditional in its origin, it is a living art,
rooted in the realities of its environment, modified
in its growth — that is to say, in its technique — by
the necessity of responding to its conditions.
But how does Saint-Gaudens fare when he con-
fines himself to a factual representation of his
subject? Let his statue of Lincoln at Chicago
testify. No grace of line or grandeur of mass;
only a chair behind the standing figure to eke out
the stringiness of the legs and in a measure to
build up the composition. Nor could the sculptor
snatch an easy triumph through any heroic ren-
dering of the figure, spare and elongated, in
clothes uncompromisingly ordinary. But the
man as he was, and just because he chanced to be
the man he was, was great, and in the fearless
acceptance of this fact the sculptor has seized
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 15
his opportunity. The statue is planted firmly on
the right foot — not every statue really stands
upon its feet — the right arm held behind the back
— these are the characteristic gestures of stability,
tenacity and reflection; while the advance of the
left leg and the grip of the left hand upon the lapel
of the coat bespeak the man of action. With such
completeness are these complex qualities sug-
gested and then crowned with the solemn dignity
of the declined head, so aloof in impenetrable
meditation, that the homely figure has a grandeur
and a power of appeal which are irresistible.
True, our imagination, reenforced by knowledge,
goes out to reach the artist half-way, thereby
lessening the space he has to travel in his idealisa-
tion of facts. Behind this isolated figure looms
up the scene in which he played so great a part.
It was precisely because this scene was present
to the sculptor's imagination, and he knew it
would be to ours, that he set himself to the most
realistic rendering of his subject and thereby
triumphed.
But once more, turn to his statue of Peter
Cooper. There is no background here of heroism,
or any environment of a nation roused to highest
sacrifice; only the background of a building, ugly
in itself, though we know it to be the habitation
of a great educational movement. Homely also
1 6 AMERICAN MASTERS
is the general appearance of the founder and bene-
factor, yet the figure in its loose, slovenly costume,
seated in a chair, presents in its solid mass a sug-
gestion of fundamental force ; the left hand grasps
a walking-cane with a gesture of fine decision, and
the head, with its long hair and fringe of beard, by
sheer force of genial, manly directness, so earnest
and unsophisticated, compels us to realize this man
to be more than ordinary. He is the prophet of
a cause, the leader of a peaceful revolution. In
a word, if one has the mind and sympathy to note
it, this old and yet alert man, of ungarnished
simplicity and indomitable confidence, is an
embodiment of the same sure uplifting of the
people to which he contributed so largely.
I have chosen these examples to illustrate
Saint-Gaudens's ability to idealise his subject , to
reach through the fact to the soul within the fact.
But his sensibility to impressions is not only
moved by the larger aspects of life; it is also
exquisitely sweet and subtle. Study his numer-
ous low-relief portraits — for example, the children
of Prescott Hall Butler, those of Jacob H. Schiff,
and the single portraits of Miss Violet Sargent
and of Robert Louis Stevenson. In all these and
in many others his sensibility is exhibited, not only
in the sympathetic comprehension of character,
but also in the extraordinary finesse of the execu-
RELIEF PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
By Augustus Saint-Gaudens
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 17
tion. The figures are not merely set against the
background; they grow out of it, forming with it
an enclosed parterre of beautiful design, of deli-
cately differing planes of elevation, of subtle tones
of gray in between the extremes of light and dark.
The effect is not unlike that revealed at early
morning when the landscape is flattened in
appearance by the mist, and, as the latter is
loosened and dispersed by the sun, the patterned
forms take on infinitesimal degrees of definition
and mysteriousness behind the intervening veils
of lighted vapour. Through such a simile one
may, perhaps, suggest the essential quality of love-
liness in these low reliefs.
Yet they are qualities shared to-day by several
sculptors in France, sufficient to reveal an artist
of rare sensibility, but not to measure the grander
characteristics of Saint-Gaudens's art. In the
conditions of American civilization he has come
within a range and depth of inspiration denied
to modern Frenchmen, and it is in the degree to
which he has responded to those opportunities
that his preeminence consists. His position is
unique, for no other sculptor of our time has so
attuned the traditions of his art to the key of
the modern spirit for the expression of grand
conceptions.
GEORGE GREY BARNARD
II
GEORGE GREY BARNARD
WHILE Saint-Gaudens, an American of Euro-
pean descent and training, has caught the
outspoken voice of our national life, George Grey-
Barnard, of American parentage and practically
self-taught, expresses its underlying force. To
the former came a congenial opportunity in the
demand for memorial sculpture. He turned it to
great account through his gift of penetrating to
the central fact of the subject and of illuminating
it with a generous imagination. Instead of facts,
however, it is rather with ideas that Barnard's
imagination has been concerned. They pre-
ceded his study of sculpture, and he sought the
latter as an expression for them, influenced in
his self-instruction by the work of Michelangelo.
He is from the West, that huge quarry out of
which a new order of ideas is being gradually
dug and shaped. The echoes of the clang of tool
upon inchoate material, of sharp wits and keen
purpose carving anew at the problems of existence,
reach us from time to time in this more conven-
21
22 AMERICAN MASTERS
tional East. We may smile at the crudeness of
some of the results achieved, but cannot disre-
gard the import of the endeavour. The force
which animates it is the craving for larger, fuller
liberty than mankind has yet attained ; a titanic
force, often brutal in its material manifestation,
but with inherent mightiness of spirit. It is this
spirit which has enveloped Barnard's imagina-
tion since his childhood, and forms, as it were,
the basis of his art. Its keynote is humanity,
the elemental relationship of man to man and
of men to the universe; a liberty of life and
art, that would shake off the trammels devised
for narrower theories and conditions and adjust
itself to the perspective of a wider horizon. A
boyhood nourished on literature and nature-
studies sowed the seed from which these matured
ideals were to spring.
He was born at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, in 1863,
the son of a Presbyterian minister ; but his early
years up to the age of twelve were spent in Chicago,
after which the family moved to Iowa. When
only nine years old he began to learn something
of shells and minerals from a retired sea captain ;
later he studied birds and animals, taught himself
to draw them and by fifteen was an expert
taxidermist with as many as 1,200 specimens
in his collection. Then for nearly two years he
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 23
earned his living as an engraver and worker in
gold and silver ornaments, learning meanwhile to
model, until, having saved a little sum of money,
he returned to Chicago, determined to become
a sculptor. He was now seventeen and had
not yet seen a statue.
There is a hint in this of the instinct that draws
would-be artists toward sculpture rather than
painting. It is an instinct for form, a passion
for its tangible bodiliness, a prepossession so
strong that it seems to transpose the senses of
touch and sight; giving to the flat and round-
topped thumb of the sculptor's strong, square
hand a sense equivalent to sight, keen and sensi-
tive as is the touch of the blind, and giving to
his eye a touch-consciousness. He feels with his
eye and sees with his thumb. It is by the touch
that in childhood we all assure ourselves of the
reality of things, and it is the stimulation of the
tactile imagination, as Mr. Bernard Berenson
calls it, which is one of the chief sources of pleas-
ure in the illusion of a picture. But touch to the
sculptor is not an illusion. While a painter
only imagines the form of an arm through his
sense of sight, the sculptor actually gets his
sensation through his hands, as he feels it growing
in form and character, substance and subtlety
of surface under his manipulation. With him
24 AMERICAN MASTERS
the physical delight is added to the mental. I
imagine, indeed, that the degree to which he
expresses this twofold delight is largely the meas-
ure of his ability as a sculptor.
Barnard thus early had experienced it; but,
we should notice, so far only through an experi-
ence of minute work. Yet his communing with
himself and with nature along the shores of the
great lake and of the Father of Waters was only
waiting to discover its effects in a larger field of
sensations.
This awakening did not come to him at once
in Chicago. There was then no Art Institute
with its array of sculpture casts; no nourishing
school with its accompanying enthusiasms. Yet,
possibly that was well for the slow, silent devel-
opment of this youth, a dreamer of dreams,
already a student of philosophy and occultism,
fervently religious, with a religion that felt after
the mysteries of life and included such dawning
notions as he had of art.
He chanced upon a teacher whose stock in
trade consisted of four casts of the antique statues
in reduced size, which he drew in every pos-
sible position, until he had completely mastered
the representation of an object on the flat. This,
it will be observed, was a temporary suspension of
his study of solid form, being indeed, a transpo-
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 25
sition from actual depth and distance to the
illusion of a third dimension; and the intense
application in this direction, with the fascina-
tion of it, affected his work for some time. I
think a comparison of "The Boy" with one
of his later works will show this. The
early work displays more feeling for light
and shade than for form, and is, in fact,
rather a study of planes of varying value
than of bulk. While this may appear a some-
what fine-drawn distinction, it does involve an
important principle, because it affects the way
in which the subject has been considered, the con-
ception, indeed, which inspired the work. In
his later work Barnard is not oblivious to the
charm of subtle modelling, but the larger motive
is present in his mind, that of the constructional,
organic character of the mass, and it becomes the
distinctive direction in which his genius expresses
itself.
He grew to consciousness of this large aspect of
sculpture through the influence of Michelangelo.
Hearing that there were some casts of the master's
work stored away in a room under lock and key
he sought admission. It was at first denied;
students by acts of vandalism had abused their
privileges; the exhibition had been closed to
them, and no exception could be made in his case.
26 AMERICAN MASTERS
"But I must see them," was his simple answer.
"Michelangelo lived and worked for me as much
as Jesus did ; his works belong to me — I must see
them." In presence of such a fervour of con-
viction the director yielded, and Barnard was
allowed to come and go as he pleased.
If one could really know the boy's emotions,
what a revelation it would be ! To most of us, if
we can recall our youth, the impressions that
counted most came gradually, finding us often
unprepared for them, and through circumstances
or our own levity of soul unable to receive due
profit at the time. But to the young Barnard,
with a seriousness beyond his years, peering into
the mystery of life, feeling after expression in
form, the revelation of Michelangelo's genius
must have been like sudden light to a blind man,
who, hitherto, had had but vague imaginings of
light and form. There, in the quiet afternoons,
until daylight faded into twilight, alone with these
sublime beings, the boy would sit and sit. Tired
on one occasion, he sat himself in the lap of the
"Moses" — for he was small and boyish-looking
despite his seventeen years — and resting his curly
head against the statue's beard fell fast asleep,
his young, eager spirit, wrapped around and
absorbed by the influence of the mighty dead. Do
you not perceive in this little story another proof
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 27
of the boy's physical joy in form, so that after
drawing from it sustenance to his spirit he nestled
into contact with the feel of it, as a baby, surfeited
with nourishment, lies close to the mother's
breast ?
And it was with a good deal of a baby's uncon-
sciousness, I suspect, that Barnard sucked in
nourishment from the experiences of this time.
He was not as yet deliberately studying these
statues, was still ignorant of the technical prob-
lems which they offered ; but, himself a dreamer
of dreams, he lost himself in the magnitude of the
conception, and little by little grew to realise
how dreams may shape themselves into form.
He began to have an inkling of the majesty of
form in the round, as something not to be trans-
lated into the flat, but to be felt in the bulk; a
realisation of the wonder of palpable structure,
when it has become the plastic expression of noble
thought. It was several years later, and much
discipline had to be undergone, before the impres-
sions of this lonely communing were to become
part of his conscious equipment as a sculptor.
But I wonder whether the scarcity of artists,
as compared with the great number of skilful
practitioners of painting and sculpture, is not
due, in part at any rate, to the fact that few
students enjoy a period of subconscious reception
28 AMERICAN MASTERS
of impressions. In place of it they are surrounded
by the clatter of the classroom, share in the
smart little theories of their fellow-students and
for the influence of the great masters substitute
adulation for some teacher who professes to know
a short cut to success. Most modern education,
indeed, is a bustling after results, that allows no
space for the slow, steady, silent growth, such as
prepares the sapling to take its place among the
giants of the forests. Yet in our study of the lives
of all true artists we shall find that the period
of communing, either with nature or with the
masterpieces of art, has intervened. Happy for
the student to whom it comes early !
At the end of his eighteenth year he received a
commission for the portrait bust of a child, and
discovered for himself the manner of executing
it in marble. With the sum received, he went to
Paris, studying for a time under the academician,
Cavelier, and then establishing himself in a
humble studio. Twelve years he lived in Paris,
enduring the extreme of privations, until the
patronage of an American, Mr. Alfred Corning
Clark, relieved the pressure of want; and the
acceptance of seven of his works at the Champ
de Mars in 1894 and his election as an associate
of the Soci^te' Nationale des Beaux Arts crowned
his struggles with artistic recognition. During
pq
< O
THE HEWER
By George Grey Barnard
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 29
the intervening years he had shunned the influence
of modern Paris, drawing nutriment in the
museums from Phidias and Michelangelo, from
the divine repose of the one and from the other's
conflict of soul, conscious of great strivings within
himself that craved utterance.
All his early works were so completely in
response to an impulse from within, that they
seem to me to reveal themselves as confessions
of his soul, as manifestations not only of his
artistic but of his spiritual development.
The earliest was "The Boy": a nude figure
seated, asleep, with arched back and with head
drooping on the breast ; a supple form, with that
mingling of firmness and languor which a child
presents in sound, healthy sleep; a composition,
very fresh in conception and beautiful in its
rhythmical compact^efs; .expressive, moreover,
in every part, of the character of profound slum-
ber. This single theme of feeling flows through
the whole figure in measured bars of melodious
movement. I like to think of it as an artist's
expression, not of a boy, but of boyhood ; his own
boyhood, in its unalloyed purity and freshness,
which even in his manhood is " not dead but
sleepeth " ; abiding with him in its beautiful
quiescence, perpetual testimony to the living on
of the child in the artist's soul.
30 AMERICAN MASTERS
Then may we not see in "Pan" an embodiment
of his experiences of passionate youth? Truly
it is also the reincarnation of the spirit of the
old golden legend of the world, before it was
burdened with seriousness, still irresponsible
and sportive; when the woods and streams were
haunted by creatures close akin to the animals,
but gifted also with something of man's higher
opportunities: lazy, sensuous and luxuriously
content. But this is only to refer back to a
mythological type the perennial characteristics
of the birth of passion in a youth. It seems
to me quite one with the philosophic bent of
Barnard's mind that he should have compre-
hended both intentions in his "Pan." It is as if
he had analysed himself and then exorcised
his vagrant desires by imprisoning them in
bronze. As an artist he takes his opportunity
in the recumbent figure of enforcing the sensuous
charm of the long, sinuous limbs, and once more
indulges in the luxuriousness of firm, soft fleshi-
ness ; this time, however, with muscles not relaxed
in sleep but unstrung in the sweet lassitude of
lazy ease. Then what a subtle insinuation of
contempt for the type as he conceives it ! He
sets one long asinine ear acock, and lets the other
droop ridiculously, while in the slanting eye there
is a leer of mischievous, foolish wantonness. I
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 31
do not forget that this is later work, executed
after Barnard's return to America; yet his
point of view is so subjective that he can scarcely
fail sooner or later to express the struggles of
his own soul.
But apart from these psychological considera-
tions the statue is one of extraordinary artistic
interest ; the composition highly original and to a
grand degree sculpturesque. It has, that is to
say, qualities peculiar to sculpture; the impress-
iveness of bulk, of form in the round, with vig-
orous appeal to our tactile sense in its bossy
elevations and deep hollows, and with that
aptitude for changing effects of light and shadow,
bold in parts, in others mysteriously subtle. More-
over, it is remarkable in its expression of character
in pose and gesture; for subtle expressiveness
could scarcely be carried further in the line of
this conception and it is continuous throughout
the figure and harmoniously complete. These,
moreover, are the traits conspicuous in all
Barnard's work.
We shall find them in the group "I Feel Two
Natures Struggling Within Me," which, perhaps,
more than any other of his works breaks away
from the usual canons of composition. I can
remember that when I first saw it the abruptness
of the composition startled me unpleasantly;
32 AMERICAN MASTERS
but this feeling has worn off and I recognize an
inherent reasonableness in the arrangement, a
harmony of fitness in the conception. It illus-
trates, in fact, the liberty of the western spirit,
which dares to free itself from formula; it is not
to be taken as a subversion of old principles, but as
a justification of the right of freedom of will,
where the originality of thought demands some
freer method of expression. For, as a matter
of fact, the salient feature of this group is the
expression of character ; and by the time that you
fall under the spell of its intention, you are recon-
ciled to the abruptness of the composition. It may
interest those who are distrustful of "literary"
expression in a work of art to know that the
metaphysical title of this group was an after-
thought. It had its inception in the chance
grouping, afterward slightly modified, of two
models, and the idea was to reproduce the charac-
ter of pose and gesture. Then the standing
figure suggested the notion of a conqueror; not
one of the theatrical sort with action of defiance,
but one who through defeat has reached an ulti-
mate victory ; and so by degrees the group began
to partake of the fulness of the sculptor's own
thinkings and conclusions, until it finished by
presenting in generalized form the conflict of the
two natures of man.
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 33
The evolution of this group very fairly illus-
trates the balance of impulses in Barnard's work.
He is by natural instinct a sculptor ; one whose
imaginings inevitably shape themselves in form.
On the other hand he is a thinker of thoughts and
a dreamer of dreams that press for utterance,
and he finds the utterance in plastic expression;
but there is no confusion in his own mind between
the mode of expression and the thought expressed.
He recognizes both the possibilities and the
limitations of his art, and in the working out of
his thought confines himself to those aspects of
it which lend themselves to plastic interpretation.
At the same time his nature is so earnest and
intense that it would seem impossible and hor-
rible to him not to use his art to some serious
end. But, be sure, it is less the bigness of his
purpose than his power as a sculptor, or, shall
we say, the happy adjustment of the two, that
gives ultimate importance to his work.
In further proof of this let me refer to two more
of his statues, one of which had its origin in
chance, the other in deliberation: The former is
" Maidenhood " which was primarily suggested
by the pose of a model, spontaneously assumed.
It had character and was evidently characteristic
of this individual type of girlhood. He studied
the figure, first in its ensemble and then in the
34 AMERICAN MASTERS
correlation of its parts, and as he worked the flood-
gates of sentiment were gradually lifted, until
there poured into the work his pent-up feeling
and convictions concerning female beauty, his
personal ones as a man and the abstract devotion
that he felt for it as an artist. The result is a
statue, lovely as a piece of technique, lovely also
in its inspired interpretation of beauty of form
and soul; a figure that has the allurement of
individual personality, as well as that higher
quality of abstract loveliness which belongs to
an ideal conception, rendered with exquisite
reverence and a spirit of purest poetry.
The other statue, " The Hewer," was begun with
the deliberate purpose of embodying in a series
of figures the gradual evolution of mankind and,
I fancy also, of the human soul toward higher
possibilities. There is nothing unusual in the
theme, but much in the way in which Barnard
has comprehended and expressed it. He has felt
it in its elemental significance and set it forth
with monumental simplicity. The background
of his imagination, and he makes it part of ours,
is the nebulous immensity out of which primitive
man emerges toward the light. The step is won
by putting forth of strength; but tentatively,
gropingly, with only partial consciousness of
strength; there is an exertion of power, but a re-
TWO FRIENDS
By George Grey Barnard
A Memorial Monument
GEORGE GREY BARNARD 35
serve far greater of unexpended power. In
correspondence with the controlled bigness of
this conception is the generalized method of the
actual modelling, so that the eye is not deflected
to this or that part, but compelled to embrace
the figure as a whole. It is in this respect that
Barnard's work differs from that of Rodin, to
which at a first glance we might feel disposed to
liken it, in consequence of the expression of char-
acter in both and the freedom from conventional
restraint. But each has his separate method of
attack; for while Rodin reaches his ensemble
through an elaboration of the parts, Barnard is
possessed first and foremost of the conception in
its entirety and keeps the parts subordinate.
The one entices you to follow the play of subtle
expression that winds through the figure, while
the other arrests your eye to its structural sig-
nificance as a unity.
In a brief summary of this sculptor's art the
thing to be noted is that it is distinguished as
much by breadth of conception as by expression
of character, and always with an instinctive
regard for the simplest form of plastic interpre-
tation. It is this which separates him from the
hypersensitive tendencies of the old world and
proves him to be a prophet of the new. His
vision is less penetrating than embracing; his
36 AMERICAN MASTERS
methods more constructive than analytical; his
emotions ample, sane. His genius indeed has
not grown with the sinuous convolutions of a
sapling that enforces its existence in a thicket,
but like one that stands alone in virgin soil with
spaciousness around it.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD
Ill
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD
"DORN in Urbana, Ohio, in 1830, Ward is
still an active force among American
sculptors. His career connects the past with
the present, spanning the long interval like a
bridge: one pier, embedded in the old condition
of things when American sculptors first began
to make America the scene and inspiration of
their art, its arch mounting above the indifference
to, and ignorance of, things artistic which pre-
vailed before the influence of European art began
to be felt here, and its other pier firmly incorpor-
ated into the new order. And there is additional
fitness in the simile, for Ward's career has
presented the logical reasonableness of an archi-
tectural structure ; built up of character, stout as
granite, shaped by experience and tempered by
local necessities ; a structure modified by practical
as well as by esthetic considerations, which has
been invaluable in its day and embodies some
features of permanent worth among others that
time has superseded. For the architect of his
39
4 o AMERICAN MASTERS
own life cannot proceed like the builder of a
material bridge — establish simultaneously his
hither and nether pier, and then by ingenious
underpinning support the weight of the arch
until he reaches the keystone, which finally locks
all into a compact whole. He can but start
with good, firm basis of intention, hew the stones
as faithfully as he knows and set them in cement
of honest endeavour, lifting his arch by personal
force, while the force of gravity, acting outside
himself, gradually determines the direction of its
curve. He will be shrewder than most if he
guesses when he has reached the keystone —
generally will only discern it after long years
by looking back; and when he gains the farther
bank of the stream and once more has the firm
ground beneath his feet, if he turns round to
view the work he will be conscious of parts
which disturb the symmetry of the whole: here
a bit of inferior craftsmanship which his later
knowledge detects, there some result of untoward
circumstances. He is happy if his life presents
a constancy of purpose and has been of service
to his fellows.
Such happiness may fairly be enjoyed by Ward.
His share in establishing the National Sculpture
Society, of which he has been president since its
foundation, would alone entitle him to the
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD 41
permanent consideration of his colleagues, while
to the sum total of American sculpture he has
made some very notable contributions. That
his work includes examples which fall short in
artistic conception and in technical skill, is
undeniable. They are the result partly of the
circumstances of his development and partly
of his own determined, straightforward charac-
ter; a combination of meager artistic experiences
at the start and of a predisposition to the
objective point of view.
One imagines that he has always been power-
fully attracted to the facts of things: the facts
of American life and the facts of the subjects
which he has portrayed in his art. If there was
any fiber of transcendentalism in his mind — and
few of us are altogether without some vision of
what is beyond the bounds of actual experience —
it took the form of speculating upon the future
of American civilisation, which facts have subse-
quently indorsed, or, if it entered into his feeling
toward his subject, made him realise something
of the spirit embedded in the fact, as in his early
statue representing the Negro breaking loose his
fetters. But the various theories concerning art
which study in Paris might have taught him,
and which in a measure are the shibboleth of
people whose faith in facts has dwindled, and,
42 AMERICAN MASTERS
unless reallied to actual facts, are but "vacant
chaff well meant for grain," he had no means of
learning in his youth, and throughout his man-
hood, I suspect, has had little patience with.
Still at the bottom of all theories is the principle
that it is not in the subject but in the manner of
presenting it that a work of art is proclaimed ;
that technique and motive should be indissolubly
wedded — to their mutual perfection if each is
choice, and, if either is inferior, to a mutual loss.
This was not recognised in America in Ward's
youth, nor until much later; and none of his
work, it is probably true to say, reveals that par-
ticular kind of craftsmanlike facility which dis-
tinguishes the work of the sculptor who has been
trained abroad, and by the side of this more
accomplished modelling Ward's statues often
appear crude. But if they lack the stylistic
quality, the best of them have a force which more
than compensates. It results from a strong feel-
ing for design, the general accumulative effect
of the whole composition, which itself results
from a strong antecedent feeling for form. The
latter seems to characterise all self-taught stu-
dents,whether sculptors or painters ; and, although,
as their experience broadens, there may be
increased subtlety of expression, the primary
characteristic of their work will continue to be
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD 43
a very strong sense and enjoyment of the struc-
tural facts of the figure or landscape, and most
frequently in their simplest and directest mani-
festations. And in the case of sculpture this is an
especially valuable gift of vision, since the most
sculptural quality in sculpture is unquestionably
that of form: its solidity, stability and natural
grace or dignity of movement. It is precisely
in these particulars that some of our foreign-
taught sculptors, while easily excelling Ward in
refinements of detail, fall short of him.
As a boy he had been devoted to fashioning
with his fingers, and, at the age of nineteen,
entered the studio of Henry Kirke Brown. The
latter, after practising as a sculptor at Albany,
had spent some five years in Europe, chiefly in
Italy; but, feeling strongly that an American
should occupy himself with American subjects,
and to that end should work in his own country,
resisted the tendency among sculptors of that
day to join the American colony in Rome or
Florence. He therefore returned and engaged
upon the equestrian statue of Washington, now
in Union Square, New York. Ward assisted
him in the work and gained thereby a fine
experience of what makes for nobility in design.
He must have profited also by companionship
with a man of such large and generous mind.
44 AMERICAN MASTERS
But his stay in the studio was short, and for the
rest he has been the architect of his own career.
A fragment remains of his student work, a
study for a high-relief in which an Indian is
represented breaking and burning his arrows —
an episode of the voyage of Hendrik Hudson.
One cannot help noticing the naivete of the
composition, the simple intention of representing
the action just as it might have happened; the
apparent unconsciousness that any academic
considerations were involved. It, no doubt,
represents the attitude of his mind at that time,
and to a very considerable extent prefigures the
lines along which his development was to pro-
ceed. Thus a year or two later, while he was
working in Washington and executing busts of
many leading men of the time, and the whole
country began to seethe with passion over the
slave question, Ward's contribution to it is
"The Freedman." It shows simply a Negro, in
an entirely natural pose, who has put forth his
strength and is looking very quietly at the broken
fetters. The whole gist of the matter is thus em-
bodied in a most terse and direct fashion, without
rodomontade or sentimentality, but solely as an
objective fact into which there is no intrusion of
the sculptor's personal feeling. But of his personal
point of view toward his art there is abundant
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD 45
testimony. This figure, which was never repro-
duced larger than statuette size, but in that
form had a wide popularity, proves how keen
and true was Ward's instinct for the sculpturesque
qualities of sculpture and for the limit to which
it is safe to go in the interpretation of sentiment.
The latter is simply enforced by the action of the
figure.
In order that he might have opportunities of
studying form in the freedom of movement, he
visited the western frontier and lived for
a while among the Indians. A statue of this
period is "The Indian Hunter," which now stands
in bronze in Central Park, New York. Again it
is a strikingly vivid realisation of actual facts;
of the racial characteristics of both the man and
his dog, and of their respective kinds of move-
ment: the man's, stealthy and powerfully con-
trolled ; the dog's, more keen and alert and need-
ing to be checked. Again, too, one feels, I think,
the absence of any preconceived theories of
technique, so that the group has something of a
primitive, almost barbarous feeling; which, how-
ever, seems strangely appropriate to the subject.
Yet it is easy to understand that for a young
sculptor, so resolutely facing natural facts and
untrained in academic teaching of what is right
and what is wrong, a table of doctrines which may
46 AMERICAN MASTERS
easily lead to dry formalism, but which yet holds
many directions and warnings of value, there
will be shoals ahead. The actual may readily
drift into the commonplace; and that some of
Ward's portrait-statues should be of small account
was to be expected from the circumstances of
his self -wrought development and peculiar per-
sonal point of view. They were the stepping-
stones by which he gradually rose to higher
things. For the thing to be noticed is that he
eventually reached the power that is exhibited
in such works as the "Greeley," "Washington,"
"Lafayette," "General Thomas," and in that
masterpiece, the "Beecher" statue, by following
with undeviating persistence the promptings of
his youth; only that with matured experience
came a clearer discrimination of the salient facts,
and a deeper understanding of what they truly
signified. In a word, he reached beyond the
fact to its significance.
It may be mainly the significance of clothes,
as in that remarkable statue of "Lafayette" at
Burlington, Vermont, in which he represents the
hero of two revolutions as a middle-aged dandy.
I cannot say whether he saw behind Lafayette's
support of liberty, as Carlyle did, but at any rate
the figure has simply the easy dignity of a well-
bred man, whose embonpoint has modified but
THE GREELEY STATUE
By John Quincy Adams Ward
THE BEECHER STATUE
By John Quincy Adams Ward
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD 47
not effaced his debonair demeanour and whose
clothes set gracefully to his person. Yet the
person is unmistakably enforced. The man is not
lost in the millinery, as one may have noticed
in some costume statues ; and it is in this respect
that Ward has shown his true appreciation of the
significance of clothes. They not only envelop
the figure as naturally as a skin, and with no
hindrance to the imagining of the body inside
them, but they adapt themselves completely to
the character of the man as shown in the pose
of the body and expression of the head. They
have been reduced, in fact, to an abstraction
corresponding to the sculptor's conception of the
man.
In the "Washington" statue, which stands
upon the steps of the Sub-Treasury Building in
Wall Street, the sculptor had the advantage of a
picturesque costume, and he has treated it with
the same masterful ease. Yet on this occasion
our attention is not divided between the sig-
nificance of the clothes and that of the figure.
The latter represents Washington in the cere-
mony of taking the oath of office in 1789, an
event which happened near the spot now occu-
pied by the statue. The pose is entirely free
from heroics : that of a noble, true-hearted gentle-
man, conscious of the dignity and responsibility
4& AMERICAN MASTERS
of the occasion. One could have wished that the
legs were planted more squarely on the ground, as
it would have increased the statuesque assertive-
ness of the figure ; but it is quite possible that the
sculptor intentionally avoided this, in the desire
to suggest that it was at the call of duty and not
of personal ambition that Washington accepted
office. So he has taken the weight off the right
foot and advanced it slightly, thus giving a
pliant, curving motion to the body, and with it a
touch of hesitancy to the pose. Backed by the
classic fagade of the Sub-Treasury Building the
statue is very happily placed, and amid the
turmoil of the neighbourhood strikes a note which
is refreshingly true and noble.
No less turmoil surrounds the Greeley monu-
ment in Newspaper Row and, outwardly at any
rate, of a less savoury character. Moreover, its
pedestal abuts upon a narrow sidewalk, and the
figure, seated in an armchair, has the unhelpful
background of a large plate-glass window. It is
itself, too, of shambling build, uncouthly costumed,
the large, round face, oddly fringed with a rim
of whiskers. The legs are wide apart; one arm
rests on the back of the chair, the other lies upon
the thigh, its hand holding a sheet of paper;
the round shoulders droop forward, and the head
is inclined so as to bring into view the flat, dome-
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD 49
like skull. Yes, the whole composition is the
very reverse of what we usually understand by
statuesque, and thousands pass and repass it
daily without any recognition, so occupied are
they in threading their way through the swarm
of loud-lunged sellers of chronic "specials."
Yet if you will step back into the roadway,
at the risk of being demolished by trolley-cars or
wagons full of mile-long rolls of paper, you cannot
fail to be impressed by the very strangeness of
the figure. How full of character it is ! Sitting
back almost in a heap, pondering some point,
the figure yet suggests that it is about to rise
and put its resolve into action, so remarkable is
the mixture of downrightedness and alacrity.
It is indeed a representation of character truly
original and of a convincing force, that bears the
stamp of genius. Let us place it in our respect
alongside of Saint-Gaudens's "Peter Cooper,"
as equally a triumph of art over uncompromising
material, and, indeed, along similar lines of un-
flinching acceptance of the actual facts of the
problem, and of broad, ample sympathy with
nobility, though it does not lie upon the surface.
For the convenience of analysing Ward's
methods I have ventured to regard these three
statues as examples of the significance, respect-
ively, of clothes, form and character. Not
5 o AMERICAN MASTERS
quite accurately, I admit, because the three
motives unite in all in various proportions; but
perhaps I am right in feeling a preponderance of
the one in each. However that may be, we
shall find a completely balanced union of all three
in the Beecher monument. The sculptor had
particularly in mind the episode of Henry Ward
Beecher's visit to England in 1863, on a special
mission from President Lincoln, for the purpose
of bringing to English public notice the true
position of the North. He was met by noisy
opposition, but bore it down by indomitable
endurance and intellectual force. In the strongly
marked, mobile features ; in the intellectuality of
the head, carried so resolutely above the broad
chest; in the striking simplicity of the quiet,
stalwart pose, no less than in the absence of all
rhetorical gesture in the arms, which are sus-
pended at the sides; even to such a detail as the
right hand, not clenched aggressively or held in
indecision, but with the fingers drawn up to the
thumb, a gesture that mingles alertness with
poise, the figure expresses character, rocklike
will and mental preeminence. The Inverness
cape serves to give increased weight and breadth
to the form; one arm being restrained within its
folds, the other free for a fling of action if the
occasion require it. The figure bears down
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD 51
upon its pedestal, column-like, monumental in
the highest degree. It is a portrait-statue of
most extraordinary impressiveness.
The equestrian statue of General Thomas at
Washington, District of Columbia, is a spirited and
arresting composition. The rider presents a por-
trait study of considerable power, but the sculptor in
his zeal for the actual has seized upon the fact that
Thomas was not a practised horseman. He does
not move in his seat with the motion of the horse,
his bridle-hand lacks control, and the action of
the horse's head proclaims it. One may enjoy a
detail so minute as that of the hand in the Beecher
statue, because it is contributory to the total
effect, and equally regret this insistence upon a
personal peculiarity of the General, since the
total effect is thereby diminished. Such a
detail is local and insignificant, only to be appre-
ciated by a few of his comrades ; but the statue
will endure and be judged for what it presents;
a general and his horse — do they move as one?
is the personal supremacy of the rider main-
tained ?
The pedestal of the "Beecher" is embellished
with figures. On one side a woman and on the
other a little girl is depositing a wreath, and a
boy is steadying the latter figure. They are
well modelled in natural and graceful movement,
52 AMERICAN MASTERS
but they impart a touch of sentimentality, so alien
to Ward's habit and, indeed, to the spirit of the
statue, that I wonder whether they were not a
concession to the wish of the subscribers. Figures
again adorn the pedestal of the Garfield monu-
ment in Washington, and among them is to be
found a most successful treatment of the nude.
"The Student" is an admirable example of
Ward's knowledge of form and of his discretion
in rendering it. His ability as a decorative
sculptor was shown in the group of "Sea-horses
and Victory" which crowned the temporary
Naval Arch in 1899, though executed many
years before. Equally pronounced were the
joyous elevation of the forms against the sky and
the harmonious unity of the whole as a mass.
It proved that Ward's management of composition
was as thorough in a complicated group as in a
single figure. He is now engaged upon the
pediment for the recently erected Stock Exchange
Building in New York. As I have seen only the
model — and that has been subjected to various
modifications — it would be premature to discuss
it. But it bids fair to be a most memorable
work, fitly crowning by its magnitude and
importance a long and honourable career.
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH
IV
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH
A MONG the earlier works of Daniel C.
French is a bust of Emerson, a truly
admirable rendering of the mingled nobility and
sweetness of the well-known face, of the human
kindliness which warmed the pure and abstract
elevation of his mind. It reminds us that in
his youth French enjoyed acquaintance with the
philosopher of Concord and came under the
influence of other famous spirits who formed the
little group of high thinkers and plain livers,
with whom it was also an axiom, of more than
incidental importance, that Americans should
shake their minds free of the European point of
view and develop a culture for themselves out
of the genius of their own conditions.
French, himself of New England stock, born
at Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1850, came under
these influences at the impressionable age of
eighteen, when he began to model under the
instruction of a member of the Alcott family,
55
56 AMERICAN MASTERS
the head of which, Amos Bronson, had been one
of the leading writers in The Dial. Moreover,
his own nature, one may suspect, furnished
congenial soil for the germination of the seeds
which it received during this time, since the
fruit of his maturity savours unmistakably of
these conditions. And this, notwithstanding that
he spent many subsequent years in Florence,
where his master was Thomas Ball, a blithe,
sweet nature, gentle, refined, and full of bon-
homie. Here again was a continuance of, at
least, the gracious influences which had surrounded
French's growth from the beginning, and it was
in the light of these that he sucked in nourishment
from the environment of Florence. To judge
by the tenor of his afterwork, the treasures of
the city did not affect him very directly; here
and there we may find a hint of assimilated style,
notably in the angels for the Clark monument in
the Forest Hills Cemetery; but for the most part,
apparently, the impressions of these days served
to give artistic indorsement to the gracious
elevation of the earlier literary ones. Even the
work upon which he engaged himself at that time,
a statue of "Endymion," was a following of
the Canova tradition, still lingering in Italy,
rather than of the beckonings of the older art,
and chiefly characteristic of himself by reason
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 57
of the calm, passionless purity of the emotion
involved.
The degree and quality of emotion which
enters into an artist's work must constitute one
of the most important elements in his art and
will even affect that other essential element,
the character of his technique. How his work
will affect ourselves will largely depend upon
the extent to which we respond, either by nature
or by a habit of cultivation, to the particular
kind of emotion which he portrays. On the
other hand, a great number of people seem unable
to appreciate the emotional quality in a work
of art and look only for the intellectual, while
more than a few artists display little or nothing
of the latter quality and exaggerate the sensuous.
Especially are they apt to limit the range of
the emotions to one kind, that of love, and to
regard it exclusively in its sexual manifestation.
In this way the word passion, with its deep
significance of an emotion so strong as to bring
suffering, has been belittled. Some art is the
product of this nobler kind of passion, a good
deal is only a tiresome reiteration of the lower
kind, and, again, there is art which emanates
from a tranquillity of spirit undisturbed by either
kind of passion. It is in this last category that
French's art seems to belong.
58 AMERICAN MASTERS
My own appreciation of it recalls the memory
of a certain mountain pool. I had made an
early start on a summer's day, rising in the
cheerless glimmer before the dawn and spending
some two hours as one of many sleepy passengers
in a stuffy train. Alighting at a drowsy little
town, where small farmers congregate to pursue
their petty barterings, I began the ascent by a
bridle path, steep, stony and dusty, winding
frequently as it steadily mounted. By noon
I had reached an elevation midway between the
last belt of trees and the snow-line and could
look down upon the cloud-mists that clung like
patches of wool to the forest, and farther down
to the green bowl of the valley, with its flashes
of river and thin spirals of gray smoke. Above
me was a more venturesome climb, to have
accomplished which would have entailed stouter
endurance and more painful effort, crowned, it
may be, with a keener, fiercer exaltation. But,
as it was I felt exalted. The spacious prospect,
the crystalline purity of the air, a labour that
had fully taxed my natural strength, combined
to produce a condition of most perfect spiritual
exhilaration, stealing over me so unconsciously
as at last to be realised with surprise. The
memory of it represents to me the clearest
comprehension of passionless emotion and of
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 59
the mental atmosphere in which a work of art
that has not been conceived in the throes of
passion may spring forth and be matured.
Full to the brim of this sensuous elation, I
wandered from the path and found myself beside
a pool that caught within its deep hollow some-
thing of the sky's blue and the glint of a passing
cloud; otherwise mirroring only the surrounding
banks and my own figure, bending over to peer
through the cold, clear water to the bottom.
Quite near it was to the dusty, beaten track,
yet secluded, cradled within its own niche of the
great mountain, placidly exhaling its water to
the sky, whence it was in turn to receive its
sustenance. Again I am helped to understand
the beautiful reasonableness of art; although it
may not be of the kind which mirrors the wide
experiences of life, holds within it the mystery
of impenetrable depth, or stirs the soul to loftiest
heights of sensuous and intellectual compre-
hension. For, if the artist sets his art at the
highest spot that his powers permit, keeps it
secluded from the passing traffic of the world,
unsullied, fresh, that it may give clear reflection
to the figures of the imagination which, in the
calm elation of this upper air, he brings to its
margin, then he has done something for which the
world is infinitely better.
60 AMERICAN MASTERS
It is an art of this kind which French, if I
mistake not, represents — elevated, but passion-
less; always true to its noblest and sweetest
promptings; mingling intellectual grace with the
graciousness of pure emotion.
His first statue was the " Minute Man, " erected
on the old battle-field at Concord in 1875. The
young farmer is standing with one hand upon
the plow and in the other grasping a musket,
his head alert, as if he were waiting for a summons,
the body held ready to advance. Though a
work of immaturity and giving little promise
of its author's subsequent accomplishment, it
yet has something of the sweet uplifting of
sentiment that will reappear later with more
assurance of conviction and with maturer technical
expression. The next important work was the
seated figure of John Harvard, unveiled at
Cambridge in 1884. During that interval of
nine years French had made extraordinary
progress. Whether we consider the conception
of the personality or the character of the tech-
nique, this statue is the work of a man who has
attained to a realization of his true bent and to
a freedom and force of craftsmanship. The
dignity of quietude, a self-contained aloofness,
the tender graciousness of a refined spirit, a
gentle, unforced sincerity — these are the qualities
DEATH AND THE SCULPTOR
By Daniel Chester French
tium the Milmore Monument, Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston
DETAIL OF THE CLARK MONUMENT
By Daniel Chester French
Forest Hills Cemetery
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 61
in himself which the sculptor has imparted to
this figure. He has represented in it the fine
flower of Puritan scholarship and devotion to
the higher claims of humanity. It is impossible
not to detect in this characterisation an echo of
the sculptor's own early memories, and more or
less they abide with him up to the present time.
In correspondence with the development of his
own ideals is that of his technique. It has
acquired a breadth and unity of feeling, a regard
for the mass and a tact of choice in the selection
of details, a mingling of suavity and monumental
stability, a disposition of the drapery, natural
and yet enriched with elegant surprises. The
statue is at once imposing and full of grace.
During the next decade French had opportuni-
ties for developing the imaginative tendencies
which had already shown themselves during his
student days. The chief works of this period
are the "Gallaudet Memorial" in Washington,
District of Columbia, the Milmore monument
in Forest Hills Cemetery, better known as
"Death and the Sculptor," the "John Boyle
O'Reilley Memorial," and the "Statue of the
Republic" at the Chicago Exposition. The
"Gallaudet" represents the great teacher of deaf
and dumb mutes in the act of instructing his
first pupil. He has his arm around the girl,
62 AMERICAN MASTERS
and each raises a hand to fashion the silent talk,
while they gaze into each other's faces in the
rapt effort of mutual comprehension. The group
is thus realistic in its conception, but developed
with a degree of sympathy that passes into lovely
imaginativeness as the sculptor penetrates the
mystery of communication between these two
creatures. Purely imaginative, however, is the
following work: The untimely death of the
sculptor, Martin Milmore, is here commemorated
by an allegory of Death arresting the hand of a
sculptor as he is engaged in perfecting his work.
He is scarcely more than a youth, well-knit and
lithe in figure, with a sweet seriousness of face;
and as he plies the mallet and chisel, carving
anew at the world-old problem of the Sphinx,
putting forth his brave young strength in pursuit
of a yet undimmed ideal, a gentle touch inter-
poses between his hand and work. He turns his
head from the enigma to face the reality of a
Presence — a female figure, her head tenderly
bowed in the shadowed obscurity of a heavy
veil, mighty wings calmly folded at her back, a
bunch of poppies in her grasp. The youth has
not yet comprehended who and what she is,
only the ineffable sadness of her face rivets his
questioning gaze. He is face to face with another
enigma — that of Death.
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 63
This memorial has won more admirers than
perhaps any other of the sculptor's works, and
the reason is not far to seek. The allegory
conveys a human story with such precision and
tender sincerity that all can read it and few can
fail to be affected. Moreover, the story is told
with artistic propriety, the character of the
memorial being sculpturesque. The dignity of
form in the round has been boldly asserted; the
device of clothing the youth's figure in a tightly
fitting suit permits a contrast of vigorous, clean-
cut form with the drowsy, sensuous suggestion
of the sweeps and folds of drapery on the other
figure, and these again are relieved by the strong,
simple modelling of the wings. Moreover, the
varied emphasis of these figures in the round,
placed against the quiet, smooth levels of low-
relief in the background, results in a colour-
scheme of striking handsomeness ; the gradations
from dark to light mingling richness and delicacy
of tone, while the passages are distributed with
such variety of bold and subtle contrasts as to
be exceptionally decorative. And it is by these
devices, as well as by the action of the two figures
and the expression of their faces, that the senti-
ment of the subject is conveyed.
The quality of the sentiment in this particular
group is fairly characteristic of French's range
64 AMERICAN MASTERS
of emotional expression. It has more of elevation
than of breadth and depth. Not that it is lacking
in either candour or sincerity, but, like Truth
at the bottom of the well, it exists in a cool, clear,
undisturbed element, its gaze concentrated on
the circle of sky above, a glimpse of abstract
inspiration, checkered by the occasional passage
of a bird or by some wayfarer's shadow. Sepa-
rated from the turmoil of human passion it
touches the theme of humanity with a gracious
tenderness that leans toward an elegant ideali-
sation and to an attitude of feeling that is far
less human than artistic. I would cite, as an
illustration of what I am trying to express, the
fact that Death has been symbolised by a woman
of noble and inviting mien, whose arms might
fold themselves around the young sculptor's
form as with a mother's caress, while, she pressed
the poppies on his brow and wooed him to eternal
sleep. It is a beautiful idea, which touches our
fancy, but not the heart that has experienced
the pain of loss; and in its lyrical melodiousness
we miss the snapping discord that would hint at
the tragedy of a career of promise abruptly cut.
Similarly, a delicate fancy rather than imagina-
tion pervades the monument erected to the
memory of the poet O'Reilley. This group of
three figures may be felt also to establish a doubt,
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 65
aroused by the previous work, as to whether the
sculptor is fortunate in the treatment of a com-
position which involves more than one figure.
Neither of them is conspicuous for organic unity
or for relational value in the parts. It is, indeed,
in the management of a single figure that French
produces the most complete ensemble. Among
these the colossal "Statue of the Republic"
at the Chicago Exposition marks, if I mistake
not, a turning-point in his art. Here, for the
first time, his matured powers came into direct
contact with the influence of architecture.
Hitherto his imagination had played around
the subject represented; now it became absorbed
in the architectonic significance of the statue
itself, as a feature of isolated and conspicuous
emphasis in a great scheme of monumental
architecture. Removed from the surroundings
for which it was conceived, the "Republic" is
scarcely beautiful, the contours being rigid, the
pose monotonous; yet these qualities became in
its appointed place the very source of its
indubitable stateliness; of its value as a focus-
point in the long vista of the Court of Honour
and as an expression in heroic shape of the dignity
of the Republic.
At this time French came into close contact
with the architect, Charles F. McKim, and the
66 AMERICAN MASTERS
intimacy has ripened into very frequent col-
laboration, so that, although he has executed
other commissions, such as that clever character-
study, the statue of Rufus Choate, and, in
cooperation with E. C. Potter, a spirited and
impressive equestrian statue of Washington,
his work has become more and more identified
with sculpture in its relation to architecture.
To a mind like his, that seems always to have
leaned toward the abstract, this alliance with an
art so free from direct human allusion must have
followed quite naturally. Yet we may be disposed
to regret a transition which has in a measure, if
I may use the word, dehumanised his art, which
broke off his development when it had acquired
a charm of poetical expression not too usual in
this country, and would appear to have curtailed
the freedom and individuality of his manner.
Certainly, the series of figures for the Capitol
at St. Paul, Minn., lack the distinction and vital
worthiness of some of his earlier work; and even
the latest statue of "Alma Mater," beautiful
as it unquestionably is, I can hardly feel
belongs among his best.
In the centre of the spacious paved court that
forms the southern and chief approach to Columbia
University, at the foot of the steps which lead
up to the library — one of McKim's most choice
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 67
and impressive designs — she sits enthroned;
clothed in a loose robe and college gown, a volume
open on her knees, the arms extending upward
from the elbows which rest upon the chair, one
hand holding a scepter, the other open with a
gesture of welcome. The face is of a familiar
type of American beauty, corresponding with
the very modern suggestion of the whole figure.
Yet the sculptor has invested the head with an
air of dispassionate refinement which gives it a
certain aloofness; scarcely more, however, than
the self-possession, consciously unconscious, with
which the American woman can carry her beauty.
It is almost as if one of them had mounted the
pedestal and, with a ready wit embracing the
situation, were enacting the part of patroness to
the university. Every student will love her
and her influence will be altogether one of sweet
nobility ; but whether he will receive any inspira-
tion in the direction of the highest art and
scholarship is less sure. The immediate
fascination of the statue is that in feeling it is
thoroughly modern and American; and, if it fails
to comprehend the complex elements drawn from
all sources and times which mingle in our highest
civilisation, it is precisely because it is limited
in character to the local and contemporary.
We recall that French in his youth came under
68 AMERICAN MASTERS
the influence of Emerson, one of whose tenets
was, as far as possible, to ignore European
traditions, and to draw his illustrations from the
society and manners of the United States; that
French himself lived some time in Florence
without assimilating its influence directly, has
habitually confined himself to rendering types
of American character and has gradually dis-
covered for himself a personal form of technical
expression. To this personal isolation may be
traced both the excellence and the limitations
of his technique.
It is distinguished by a pure and poignant
serenity, by a monumental feeling penetrated
with a sort of gentle sprightliness ; for the
expression which he puts into the modelling of
the limbs can scarcely be characterised by a
word of more sensitive application. In his
handling of an arm or hand, still more of the
articulation of a wrist, his method is so dis-
passionate as to betray little fascination in the
loveliness of form and movement. In this
respect his technique, as compared with modern
French sculpture, is deficient in the stylistic
quality, lacking the raciness and the suggestive
piquancy of craftsmanlike precision. As to the
finer quality, that of style, in which thought is
wedded to technique in a union choicely appro-
ALMA MATER
By Daniel Chester French
Columbia University
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH 69
priate, indefinably distinguished, one may detect
it in his angels for the Clark monument, par-
ticularly in the treatment of the head and wings.
But these panels are, perhaps, the only examples
of his work in which a direct influence of his
sojourn in Florence can be traced. They are
imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance.
When, as usually, he works in an atmosphere
circumscribed by local considerations, I doubt
if we shall find this added savour of style. He
handles drapery with evident delight, but scarcely
with an independent control of the material.
Having arranged it upon the model with perfect
taste, he copies the folds and volumes. They
seldom display that touch of artistic arbitrariness
which a master of style would give them, com-
pelling them to yield to the precise shade of
expression demanded by the subtle union of
his hand and brain. In the "Death and the
Sculptor" the drapery reaches a measure of
style, but scarcely in the "Alma Mater"; and
this is precisely one of the reasons of the suggestion
that a woman has been suddenly metamorphosed
into a statue. The drapery is not idealised.
Yet, if it is only on rare occasions that French's
work evinces style, it is never without a very
rare and fine distinction — the impress of a man
who reverences his art and has yielded her the
70 AMERICAN MASTERS
devotion of a refined and elevated spirit. If the
localness of its range may have been at the
expense of some desirable qualities, it has
endeared it to the greater number of people and
presented an invaluable incentive to many a
young artist to seek his ideals in his own country.
If it fails to touch the deeper chords of human
emotion, it is always purifying and uplifting.
With maturity it has lost nothing of its original
freshness, and has had an abiding influence for
good upon American art and life.
FREDERICK MACMONNIES
V
FREDERICK MACMONNIES
PENETRATING the American temperament
is a strong vein of boyishness, alertness,
elasticity of mind, a happy disregard of difficulty
and a buoyant hopefulness; a predisposition to
humour and a refusal, except in really serious
matters, to take life seriously; a national grace
of gaiety. It is this phase of Americanism that
is reflected in the sculpture of Frederick Mac-
monnies.
He is himself a remarkable example of maturity
in youth. To-day, in this year 1903, he is but
forty, yet in variety and quality the work accom-
plished has been prodigious, and he has long since
reached a notable eminence both at home and in
Paris. The latter has been pretty constantly
his place of sojourn since 1884, and he has proved
himself fully in touch with its spirit, at least with
that exhalation of elegant materialism which
hovers over its deeper qualities. For, except in
the statues of Nathan Hale and James S. T.
Stranahan, and possibly in his "Shakespeare"
73
74 AMERICAN MASTERS
of the Congressional Library, Macmonnies has
shown himself more alive to the external charm
of form than to its expression of underlying
qualities of deeper significance.
At the age of seventeen he had the good
fortune to be received into the studio of Saint -
Gaudens as an apprentice-pupil, where he worked
for some four years, meanwhile attending the
life classes at the Academy of Design and the
Art Students' League. Even in those days he
developed an extraordinary manual skill, and
his drawings also are remembered by his fellow-
students as being quite unusually graceful and
true. He had, moreover, the privilege of working
under the master, at the time of his greatest
productivity, when his studio was the resort of
the best architects, sculptors and painters; so
that he grew up under the most favoured conditions,
corresponding in kind to those experienced by
apprentices of the fifteenth century in the bottegas
of the Florentine masters.
Accordingly, when Macmonnies went to Europe,
in 1884, his experience and knowledge were far
beyond what students of his age usually possess.
However, the first visit to Paris was abruptly
terminated by the cholera, before which he
retreated to Munich, and for some months studied
painting. Then followed a tour on foot over the
FREDERICK MACMONNIES 75
Alps, when a summons from Saint-Gaudens
recalled him home. For a year he assisted the
master and then returned to Paris, this time
entering the Ecole des Beaux Arts and studying
under Falguiere; with such success that he
twice won the Prix d' Atelier, which ranks next
to the Prix de Rome and is the highest prize
open to foreigners. Then, taking a studio of
his own, he executed his first statue, a "Diana,"
which gained an Honourable Mention at the
Salon. A commission for three angels in bronze
for the Church of St. Paul in New York was
followed in 1889 and 1890 by orders for the
Hale and Stranahan statues, for the latter
of which he received a Second Medal at the
Salon, the only instance of an American sculptor
being thus honoured. After executing two small
fountain designs, for which he modelled a " Pan of
Rohallion" and a "Faun with Heron," he found
himself confronted with the big problem of the
Columbia fountain, the most important sculptural
group at the Chicago Exposition. Since then,
in addition to many statuettes, medallions, busts
and low-relief portraits he has accomplished
such notable works as the "Bacchante," the
statue of Sir Harry Vane, the "Shakespeare,"
pediments for the Bowery Savings Bank and
spandrils for the Washington Arch in New York,
76 AMERICAN MASTERS
a quadriga for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial
Arch in Brooklyn and horse groups for the
entrance to Prospect Park, a "Victory" for the
battle monument at West Point and colossal
groups for the Indiana State Soldiers' and Sailors'
Memorial at Indianapolis. The mere enumera-
tion of this incomplete list of works, representing
a period that scarcely exceeds ten years, testifies
to the artist's energy and inventiveness. That
such an exuberance of output should affect the
quality of his work was almost inevitable. The
precise way in which it seems to have done so is
interesting, in relation not only to Macmonnies's
career, but to the art generally. It has, indeed,
a reference to the artist's manner of using his
model, to the degree in which his imagination
maintains a control over or succumbs to the facts
of the living subject.
It is true the model will frequently suggest
an idea to the artist. Some arrest of action,
momentary gesture, or the movement of relaxa-
tion, as the figure, tired with posing, extends
itself, will supply the artist's eye, ever on the
alert for impressions, with the hint of a motive
which his imagination will develop into a serious
and beautiful work. He will use the model to
build up the structural fabric of his ideas, and,
if need be, to elaborate the facts, but unless he
By permission of Theodore B. Starr, New York
DIANA
By Frederick Macmonnies
By permission of Theodore B. Starr, New York
BACCHANTE
By Frederick Macmonnies
FREDERICK MACMONNIES 77
can modify the facts of the figure by elimination
or accentuation and invest his rendering of them
with that intangible something which does not exist
in the model, but in the impression which the latter
has made upon his imagination, the result will
scarcely fail to bear the earmark of being a copy.
Doubtless the artist will lessen the probability
of this, indeed, may entirely remove it, by his
absorption in the technical subtleties of obtaining
an illusion of actual facts out of his inert material ;
but this, after all, is one of the active forms of
his artistic imagination. If he exercises it with
enthusiasm he is still maintaining his ascendency
over the objectivity of the model. This is the
kind of realism in which the Japanese carver
indulges on his sword hilt. The facts are for him
merely an excuse for revelling in the enjoyment
of his skill — the closer his rendering of them the
greater his triumph over the medium — and we
ourselves in examining his work lose cognisance
of the facts in our wonder at the skill of crafts-
manship.
This is a very different kind of realism from
that exhibited in the statue which crowned the
principal entrance of the recent Paris Exposition.
The figure presumably was to symbolise modern
Paris. Perhaps it was in a spirit of mischief,
certainly without much sense of humour and
78 AMERICAN MASTERS
with no imagination, that the sculptor sought his
model in a well-known magazin des modes,
selecting the most famous of the young ladies,
on whose beautiful figure the mantles and cloaks
are set, that the patronesses of the establishment
may see by a supreme effort of the imagination
how they will set upon themselves. He repre-
sented her in a costume a la mode. The statue
stood against the sky, a monument of common-
place, trivial and ridiculous.
But, without going to any such lengths in
demeaning his imagination, the artist may still
allow it to become hypnotised by his model. I
was very much struck by the remark of a painter,
whose nudes are exquisitely pure and poetical
in type, that it was his habit as soon as he had
secured the facts of the figure to discontinue the
model, since he found that otherwise he was apt
to become possessed by it. And is it not a fact
that in very many statues and pictures one
detects the evidence of this possession? Is it
absent in Macmonnies's later work?
The earlier is alive with spontaneous, creative
energy, which shows itself most characteristically
in works like the "Cupid on Ball," "Boy with
Heron," and the "Diana." The last has been
criticised for being "nervous and strained" in
manner. Not quite justly, perhaps, since the
FREDERICK MACMONNIES 79
long, lean limbs are precisely those of one accus-
tomed to swift movement; the movement in this
case is free and elastic, and the whole gesture of
the body expressive of keen and practiced energy ;
no antique type, it is true, but its modern anti-
thesis, the girl whose graceful lines have been
strung and whose grace of action liberated by
physical activities. The figure has the buoyancy
and poise of mass and charm of living lines which
distinguish the work of Macmonnies as much as
the actual beauty of modelling. These traits
reappear in a most fascinating way in the artless
grace of the "Cupid," bounding along with head
and shoulders thrown back, as he discharges
an arrow behind him. The action of the body
is quick with naturalness, and yet the disposition
of every part, even to such a detail as the fingers,
reveals the shrewd arrangement of a choicely
refined taste — an instinctive taste, operating
almost unconsciously, with a frank, boyish impul-
siveness, high spirited and not without a spice of
mischievous humour. For note the redoubtable
struggle between the "Boy with Heron"; the
youngster planted firmly and putting forth his
strength so stubbornly, the bird thrashing the
air with its wings and writhing its body angrily.
How will it end ? Is it only a tumble of sport, or
will the young creature of the earth not let go
80 AMERICAN MASTERS
until the creature of the air is subdued, perhaps
maimed, killed? Or, again, in the "Pan of
Rohallion" the boy stands upon a ball supported
by miniature dolphins, which spout their streams
of water and look up as if listening, while he blows
the two reeds that issue at a broad angle from his
impish mouth, leaning back to inflate his chest
until his body describes an arc. It is the attitude
of a saucy child that has taken the measure of
its little self from the affectionate indulgence
that surrounds it; again, not an antique type,
nor rustically impish like a Puck, but with the
engaging elegance and self-conscious roguery of a
certain kind of modern urchin.
Yes, modernity is the key to which all Mac-
monnies's work is pitched ; an echo not of the
modern mind, but of the modern temperament.
So we may be disposed to prefer the earlier ones,
while his temperament was still fresh and frank
and exuberant with the insouciance of youth.
Later on the exuberance is at once more conscious
and less spontaneous, In the "Diana" there
was an abounding healthfulness of liberated
energy; in the "Bacchante" a suggestion of
energy, reenforced with champagne. Truly, this
is not an inapt suggestion for a bacchante to
make ; but we are a long way from the anthropo-
morphic tendency of the antique mind which
FREDERICK MACMONNIES 81
personified the power of wine in its social and
beneficent aspects, and saw in Bacchus the god
of civilisation and in his devotees the frenzy of
divine inspiration. Moreover, there is no sugges-
tion of this in the statue. The figure is of modern
type, rendered with undisguised naturalness.
After being declined by the trustees of the Boston
Public Library, it is now in the Metropolitan
Museum, where among the variety of impressions
it loses its startling emphasis and takes its place
naturally as one of the cleverest pieces of modern
sculpture. For of its exceeding cleverness there
can be no doubt. The action is such as no model
could maintain in its vivacity for more than a
moment; the artist has seized it in all its flow
and suppleness of movement and held it in his
imagination to the finish. It is a statue which
we can almost accept as an example of the
predominance of technique over the facts of the
living model, except for a certain look-at-me-
ishness which seems to result from the artist's
consciousness that his problem was a daring
exhibition of skill. There is just a little too much
protestation of skill in the whole conception,
just as there is too much protestation of hilarity
in the girl's face. Her gaiety is hysterical, the
composition lacking in artistic sanity.
Both the Nathan Hale and the Stranahan
82 AMERICAN MASTERS
statues were completed when the artist was only
twenty-eight years of age. The former, since
no portrait of Hale exists, is an effort of imagina-
tion, the latter of observation and by far the
finer work. For, while Macmonnies is gifted
with a very delightful imaginativeness, he has
not so far shown himself possessed of the deeper
qualities of imagination. The Hale scarcely rises
above a graceful and touching sentimentality;
there is a point-device nicety in the carriage of
the figure; it stands well upon its feet, but with
an air of debonair primness and too conscious
rectitude. The point of view is a little imma-
ture. In the Stranahan, however, the frankness of
youth has helped the artist. He had seen many
a sculptor go down before the difficulty of a
figure in modern civilian garb, but he had also
seen his master, Saint-Gaudens, triumph over it
in his " Lincoln." So, as a boy to prove he is not
afraid, grasps the nettle tightly and is not stung,
Macmonnies grasped his problem and succeeded.
He contrives no ingenious arrangement nor
extenuates any detail of the costume, but actually
makes it interesting by the charming handling of
the masses and textures. With equal directness
he has represented the character of the figure:
stable, composed, yet animated, while to the
observation of the head he has brought a sym-
FREDERICK MACMONNIES 83
pathetic and reverent study, which results in a
singular nobility and sweetness of expression.
The statue, in fact, has a very considerable
measure of monumental dignity, is full of vitality
and touched all over with fineness of human
and artistic feeling.
Full of vitality also, and of artistic feeling
is the "Sir Harry Vane" in the Boston Library.
The costume, a beaver with rolled brim and
plume, doublet and cloak, and breeches tucked
into riding-boots, offered opportunities of pictur-
esqueness of which Macmonnies has taken full
advantage. The gesture, too, as the figure
stands firmly with one leg advanced, drawing on
a glove, is manly and of winning courtliness.
Indeed, the elegance may be felt to be in excess ;
the conception of the personality being scarcely
more than that of a fine gentleman engaged in
the unimportant occupation of putting on his
gloves. The costume also plays a conspicuous share
in the statue of "Shakespeare" at Washington.
The doublet, trunks and surcoat are stiff with
embroidery, most cunningly modelled, and the
set of the silk hose upon the strong, shapely
legs is admirable. The head, too, is admirably
constructed, the bony portions having been
copied from the bust in Stratf ord-on-Avon Church
and the features from the Droeshout portrait,
84 AMERICAN MASTERS
commended by Jonson for its fidelity. Thus
the external facts have been very conscientiously
compiled, and edited with much mastery of
craftsmanship; but the soul of the facts, the
inspired poet inside them, is scarcely suggested.
The statue illustrates again that Macmonnies does
not display imagination; that he only approxi-
mates to it with a certain charm of imaginative-
ness, finding fittest expression in subjects of a
decorative character, of which the very beautiful
central doors of the Library of Congress remain
the most successful example.
For the larger compositions, while full of exu-
berant invention and charm of detail, lack unity
and dignity of ensemble. The best of them was
probably the short-lived fountain for the Court of
Honour at Chicago. Its central feature, the
"Ship of the Republic," presented a handsome
silhouette, whereas the quadriga on the Brooklyn
Arch, when viewed from the back, does not.
Considering also the necessary haste involved in
the preparation of the fountain, it was a fairly
maintained composition, reasonably balanced and
homogeneous. In spirit, however, it represented
the verve and gaiety which the Parisian seeks in
exposition sculpture, and scarcely conformed to
the graver, more monumental character of the
architectural scheme at Chicago ; while the natural-
FREDERICK MACMONNIES 85
istic rendering of a Parisian model to symbolise
the Republic, presented a curious and not unin-
structive contrast to French's "Republic" at
the other end of the basin.
For in this figure Macmonnies revealed perhaps
for the first time, certainly in most marked
manner, his tendency to lose himself in the
natural facts of the model. Some extenuation
might be found in the haste with which the work
was bound to be completed ; and a similar insuffi-
ciency of time — as commissions piled upon him
in unexampled profusion — may account for his
subsequent addiction to bare naturalism. Yet
it scarcely excuses it, and still less that the natural-
ism should take a grosser form, until in the colossal
groups at Indianapolis it reached a degree of
coarseness in the female figures which is very
far indeed from the exquisite feeling of the
artist's early work.
In the freshness of his youth he reflected the
national grace of gaiety. God forbid that the
grossness of type and orgy of action displayed
in these latter groups should be indicative of
anything American!
PAUL WEYLAND BARTLETT
VI
PAUL WEYLAND BARTLETT
TN the Metropolitan Museum of New York there
is a group, called "The Bohemian," which
represents a man leaning over a young bear,
endeavouring by voice and gesture to encourage
it to antics. The attitude and play of move-
ment are very true to life.
One knows the action of a trained bear at the
end of its keeper's chain; how it balances from
foot to foot, moves its body up and down like a
huge, slow piston rod, while its head turns this
way, that way, keeping rude time to the rhythm,
half chant, half howl, of the man's voice. The
latter seemed to our childhood's imagination
to have some affinity with the bear ; both strange
creatures appearing in the village, whence no
one knew; performing their uncouth antics,
silent but for the man's mournful, monotonous
dirge or an occasional burst of gibberish as he
rattled the chain; then disappearing, whither?
In the posturing of the man in this group we can
anticipate what will be the movement of the
89
9 o AMERICAN MASTERS
bear when it is trained, and feel the suggestion
also of an animal kinship between them and of
their outcast, vagrant fellowship. Not only is
the technique sure and facile, the observation of
form and action just, but the conception is one
in which imagination has played a distinct part.
It is an early work of Paul Weyland Bartlett,
executed shortly after he had studied with
Fremiet. One may fancy that he, too, had
come under the spell of these strange travelling
companions, and the absorbing question to his
boy's mind had been: How was the bear
taught? Then, in after years, when his interest
in animals, quickened by the example of his
master, took artistic shape, he bethought him of
his old-time wonder and set himself to solve it.
However that may be, it is clear that Bartlett's
preoccupation in the subject extended beyond
mere deftness of craftsmanship, and that in some
way or other his imagination had been roused.
I urge this point because some of his subse-
quent works might lead one to suppose that he
is lacking in imagination and absorbed exclusively
in the exercise of a very accomplished, graceful
and refined technique. Thus his statue of " Law "
in the rotunda of the Library of Congress at
Washington reveals no higher conception than
that of a refined young woman in classic draperies,
PAUL WEYLAND BARTLETT 91
holding a scroll and resting one hand upon a
table of the law; a personification entirely super-
ficial and only redeemed from mediocrity by the
tactful elegance of the modelling.
But, while he was engaged on this, he was
pondering another statue which hit his interest
closely. The artist in him that could not be
aroused to enthusiasm by an abstraction, such
as "Law," awoke to the personal matter of por-
traying the greatest master of his own craft. His
imagination was enlisted, and after much delay —
for his conscience was very truly involved in this
work and he had an ideal that to his utmost
ability he would reach — the "Michelangelo"
was completed; a work of sincere imagination;
of most arresting and moving appeal.
Then followed a commission for an equestrian
statue of Lafayette; and, after making the pre-
liminary sketch for it in New York, he returned
to Paris to execute it. It was there, too, that he
had conceived and executed the "Michelangelo" ;
but with this "Lafayette" his imagination again
failed him. Through lack of interest in the
subject, I wonder, or lack of incentive in the
environment, or lack of stability in himself?
For from this statue which stands in the Place du
Carrousel, a gift from the children of America,
judged at least from the full-sized model tern-
92 AMERICAN MASTERS
porarily erected for the ceremony of presenta-
tion in 1900, one receives mainly an impression
of elegance. An elegance certainly monumental ;
raised to the dignity of a motive and incorporated
into a fine structure of form, yet a little bit pre-
tentious. It is as if the sculptor had no higher
purpose than to prove his capability as a stylist.
He has certainly succeeded; but the statue is
more than a trifle modish.
Bartlett had no need, however, to protest his pos-
session of stylistic qualities. The "Michelangelo"
sufficiently proclaimed it, rivalling the skill of tech-
nique displayed in Macmonnies's "Shakespeare "
in the same rotunda, and displaying even greater
accent of mastery, since it is the expression of a
more forceful and imaginative characterisation.
It is worth while to notice how keenly the sculptor
has anticipated the material in which the statue
was to be finished. For, while marble permits a
great variety of surface effects and delicate con-
trasts of light and shade, the essential suggestion
of bronze is its hardness, and consequently its
special capacity is to express structure and action,
bone and muscle. In this ' ' Michelangelo ' ' one will
find no superfluities of detail, little insistence
upon qualities of surface. A few salient lines of
planes, with incisive depth of shade here and
there, suffice for the drawing of the figure. The
MICHELANGELO
By Paul Weyland Bartlett
Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
PAUL WEYLAND BARTLETT 93
main concern is structural, even the leather
apron playing no inconsiderable part in the strong,
stalwart frugality of the whole treatment.
This instinct for the special qualities of bronze
has led Bartlett to make experiments in what is
a thoroughly characteristic method of securing
surface effect, the colouring of the metal with
patina of various kinds. On several occasions
he has exhibited little objects, such as frogs and
turtles, in which he seemed to have recovered
some of the secrets of Japanese art, so rich and
varied were the tones of red and brown and green,
so exquisite the silky smoothness of the not
too highly polished surface. Compared with
the crude effects of commercial pickling the
colour and texture of these objects was a
revelation.
As to the conception of character in the "Michel-
angelo," opinions seem to differ, some finding
it deficient in suggestion; as if any statue were
likely to convey to our imagination the full
suggestion of the master's genius. Such can only
be found in his own works. For myself, I find
abundance of suggestion in the rugged grandeur
of the head (which in the accompanying illus-
tration has been unfortunately reduced in size) ;
a ruggedness, scarred by time and spiritual
conflict with the fever heat of supreme, unsatis-
94 AMERICAN MASTERS
fied passion; a rugged, mountain-like head,
with deepset eyes, two craters communicating
with the inner volcanic fire. I am happy in the
possession of a cast of this head, have lived with
it several years, turned to it constantly with a
sense of being strengthened and purified thereby.
I find, too, in the figure a fair amount of
correspondence to the character of the head.
Structurally it is strong and the attitude is that
of a man completely absorbed in the thoughts
that occupy his brain. Indeed, one of the most
notable things in the composition is the entire
absence of any suggestion of preconceived pose;
the figure stands in complete, unconscious isola-
tion. When the illusion from the front is so
satisfactory it is with repugnance that one pries
behind the scenes; but this statue in its position
has to be viewed also from the rear and, so
viewed, is less dignified. The coat, fitting trimly
to the waist and finishing in a stiff skirt, again
with a hint of modishness, belies the stern
simplicity of the front view. Some smaller motive
has here intervened, of historical accuracy to a
little period of costume, quite out of place in
one who belongs to all subsequent ages; unrea-
sonable, too, for we fancy that the old hewer of
marble would never have encumbered himself
with such sartorial gear, when, as here represented,
PAUL WEYLAND BARTLETT 95
he stood with chisel in hand meditating some
great conception.
But there is no satisfaction in dwelling on this
point. The happier thought is that a sculptor,
still young, could have given us a work so dis-
tinguished in technique, of so sincere and strong
appeal.
HERBERT ADAMS
VII
HERBERT ADAMS
/ TpHE delicately refined sentiment of Herbert
■*■ Adams, product of a naturally sweet and
modest temperament, has discovered its fittest
expression in flowers and in the flower-like forms
of women and children, influenced in its manner
by decorative feeling. For he seems to have
the instinct that leads men to be naturalists;
of the kind whose gentle mind draws them into
intimacy with nature's nurslings and frequently
as well toward very tender sympathy with what
is most fresh and fragrant in humanity. Such
a one studies and loves form, but less for its
organic and structural import than for its visible
expression of the spirit with which his imagination
invests it; a very sensitive kind of imagination,
that must play freely or suffer some impairment
of its delicate elasticity.
From his earliest years Adams had desired to
be a sculptor. He came of an old family of good
New England stock and was born at West
Concord, Vermont, in 1858, but passed his boy-
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ioo AMERICAN MASTERS
hood in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. A general
education at the local grammar and high school
was supplemented by special studies at the
Worcester Institute of Technology and the
Massachusetts Normal Art School. Then followed
a period of five years in Paris, where he studied
under Merci6, the pupil of Falguiere. Among
the many sculptors with whom he came in
contact, he felt most strongly the influence of
these two, both natives of Toulouse, in whose art
the poetry of the south mingles with academic
elegance and technical perfection. During these
years, too, he studied in the galleries and fre-
quented the Louvre, not only for the sculpture,
but also for the paintings.
That the latter should have attracted him
may seem at first sight hardly worth mentioning ;
since, indeed, no student of art, whatever his
metier would be likely to escape the fascination
of the paintings. But Adams seems to have
been very conscious of it then, and to look
back upon it now as one of the distinct influences
of his student days. And that painting had an
influence, and a very marked one, upon his
technique and motives as a sculptor, one can
scarcely doubt. His early work shows more feeling
for the harmonic rendering of light and shade
and for the decorative treatment of the surface
HERBERT ADAMS 101
than for the structure and character of the form.
It reveals also, especially in his busts, that
specialisation of sentiment, limited in range,
very quietly intense in kind, tinctured frequently
with enigmatic suggestion, which is so often
found in Italian sculpture and painting of the
fifteenth century. That he had felt that influence
has occurred to many observers of Adams's work ;
yet it was not until five years ago that he visited
Italy. Accordingly, it must have been to his
studies at the Louvre that he owed his acquaint-
ance with Italian art; and the paintings as well
as the sculpture, perhaps as much as it, must
have shaped his impressions. And the work
of the marble sculptors of the fifteenth century,
of men like Mino da Fiesole and Maiano, is
strongly pictorial in character, frequently with
more of the painter quality than the sculptor,
with great regard for highly finished surfaces
and delicate richness of light and shade. They
represented the higher tendencies of the thought
of their time: subtle and refined and elegantly
Platonic. To some corresponding partiality is
apparently due the inclination of Adams's mind
toward this particular expression of sculpture.
For, while sculpture responds to the most
vigorous conceptions of the artist, it lends itself
also to the most sensitive idealisation; more so
102 AMERICAN MASTERS
in a measure than painting, since the absence
of the realism of colour makes a greater demand
upon the imagination and keeps the representation
more nearly within the region of the abstract.
In order to increase the sensitiveness of the
idealisation by merging it in the vague, the refuge
of the modern world from the too exacting claims
of the actual, Rodin often leaves part of his
statues in the rough. So did Michelangelo.
But the Italian mind of the fifteenth century,
wedded to perfection and finish as an essential
of its creed, carried to further sensitiveness the
tactile suggestion of the marble by briaging its
surface to a smoothness of polish akin to that of
jade or ivory, materials which are of peculiarly
caressing appeal to the sense of touch. The
effect was also heightened by the use of colour.
The practice of colouring sculpture dates back
to the earliest times which archeological research
has been able to embrace. Continuing without
interruption to the present times in Oriental
countries, it was, however, abandoned in the
West. Yet the Greeks and Romans, the Gothic
artists, and those of the Italian Renaissance up
to the sixteenth century resorted to it freely.
Then the practise, for some reason, fell into
disuse, and by degrees the strong prejudice
against it resulted in forgetfulness that it had
HERBERT ADAMS 103
ever existed among the greatest artists of
antiquity, and it was accepted as a matter of
course that one of the chief beauties of a marble
statue was its whiteness, and that the colouring
of a statue was a habit only of barbarians. But
in comparatively recent times we have learned
to appreciate the use of colour by the Indians,
Chinese and Japanese upon their statues and to
understand its motive, and have discovered, as
I have said, that the practice was at one time
universal. Yet even now the prejudice against
it continues. Some artists object to it because
the colour tends to make less obvious to the eye
their skilful nicety of technique, while among
laymen there exists a very general misunder-
standing of the motive in using colour.
They suppose that colour is added to a statue
to increase its resemblance to nature; as, indeed,
would seem to be the motive in the cheap images
commercially produced for churches. But the
motive of the best artists has never been a realistic
one. They have added colour, either for
decorative purposes or to enforce the idea of the
statue, the meaning that was uppermost in the
artist's mind as he fashioned it. Thus the
statue of the god and the cella in which it stood
were brought into a unity of effect by colouring
both, so that the divine presence permeated
104 AMERICAN MASTERS
the shrine. Or it might be that the latter was
dimly lighted and the greater part of the statue
was plunged in mysterious obscurity, when the
artist would gild the lips and eyes that the benign
smile and the composure of the glance might
shine with soft conspicuousness amid the gloom.
In both these examples artistic fitness would
regulate the use of colour both to unify the
effect and to enforce the idea. So, too, in the
case of a bust, the artist may feel that there is
an expression in the eyes of the woman whose
portrait he is modelling or latent in the curve of
the lips, which summarises the impression of
her character as he feels it. In his desire to
emphasise the idea which he has in his mind, he
will resort to colour in the eyes or lips; he may
then feel the need of balancing notes of colour
elsewhere, as in the shadows of the hair or in the
fillet which binds it or in some ornament of
jewelry; and, having gone so far, may find it
desirable to complete by further enrichments
of colour the general decorative feeling that has
been produced. Very probably he will be
influenced in his use of colour by the larger
decorative intention of making the bust more
conformable to its place in a room, so that instead
of standing out in cold distinctness it may merge
into the warmth of surrounding colour.
PORTRAIT BUST
By Herbert Adams
HERBERT ADAMS 105
Evidently actuated by such intentions, Adams
has frequently resorted to colour in portrait
reliefs and busts, with so choice a feeling that
they have a quality of very rare distinction. In
one case, while the form is marble of a pinkish,
creamy hue, the bodice of the dress and full-puffed
sleeves are carved in wood of a pale-cedar colour
and an embroidered band across the bosom is
sprinkled with gems of lapis lazuli and green.
This last feature is handled with exquisite finesse,
while the character of the rest of the design is
large and simple. Two of his busts are illustrated
here, and in one case there is colour treatment
and in the other the marble has been left in its
purity. The former suffers by reproduction,
since the photographic process has altered the
relation between the coloured portions and the
rest, giving a sharpness of contrast to the eyes
and mouth; and it is at a further disadvantage,
for the sake of comparison, because the other
is an exceptionally fine example of Adams's
work. A portrait of the artist's wife reveals
an intimacy of sympathetic comprehension and
a loving reverence of expression that make it a
quite unusual work. It is pervaded also with
an exquisite mystery of feeling, as of something
beyond the artist's and the husband's knowledge
hidden behind the veil of the woman's separate
106 AMERICAN MASTERS
existence, but a mystery the quality of which
his knowledge comprehends. For there is
mystery also in the face of the other bust, but
more enigmatic; only a partial reading of the
character and to the rest no clue. While the
one portrait reveals a character matured and
comprehensible, notwithstanding that its outlines
merge into conjecture, the other leaves one
guessing, as do many of the old Florentine
women's portraits.
The " Bust of the Artist's Wife" in its melodious
rendering of light and shade illustrates very
pointedly the predominance of the colour or
painter feeling over the sculptural, of expression
over structure. It is more or less felt in all
Adams's busts, and is very noticeable in low reliefs,
such as the "Hoyt Memorial'' and the "Pratt
Memorial " tablets, where he followed his own
promptings. But when he works in cooperation
with an architect, the latter's influence disturbs
the oneness of his motive and draws him to
considerations of the architectonic use of form,
which results in some impairment of the
expression.
In the " Hoyt Memorial " two angels, floating
in the air, support a tablet with inscription.
Emphasis is given to the heads and arms and, in
a less degree, to the wings; but the rest of the
HERBERT ADAMS 107
form is indicated little more than is necessary to
explain the arrangement of the streaming folds of
light drapery. The result is a delicate pattern
of light and shade, a decoration of sweetly refined
imagination, corresponding with the gracious
refinement of the expression in the faces. A
similar appreciation fits the "Pratt Memorial
Angel" which he modelled for the Baptist
Emmanuel Church in Brooklyn, although the
figure is in the round. In the " Pratt Memorial "
tablet, executed some years later, Adams reveals
how exquisitely he can use flower forms as motive
for decoration. The design forms the border
of a long, narrow panel. At the top is a winged
head, symbolising the Angel of the Resurrection,
and at the foot a head without wings, representing
the Sleep of Death. The latter is enfolded with
poppy-flowers and leaves, these forms being
carried up the sides of the panel, until at the
middle distance they become interspersed with
lily-forms which finally assert themselves at the
top. The modelling is in very low relief with the
exception of the heads, to the lower of which a
modest emphasis is given, while to the upper a
much stronger one. Both these faces are very
beautiful, the expression being chiefly centred
in the eyes. The lids in the one case are half-
raised, as in the act of awakening before con-
io8 AMERICAN MASTERS
sciousness has fully dawned; in the other lying
as softly over the eyeballs as folded petals. The
exquisite chastity and serenity of these ripe,
rounded faces are echoed in the floral borders;
so richly patterned, yet with such reserve and
tender piquancy. And, in contrast with the
usual tedious reiteration of time-wearied orna-
mental motives, how refreshing the novelty and
imagination in these borders ! The artist has
gone to nature for his models, and, while
reproducing the character of Renaissance orna-
ments, has used the natural forms with so delicate
an exuberance of fancy that no motive is repeated,
the whole being quick with fragrant and fresh
appeal. Indeed, so far as my knowledge goes,
no plastic decoration has been produced in this
country which can approach it in beauty ; perhaps
not even in the actual beauty of the ornamental
forms, certainly not in the sentiment of pure and
holy calm which it exhales.
Nor even in other decorations by Adams shall
we find, I think, such perfect harmony between
the form and feeling, for in his other examples
he was working with divided mind. While the
floral borders upon the pair of bronze doors
which he executed for the Library of Congress
are intrinsically as beautiful as these, displaying
the same freshness of invention and loving insight
HERBERT ADAMS 109
into the decorative suggestion of flowers, they
have not the same perfectly balanced relation
to the character and feeling of the whole design.
The artist was dragged from his own poise by
two outside influences. The doors had been
commenced by Olin Warner, and before his death
the figures in the panels had been planned and
partly executed. Adams was called upon to
complete the work and strove loyally to preserve
as much as possible of the dead artist's intention.
Consequently, the figures are neither his nor
Warner's. Moreover, the planning of the doors
had been originally the architect's, and he, too,
made his influence felt in the direction of a
predilection for the profuse exuberance of Roman
ornament. With this Adams has absolutely no
sympathy, his own tendency being toward an
ardent nature-study purified by the influence
of the antique which prevailed among Floren-
tines of the fifteenth century. Therefore, again
he was twisted from what he would have done
instinctively. Compared with his independent
work in the " Pratt Memorial " tablet, these
doors are overloaded and lacking in singleness
and unity of motive. Yet with what devotion
Adams worked ! The process of casting in the
bronze could only reproduce the front surface
of his decoration; the undercutting of the leaves
no AMERICAN MASTERS
and tendrils had to be executed afterward with
a graving tool, and for weeks he superintended
the work. Viewed in detail, the borders in these
doors are unusually alive with beauty, but, as I
have said, the ensemble is lacking in the crowning
beauty of harmony of form and feeling.
He has recently completed a tympanum in
marble and two bronze doors for the Vanderbilt
Memorial Entrance, which has been added to
St. Bartholomew's Church in New York. Here,
again, he cooperated with the architect. Such
cooperation necessarily imposes certain conditions
upon the sculptor's imagination; I had almost
written limitations or restrictions, except that
the necessity of having to conform to an archi-
tectonic plan need be no bar to the freedom of
imagination, but merely directs it into a certain
channel. It permits, indeed, a liberty within
the law; but this is not the sort of cooperation
that has existed between the sculptor and
architect on the present occasion. The latter
has not only established the architectural plan
of the design — a geometrical arrangement of
bands and spaces which presents a very agreeable
ensemble and nice apportionment of graduated
emphasis — but has also imposed upon the sculptor
the character of his decoration. The church is
a modern rendering of the Romanesque style;
BUST OF THE ARTIST'S WIFE
By Herbert Adams
HERBERT ADAMS m
therefore, the architect has sought the models
for the decoration in medieval sculpture of the
eleventh or early twelfth century. It is a
characteristic example of the way in which the
American architectural mind frequently works.
Such a course is so obvious and reasonable, yet
what a meagerness of imagination it displays !
It has mastered the "styles" and lives up to its
tables of laws and formulas as rigidly, as literally
and with as little regard for their spirit as the
Jews of old clung to their Decalogue. It dare
not, or cannot, rekindle the spirit of the past with
an infusion of the present, as has been done in
all living periods of architecture, but to com-
memorate a New Yorker of the nineteenth
century, reproduces the ungainly types of figures,
fashioned at a time when architecture was better
understood than sculpture. So in the principal
panels of the doors the architect has arranged
four apostles — rude, formalistic figures, too short
in the leg — and filled the subordinate ovals with
dry little rigid groups; succeeding in his desire
to remind us of the past and failing utterly to
affect us in the present. For what possible appeal,
religious, emotional or esthetic, can these groups
make to the modern imagination? Yet, from
the point of view of the subject we are discussing,
the saddest thing is that a sculptor of "delicately
ii2 AMERICAN MASTERS
imagined sensations" should be so distorted from
the true bent of his genius and compelled to exert
ingenuity in lieu of imagination. It is an
incredible waste, for only in the borders can we
discover Adams's real self; yet, if he had been
permitted to work in a reasonable liberty of
imagination, he might have made the groups
conformable to the style of the building and
possessed also of some vital elements of beauty
and of beautiful appeal.
One effect, however, of this unequal co-
operation with the architect which may bring
some compensating benefit to Adams's art has
been that his mind has been directed more than
previously to the architectonics of decoration
and to the sculptural value of form. For, while
the figures in these doors have no individual
interest, the sum total of the whole decoration
has a very marked structural dignity, which
arouses one's respect, if it does not warm one to
enthusiasm. And this enforcement of the
structural quality reappears even more con-
spicuously in the tympanum, both in the in-
creased sense of force which the figures convey,
and in the organic relation of the forms to the
shape of the space and to its architectural
function.
For, as I have said before, Adams's work does
HERBERT ADAMS 113
not usually impress one by its qualities of form,
but rather by its sentiment and expression.
Even in the portrait-statue of Joseph Henry
in the Library of Congress and the "Channing, "
recently unveiled at Boston, one does not feel
the form and character of the bodies. Both
figures are represented in gowns and count
mainly as decorative masses. In the statue of
Richard Smith, however, which is one of his
latest, he has shown the professor in his laboratory,
clad in shirt and trousers, with no accessory
except an apron caught up on one side; and in
the treatment of the head and body and more
especially in the carriage of the hands, as one
holds a specimen and the other a magnifying
glass, has obtained a considerable measure of
structural character.
Nor do I forget the tympanum, executed in
1896, for the Senate Reading-Room in the Library
of Congress, a design of two mermaids supporting
a cartouche. The nude forms display a thorough
knowledge of the figure and a truly sculptural
appreciation of the charm of muscular movement
rippling over firmly constructed bodies. It seems
to prove, if it were necessary, that the preference
which Adams has shown for the pictorial
possibilities of sculpture is due only to his
particular temperament; to a reticence of feeling
ii 4 AMERICAN MASTERS
that shrinks from too exact an expression of the
idea, around which in his own imagination also
he preserves a certain zone of vagueness.
So, in the tympanum for Saint Bartholomew's
Church, illustrated on an accompanying page,
he is divided between the motives of expressing
a sentiment of tender adoration and of giving the
figures at the same time an architectonic force.
In the latter direction we may feel that he has
been the more successful; for in the attention
paid to form he seems to have become preoccupied
in the model. The same face appears in each of
the three figures and with a self -consciousness
in the eyes that contradicts the devotional
expression of the mouth ; a self -consciousness that
I find myself connecting with the little niceties
of arrangement with which the hair is prinked.
I conclude by wondering if this tympanum will
prove a turning-point in the artist's career I
For when one studies the beauty of form, so
strongly realised beneath the draperies, its fine
expression and functional propriety, it is to feel
that this work, despite a certain lack of Adams's
usual spirituality of sentiment, is the most
important in a sculptural sense that he has yet
done. For, regarded from the point of view of an
architectural decoration it is unusually distin-
guished with admirable appropriateness of lines
HERBERT ADAMS 115
and masses to the space, a truly architectural
feeling, and a distribution of light and shade,
characterised alike by richness and by delicacy.
It has the choiceness of style of his best portraits,
reenforced by virility. And, if this latter quality,
called into play by his cooperation with the
architect, is maintained in future work, the
result can scarcely fail to be a betterment of his
art. For he will find a way of bringing it into
complete harmony with the expression of his
sentiment, since there is no necessary incompati-
bility between virility of style and delicacy of
feeling. Indeed, the offspring of their union is a
very special poignancy.
CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS
VIII
CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS
f^HARLES HENRY NIEHAUS is a con-
^^ spicuous exception to the general rule
that our sculptors are Paris-trained. After
working as a youth at wood -engraving, stone-
cutting and carving in marble, he became a
student in the McMicken School of Design, in his
native city, Cincinnati, Ohio, and thence pro-
ceeded to Munich. His German training was
supplemented by extensive travel and later by
a prolonged visit to Rome, during which he
devoted himself to the study of the nude under
the influence of the antique.
But before the latter interlude in a life other-
wise filled with the execution of commissions, he
returned to America. For him the time was
auspicious. President Garfield had recently been
assassinated, and the State of Ohio had appro-
priated funds for a statue to be placed in the
Capitol at Washington, and by public subscrip-
tion another was to be erected in Race Street,
Cincinnati. Both these commissions were awarded
119
120 AMERICAN MASTERS
to the young Ohio sculptor. Each statue com-
memorates Garfield's gift of oratory, but the
one at Cincinnati in a more informal way, so that
it probably represents very fairly Niehaus's
particular tendency at this time.
There is a dramatic touch in the pose of the
figure; the weight firmly on the left foot, the
other energetically advanced ; both arms extended ;
one holding a sheaf of paper, the other raised
slightly in a gesture of maintaining the attention
of the audience; the handsome head well carried
above the broad, arched chest. But this dramatic
suggestion does not pass beyond the limit of
tolerably natural characterisation; the balance
between energy and controlling force, manifested
in the studied carriage ot a speaker accustomed
to move his hearers; and the naturalism is com-
pleted by the absence of all affectations of arrange-
ment in the costume. It comprises simply a
frock coat and trousers and an overcoat unbut-
toned and drawn clear of the chest. The figure,
indeed, is represented in the guise and attitude
in which it might be familiar to the greatest
number of people. So, too, is that of William
Allen, for which Niehaus shortly afterward
received the commission from the State of Ohio;
yet with even greater simplicity and naturalness,
with an absence of the heroic or dramatic which
CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS iai
had been fitting enough in the "Garfield," con-
sidering the circumstances. The "Allen" is an
intimate portrait of an incisive speaker and
clear, close reasoner, in an attitude entirely
unstudied, full of natural resolution.
From these two statues one may get a very
fair impression of the sculptor's natural bent as
influenced by Munich training. Its prime feature
is a vigorous realism that makes straight for
character in the subject, rinding it as much in pose
and gesture as in the head, and giving expression
to it in the simplest and directest fashion ; if with
some dramatic play as we have seen, yet without
any floridness. What we do not yet observe is
a feeling for the subtler expression of movement
in the figure, and, in consequence, of subtler
feeling in the disposition and texture of the
draperies; qualities which entered into his work
after his protracted study in Italy.
For, having completed these commissions,
Niehaus set out for Rome and established himself
in a studio just outside the Porta del Popolo, in
close proximity to the Villa Borghese, devoting
himself, as I have said, to the study of the nude.
The only three statues which survive from this
period — an athlete scraping himself with a strigil,
another binding on the cestus, and a "Silenus,"
pirouetting on one foot as he blows his pipes —
i22 AMERICAN MASTERS
are quite remarkable examples of the modern
interpretation of the antique. Movement con-
tinuous through every part of the body and
absolutely adjusted to the action; a poise of
balance in the disposition of the torso and limbs,
which combines the pleasure of repose with that
of movement; anatomical accuracy that includes
the structure of the figure and the varieties of
tension according as the muscles are separately
employed ; and throughout a salience of modelling
which imparts a dignity as well as naturalness to
the whole — these are the qualities so admirably
attained. The knowledge of form and the feeling
for it thus perfected has naturally influenced all
the sculptor's subsequent work. He exhibits
them obviously in the colossal nude, "The
Driller," executed for the Drake monument at
Titusville, Pennsylvania ; but no less in numerous
portrait-statues.
An American sculptor has unfortunately few
opportunities for displaying his ability in the
treatment of the nude, the commissions which
perforce engage his time being almost exclusively
problems of figures in modern civilian garb or in
the uniform of the army or navy. He may
occasionally introduce it into a piece of decorative
sculpture, or fashion some ideal subject for the
pure love of doing it, since his chances of disposing
THE DRILLER
By Charles Henry Niehaus
From the Drake Monument, Titusville, Pennsylvania
<mmmm&
THE HAHNEMANN STATUE
By Charles Henry Niehaus
From the Hahnemann Memorial, Washington, D. C.
CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS 123
of it are very limited. For while the old Puritan
objection to the nude may have almost died out in
America, it has scarcely been succeeded by a true
appreciation of the abstract expression and beauty
of the human form when treated by an artist.
An old-fashioned bluntness of vision fails to see
more in a nude than nakedness; may enjoy very
thoroughly the structural and muscular develop-
ment, play of movement and texture of skin in a
horse, or the analogies of these qualities in a tree
or plant, and yet miss entirely their subtler
manifestations when exhibited in the freely
exposed human form. Prejudice or lack of
imagination obscures the fact that it is the
expression of these qualities in their highest
possible degree, that is the end and purpose of
the artist; an obscurity, however, which, it must
be admitted, not a few nude paintings and
sculptures tend to perpetuate.
So Niehaus had to wait very many years before
he could utilise frankly the results of his studies at
Rome. The opportunity came with the erection
of a monument to the memory of Colonel Edwin
L. Drake, who sunk the first oil well in Pennsyl-
vania in 1859. The donor, who preserved his
incognito, but who is supposed to have been one
of the officials of the Standard Oil Company,
demanded an architectural structure with planes
124 AMERICAN MASTERS
on which the story of Drake's life and achievements
might be inscribed, and instead of a representation
of himself a figure typical of his work. Thus
arose occasion for "The Driller."
It would be well if public monuments were more
frequently of this typical character. Our cities
and parks are peopled in bronze, not as much as
possible to their embellishment. By all means
hand down the effigies of great and worthy men ;
but why not with more regard for the really
salient thing, the head, introduced as bust or
bas-relief, and with less for the frock coat and
trousers, the cut of which can be taken on trust
or, better still, forgotten ? Instead of demanding
such prosaic record, how much better it would be
to call upon the sculptor to create out of his imagi-
nation some subject that may represent or sym-
bolise the greatness of the hero and appeal to the
imagination of succeeding generations, meanwhile
gladdening all who pass and repass it daily with
its essential beauties. Have you not seen a
trousered, frock-coated statue against the pedestal
of which are a row of seats and sitters with their
back to the man that is to be remembered?
Substitute, however, for example, a fountain to
his memory; and in parched summer weather, at
least, all eyes would be turned toward its refresh-
ment, and possibly some hearts reminded of the
CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS 125
man in whose honour it was placed; who, if he
were fit to be remembered, must have brought
in his lifetime some refreshment and stimulus of
suggestion to his fellowmen. So with our bat-
talions of generals, mounted and unmounted,
scattered over the country. Great men they
were, but there was greatness also in the volun-
teers of the rank and file; and I for one shall
continue to find more incentive to enthusiasm in
the recognition of this in the Shaw Memorial
than in dozens of solitary individuals. Once
more, it is imagination in which we are wont to
be lacking; and the best that is in our artists is
seldom called forth because of our insistence
upon the obvious and trite.
"The Driller," therefore, was an unusual
opportunity for Niehaus, of which he has made
characteristic use. That is to say, the realism of
the figure as it kneels with hammer uplifted to
drive the drill into the ground, is admirably true,
while the figure has a classic dignity of composi-
tion; and its expression of control, as well as of
the putting forth of force, brings it within the
domain of ideal beauty. In some groups which
were among the ephemeral sculpture of the Pan-
American Exposition he also freely introduced
the nude, in a number of figures symbolising
various kinds of industry. Individually they
126 AMERICAN MASTERS
were excellent, but the combined effect was
unfortunate. The composition as a whole lacked
cohesion and dignity, representing little more
than an aggregation of figures, separately em-
ployed; so that one missed the idealising touch
and found their realism of the crudely, story-
telling kind.
And this last characteristic — I do not know
whether it is a symptom of German genre feeling
derived from Munich — reappears elsewhere in his
work. While his statues are strongly sculptural,
his bas-reliefs betray not only a very pictorial
feeling, but that particular genre phase of it
which is mainly occupied with enforcement of
the facts. Not, however, in his earliest work of
the kind, the historical doors of Trinity Church,
New York, in which the representation of inci-
dents was demanded. These he represented
very realistically, but with a regard for the
decorative charm of full and empty spaces and
of receding planes of distance. Compared with
the pictorial nuance displayed in these six panels,
the treatment of the four which embellish the
Hahnemann monument is very deficient in
artistic imagination. They represent the founder
of homeopathy in a series of scenes which are
baldly illustrative and seem to have little interest
of subject and still less of decorative value.
CHARLES HENRY NIEHAUS 127
Yet they are affixed to a monument setting off
a portrait-statue which is Niehaus's finest work,
and equalled by few others in the country. The
expression of benign dignity in the head flows
through the whole length of the figure, which is
disposed in lines that are as suave as they are
noble. From every point of view it has the
grandeur of monumental repose, softened, one
might almost say humanised, by this exquisite
winding movement. Among modern portrait-
statues I can remember few that make so sweet
and serious an impression. In the composition
of this figure one can trace unmistakably the
effect of the sculptor's close study of the antique,
not only in the suppleness of movement and
statuesqueness of pose, but also in the abstract
appeal to one's esthetic enjoyment that the
composition of the figure yields. Moreover, this
freedom, force and sensitiveness extend to the
handling of the drapery, in which every fold has
a grace of naturalness and also a value of expres-
sion. These qualities are again happily united
in the sitting statue of Lincoln at Muskegon,
Michigan. While it is neither so forceful nor
so persuasive as the " Hahnemann," it yet has a
liberal measure of graciousness and dignity and a
finery monumental feeling.
In these statues and in some others, as in
128 AMERICAN MASTERS
the Gibbon in the Library of Congress and,
though perhaps by more apparently contrived
means, in the standing statue of Stephen Girard,
Niehaus obtains from the composition of the single
figure a degree of decorative effect which seems
to fail him in treating groups. Thus the pediment
of the Appellate Court, New York, while good in
detail, is without much unity or harmonious
feeling. It is, indeed, in the portrayal of charac-
ter — as in his fine, straightforward rendering of
Farragut, or in those striking busts of Rabbi
Gottheil and of Ward, the sculptor, and in the
statues already noticed, wherein the pose and
drapery, besides contributing to the character,
yield an additional suggestion of monumental
dignity — that he is at his best.
OLIN LEVI WARNER
IX
OLIN LEVI WARNER
TN these days when we are trying to raise
"artists," as we do chickens, by a process
akin to incubation, we regard it as an anomaly
if one emerges to eminence from surroundings
which, according to our system, do not seem
congenial. And people have expressed surprise
that Warner, the child of a New England Method-
ist minister, brought up in a community which
had no artistic inclinations, should have made
up his mind to become a sculptor before he had
ever seen a statue. But the history of art is full
of such surprises; and the thoughts of youth
are ever like the wind, "which bloweth where it
listeth; thou canst not tell whence it cometh or
whither it goeth." The greater and more beau-
tiful surprise is that the boy had foundation of
character on which to nourish the flowers of his
imagination, and that when in after years they
were matured, it was found that he had kept them
so choicely select, that their fragrance was not
unlike that of the flowers which in old time
x 3*
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bloomed on the hills of Hellas. Something of
the old Greek spirit had been revived in this son
of Connecticut: intellectual stability, moral bal-
ance and spiritual serenity. Presently we shall
consider how these qualities became translated
into terms of art in his work — into a feeling for
form, monumental rather than picturesque, a
rhythmical and harmonious reserve, a peculiar
sensitiveness to the significance of the essential
facts in the design — but at the moment let us
note how they affected his early conduct.
By the time that he left school at the age of
nineteen, the desire of bemg a sculptor had so
grown upon him as to press for a decision. Accord-
ingly he arranged for himself a test. He would
attempt a bust of his father, and thus determine
once and for all the "to be or not to be" of his
ambition. So, in ignorance of the easier way by
which sculptors proceed, he bought some plaster
of Paris, converted it into a block, and set to
work with a knife. His only notion of art was
to produce a good likeness, and in this he suc-
ceeded. The bust was exhibited and commended
at the State Fair, and Warner felt that his
cherished wish was justified. But the delibera-
tion which had characterised the choice of a
profession was followed by an equal seriousness
in determining the means of attaining it. He
OLIN LEVI WARNER 133
could not have known that sculpture in America
at that time was in a poor way; he had, in fact,
no acquaintance even with the mediocre kinds of
statue; but the old-fashioned, New England
conscience within him viewed the matter very
earnestly. Already he felt a reverence for the
work to which he was to devote his life, and that
the best of preparations must be made. He
would seek it in Paris. But he had no funds nor
could his father spare them, so he quietly laid
aside his longings and proceeded to earn the
necessary money. Mastering the trade of tele-
graph operator, he pursued it for six years, not,
as may be supposed, without some ultimate
benefit to the facility and delicacy of his manipu^
lation. At length, with his savings of $1,500 he
started for Paris. This was in 1869, when he
was twenty-five years of age.
Arriving in the great city without introduction,
friends or knowledge of the language, he made his
way to the Louvre. Here were students busy
copying; fellows such as he meant to be, and he
was drawn toward them, wandering from easel
to easel, until upon the woodwork of one he
espied a name, "Arthur Wilson." He ventured
to address the owner and tell him of his quest,
and was directed to a studio occupied by two
young sculptors, an American and an English-
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man. With them he studied for nine months,
until, through the influence of United States
Minister Washburne, he was admitted to the
Ecole des Beaux Arts. Here he worked in the
studio of Francois Jouffroy, where he had the
benefit of associating with such artists as Fal-
guiere, an older pupil of the master, and with
Falguiere's pupil, Mercie, a man of his own age.
Both of these artists had broken away from the
master's severely academic style and were
tempering their own with the life and movement
of the new naturalistic tendencies. Warner
also in modelling from nature incurred the old
master's strictures, because his sturdy individual-
ism refused to lend itself to conventional methods ;
but, on the other hand, his studies from the
antique were commended. In time, however, his
funds were exhausted, and, having to find em-
ployment, he entered as an ordinary workman
the studio of Carpeaux, the strongest decorative
sculptor in France since Rude, whose pupil he
had been. Warner's ability was recognised by
the master, and he received the great compliment
of an invitation to remain and study in the studio.
But he declined, being eager by this time to return
home.
The years of studentship had been diversi-
fied by the thrilling events of the Siege of Paris
OLIN LEVI WARNER 135
and the Commune. Warner in his own country-
had experienced the war-fever, and, eager to
join the Army of the Republic as a drummer-
boy, had been dissuaded by his father, who
during the stormy days of the Civil War carried
him off to a quiet spot among the Vermont
hills, that he might continue his studies. So,
when the empire fell and a republic was estab-
lished, he regarded the action of the Germans
in continuing the war as an attack upon liberty,
and enlisted with many of his comrades in the
Foreign Legion. But his duties were confined
to mounting guard upon the fortifications.
When, in 1872, Warner returned to New York
it was to suffer the hard experience of disillusion-
ment. In Paris he had found art occupying a
prominent position in the public and private life
of the community, artists honoured and encour-
aged by the State and his own ability acknowl-
edged by some of the masters of his craft. He
returned to his native country to find a pre-
vailing ignorance concerning art; to find the
trained artist competing for jobs with the com-
mercial stonecutter and metal-worker, the compe-
titions decided more by political favoritism and
wire-pulling than by artistic merit; to find,
indeed, that he was transplanting the delicate
growth of his ideals from a congenial soil to what
136 AMERICAN MASTERS
was, artistically speaking, very much of an arid
and howling wilderness. These words are scarcely
too strong to express the conditions of the field
of art in this country more than a quarter of a
century ago, before the Centennial Exhibition had
sounded the tocsin of an improved taste ; before
the students of art had begun to return in num-
bers from the foreign schools, and schools of art
in this country had been put upon a better basis ;
before the importation of all sorts of works of
art from Europe and the East, and the travel
of our own people abroad had become so exten-
sive; before the spread of interest and knowl-
edge which all these causes operated to produce.
Even now the slime of politics is very apt to
foul the fair working of competitions, and it is
often difficult for a sculptor, unless he is at the
very top of his profession, to secure a public
commission without some degree of wire-pulling.
But in 1872, when the factories kept on hand
a stock of military statues, complete in every
particular except the number of the regiment —
which was riveted on to suit the requirements
of the intending purchasing committee — the out-
look for an unknown artist with high ideals, clean
of purpose, who reverenced his profession as his
life, was dark indeed. Warner held hunger
and despair at arm's length for four years, and
BUST OF DANIEL COTTIER
By Olin Levi Warner
CUPID AND PSYCHE
By Olin Levi Warner
OLIN LEVI WARNER 137
then decided that he had better return to his
trade of telegraph operator.
So he wrote to Mr. Plant, the president of the
Southern Express Company, with whom he had
previously been employed, asking for a position.
This gentleman, however, learning the circum-
stances of the case, met them with a commission
for a portrait-bust of himself, followed by one of
Mrs. Plant. About this time, too, Warner made
the acquaintance of Mr. Daniel Cottier, who had
recently opened a gallery for the display of the
objects of art which he was importing, and now
invited the sculptor to make an exhibition of his
works. This proved to be the turning-point of
his affairs; commissions began to come in with
increasing frequency, until he was fully engaged
upon a number of important works. He was
elected a full member of the National Academy,
and was one of the original group of painters
and sculptors who founded the Society of
American Artists.
In the too short period left to him before his sud-
den death in 1896, which resulted from a bicycle
accident in Central Park, New York, he produced
a variety of works of high merit. They comprise
portrait-busts, among the best of which are those
of Daniel Cottier, Alden Weir, W. C. Brownell
and Miss Maud Morgan; three heroic statues,
138 AMERICAN MASTERS
representing, respectively: Governor Bucking-
ham of Connecticut, William Lloyd Garrison
and General Devens ; fountains for Union Square,
New York, and for Portland, Oregon; many
medallion portraits, including some of Indian
Chiefs; ideal subjects, "Twilight," "The Dancing
Nymph" and " Diana" ; an alto-relievo of " Cupid
and Psyche" and one of the sets of bronze doors
for the Library of Congress at Washington.
In all these works, covering so wide a range of
motive, there is present a union of monumental
feeling with extreme sensitiveness, which gives
them in a marked degree the sculpturesque
character and invests them with a singular
individuality.
I shall never forget the impression made on
me by a memorial exhibition, held in 1897, of a
considerable number of his busts and medallions
and of the "Psyche." It may sound a little
incongruous, but they suggested the impression
that a highly bred, finely trained race-horse makes
upon the imagination; an intensity of force and
suppleness, nothing superfluous, everything ex-
pressive of its function, the whole an embodiment
of keen vitality, of power and grace. There
was a similarly high-bred feeling in these heads,
the sign-manual of an unusually keen perception
of facts and of a most refined sensibility in the
OLIN LEVI WARNER 139
rendering of them. I doubt if anywhere in
modern art, except in that of Rodin, will you
find busts of such vital power. They exhibit the
same regard for the structural significance of
the head ; something more than the suggestion of
form and bulk — a rich, strong, jubilant recognition
of these facts as the ones of peculiar interest to
the sculptor, offering him the opportunity of
indulging his especial delight. They exhibit
also, as do Rodin's, the same delicately precise
handling of details: like the obligato which a
musician composes upon his basic theme, yet
with a different range of motive. Warner's
work does not reveal the psychological analysis
of Rodin's; the penetrating, almost troublous
intensity of his bust of Dalou, for example. He
is scarcely less keen or subtle in his analysis than
the French master, but studies the ripple of flesh
above the muscles, the tremor or fold of an
eyelid, the curves of nose or mouth, the disposi-
tion of the hair, with a pure delight in their
expressional force or grace. He views the head
as a type rather than as an individuality, and
seeks to extract from it the essence of its character.
It is in this respect, among others, that he shows
himself to be imbued with the kind of spirit that
animated the Greeks. As compared with Rodin,
whose vision grasps the complexities of modern
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emotion and the underlying sadness of an age
that has come late in time and whose energy is
enclosed in a frail web of nerves, Warner is a
child-man, with a man's reserve and poise, and
a child's unsophisticated eagerness of eye
and its pure delight in beauty and the joy of
living.
And this strain of the Greek temperament in
sculpture is a very different thing from the motive
of the so-called "classic" school. The latter
drew its primary inspiration from Roman
sculpture, in a search for something supposedly
heroic, that would fit the genius of the new
republicanism which had arisen out of the chaos
of the Revolution. It was at first grandiloquent,
but, growing senile, fell to babbling of the abstract
beauty of line and form, always without direct
reference to nature and gradually with the
increased formalism that grew from the perpetu-
ation of certain arbitrary rules and precedents.
Such "classic" statues, when they are the work
of a master, have their beauty, but it is inert,
without the thrill of life; when the work of a
mere practitioner, they are unspeakably jejune
and paltry. Both kinds are alike in their divorce
from nature-study, from the inspiration which it
gives to an intimate appreciation of line and
form. They will not show the fluidity of line,
OLIN LEVI WARNER 141
the delicate surprises of curve, the infinite
subtleties of modelling that invite caress, the
texture and quality of flesh, nor the mingling of
firm and supple in the form, the pliant movement
adjusted to the action of the figure — in a word,
the stir of life within the material. Warner
gives us this sensation and with so choice an
instinct for the exact point at which the naturalism
should melt into plastic immobility, with a love
so keen and unalloyed for the manifestations of
nature and in a spirit so seriously jocund, that we
recognise, as I have said, his affinity with the
old Greek ideal.
We may trace it also in his feeling for the
monumental rather than for the picturesque;
for those qualities in sculpture which belong to
it preeminently, as opposed to those which it
derives by analogy from painting. It appears
in the alto-relievo, "Cupid and Psyche," most
conspicuously, because the subject might have
been treated differently. The modern sculptor,
working from the background to the front plane
by repeated superlayers of clay, can introduce
a variety of subtly differentiated planes, and may
become absorbed in this composition of light
and shade, producing an effect which we can
describe as full of colour and which is exceedingly
beautiful. The artist of old time, however,
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graving the marble, wood or metal, started with
the form of the figures under his hand, absorbed
himself in them and regarded the open spaces
of his composition, when he reached them, simply
as a background. Instead of a quasi-pictorial
subtlety of light and shade he strove for a purely
sculptural tangibility of modelled form. It is
this insistence upon form which is so conspicuous
in the "Psyche"; in the contrast between the
child's podgy softness and the maiden's long,
lithe, firm figure.
This principle, applied to decoration, is most
successfully represented in the artist's last
completed work, the bronze doors of the Library
of Congress. In the lunette-shaped spaces above
the doors the figures are in very high relief, and
the background is modelled with forms of moun-
tains and clouds, producing an effect of great
richness, while upon each valve of the door is a
single figure in low relief; the flesh parts having
an emphasis of roundness, the draperies being
flattened, yet amply indicating the dignity of
the form beneath. The left-hand figure with
the lyre (how I wish that it were possible to
reproduce it here !) is supremely beautiful in its
poise between life and art, in its exquisite rhythm
of lines and in the alternate ebb and flow of the
planes of surface.
OLIN LEVI WARNER 143
But it was in his rendering of the nude that
Warner exhibited the loveliest qualities of his
art. He viewed it, as one views a flower, with
single vision for its exquisite abstract beauty.
Flower-like and fragrant, the "Psyche," the
"Dancing Nymph" and "Diana," have the
quivering sensibility of contour that one finds
in the free growth of nature; united, however, to
a firmness of texture and strength of structure
and to a conscious play of movement, responding
to the play of spirit, which in their perfect alliance
are only to be found in the human form. The
spirit which animates these figures is, of course,
the sculptor's, and it reveals itself most choicely
in the serenity of the "Diana," in the suspense
between absolute repose and projected movement.
For the figure seems about to rise; the carriage
of the head and body alike suggest the activity
inherent in the languor. One may believe that
in the precision of beauty displayed in this statue,
in the complete adjustment, that is to say, of
every one of its qualities of beauty to the supreme
idea of discovering that imaginary line upon
which life merges into art, the mobile into the
immobile, Warner reached most nearly his ideal.
For in his busts and heroic statues, as in the
fountains and decorative subjects, he was more
or less constrained to a point of view. But in
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his nudes, and particularly in this one, the product
of his maturity, he could work in the full liberty
of his imagination. And the latter is found to
be the ideal expression of those qualities of
character which I have already attributed to
him: intellectual stability, moral balance and
spiritual serenity.
The singularly choice discretion which governed
Warner's appreciation of form is shown equally
in his Portland fountain: a circular bowl with
broad, flat brim, supported upon a rectangular
pedestal and balanced by two caryatides. The
design is almost severely simple, yet tempered
with a grace of fitness in every detail, so chaste
and noble as to produce an impression of perfect
repose. It has, indeed, just that suggestion of
being firmly rooted, of strong growth upward
and of natural spread at the top, which
exactly befits its architectural character, while
in the contour and details it is as delicate as
a lily.
We have traced this feeling for the monumental
side of sculpture in Warner's reliefs, where it is
revealed in the thoroughly plastic treatment of
form, so that it quivers on the edge between
immobility and life; in his fountain, that
presents a conspicuous immobility quickened with
animation, and in his busts, wherein the form
DIANA
By Olin Levi Warner
OLIN LEVI WARNER 145
is made the foundation of lifelike character.
It remains to note how this last combination is
carried to its highest conclusions in his heroic
statues.
A standing figure could scarcely be planted
on its feet or mount with more inevitableness of
free, strong growth than the statue of General
Devens, while in the carriage of the whole body,
more especially in that of the alert, intellectual
head, the type of the citizen-officer is convincingly
expressed. But a sitting figure offers a more
complicated problem, owing to the number and
variety of planes which it presents and to the
necessity of harmonising these contrasted items
into a completely balanced ensemble. Warner,
in the statue of Garrison, has united such a variety
of lineal directions and opposing planes into a
stately, stable mass ; has mingled with the dignity
of repose an energy of character and gesture all
the more impressive that it is kept in control, and
has made every detail of movement respond to
the suppressed fire of character in the head.
The latter is modelled with a touch as tenderly
appreciative as will be found in any of his busts
or reliefs, so that this statue of the great aboli-
tionist, perhaps the most important work of his
career, sums up the diverse characteristics of
his art.
146 AMERICAN MASTERS
How noble that was in sentiment and
expression, how thoughtfully taken up and with
what a loving gravity pursued, even the least of
his works declare.
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM
TT was five years ago that Solon H. Borglum
was first represented at the Salon; he also
received a silver medal at the Universal Exposition
of 1900 and another at the Pan-American
Exhibition in Buffalo; quite recently a fuller
display of his work has been seen at the Keppel
Gallery in New York. Yet, although he is
probably the most original sculptor that this
country has produced, he is still but little known
to the American public.
It may seem strange that a people with such
eagerness for novelty should in some cases be so
slow to appreciate originality. But there is no
necessary connection between the two; indeed,
the pleasure in novelty may easily pass into a
craving for it, as enfeebling to the mind as the
habitual use of drug or dram; whereas the
recognition of originality demands some inde-
pendence and original effort on the part of our-
selves. Again, originality does not act by blind
jumps in midair, as in that species of dream
149
150 AMERICAN MASTERS
with which some of us may be familiar, wherein
we find ourselves midway in a leap, and then,
by successive contractions of the muscles, seem
to continue our leaps in the air until we fancy
that we are flying. The leap of originality must
always commence from some mental terra firrna —
conscious or unconscious experience ; and, accord-
ing as there is in ourselves some degree of
corresponding experience, shall we appreciate or
at least be impressed by the originality of the
inventor and the artist ; of the creator, in a word,
whether he deals in facts or in ideas. For this
reason the creator of facts meets with readier
recognition than the creator of ideas. Marconi,
for example, though he deals with matters far
beyond the understanding of most people, never-
theless appeals to their imagination through
their habitual, though it may be unscientific,
acquaintance with the previous methods of
telegraphic communication. So, in the case of
every creator in the domain of practical experi-
ment; either he meets a realised need or quickly
suggests a need through the analogy of our
e very-day experience.
On the other hand, the creator of ideas must
be satisfied with a smaller following, at least at
first, and at any rate with slower appreciation.
Yet here, too, there are degrees of slowness,
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM 151
according to the medium of expression which he
employs. Of all such artists, he who works
in words will reach the people most quickly,
since this is an age of words, especially of the
written word.
The public eye is habituated to the printed
page; though, truly, not so much in search of
ideas or for suggestive stimulus to thought, but
rather to the loss of independent thinking and
to the smothering of the imagination in a banal
prodigality of detailed statements. In the palmy
days of painting and sculpture it was to them
that the eye was habituated, and the impressions
thus received were informed with the experience
and the imagination of each observer. We,
however, in the superiority of our modern
education, run our eye over a painting or piece
of sculpture to discover what there is in either
that is convertible into words, and overlook
the qualities which affect the senses abstractly,
which are indeed the bones and marrow and
very physiognomy of the work of art, its dis-
tinguishing characteristics and capacity to move
us. And this powerlessness to enter into a work
of art from the artist's point of view deprives
us of all independence and initiative of appre-
ciation. When a gap has been made by some
bell-wether in the hedge of stubborn intolerance
1 52 AMERICAN MASTERS
which public opinion had set round the art of a
Rodin, we take our turn in the long row of sheep
that follow each other's tails through the gap
and fancy that we are discoverers and appre-
ciators of genius. Small wonder, then, if one of
our own prophets, merely a young sculptor of
America, should still be waiting for honour in
his own country.
Yet it is here, if anywhere, that Borglum's
work should be appreciated, since it is American
to the core, dealing with the incidents of cowboy
life on the western prairies. Others have essayed
the same subject, but rather from an outside
standpoint with technical equipment derived
from, or at least inspired by, the teaching of the
Parisian schools. Borglum, on the other hand,
knew from childhood the inside of the life, was
himself a cowboy, and for a long time with no
thought of anything but the joy and interest of
the life itself. Least of all had he any notions
about art. The free, open-air existence amid
spaciousness of earth and sky; the recurring
seasons, each with its separate routine of necessary
work, demanding the exercise of vigour, resource-
fulness and courage; intimacy with man and
animal life, and sympathy begotten of mutual
hardships and frequent dangers — these things
possessed him, and in the vast silence of nature
COWBOY MOUNTING
By Solon Hannibal Borglum
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM 153
penetrated silently the fibers of his being. He
grew and grew unconsciously; his manhood
matured before the artist in him awoke ; his mind
stored with experiences before the need came
upon him of expression.
The dormant artistic instinct was an inheritance
from his father, a Danish wood-carver, who had
migrated to this country early in the sixties.
He settled in Ogden, Utah, where Solon was born
in 1868; but he found no encouragement for his
craft and, resolving to become a doctor, turned
back to St. Louis, took a degree in medicine,
and then established himself in Fremont,
Nebraska, where his practice soon extended far
into the prairies. He kept many horses, and
the son grew up among them, with little inclination
for school studies and a keen desire for the open-
air life. At first he worked as a cowboy on a
ranch of his father's; later assumed control of
a larger one, where for a number of years he
lived in that close companionship with men and
animals which breeds sympathy as well as
knowledge.
One of his elder brothers, Gutzon, had already
become an artist, and it was a visit that he paid
to the ranch in 1890 which first aroused in Solon's
mind a thought of trying to draw. He began
to experiment with the pencil, and gradually the
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fascination of representing form grew upon him,
so that sketching occupied all his leisure time
with continually increasing grip upon his desire,
until by 1893 he made up his mind to sell out his
share in the ranch and go forth and study art.
First he sought his brother in the Sierra Madre
Mountains of California and studied painting
with him for a few months; then drifted to Los
Angeles, and thence to Santa Anna. In the
latter town he rented his first studio at two dollars
a month; but it was not long before he found
his clothes were getting shabby, and, moreover,
the confinement of the four walls was irksome.
So he put a sign upon his door, " In Studio
Saturdays Only"; and under cover of the dusk
started for the wild country of the Saddleback
Mountains. All through the week he lived
among the old Spanish Indians and Greasers — -
lawless people who have been left stranded in
the march of civilisation — eating with them,
sleeping beside them in the thicket, sketching
everything he saw. On Friday he started back
for the town, and, sleeping on the outskirts,
was early astir in the morning and passed
unobserved to his little room before the towns-
people were awake.
That first Saturday he was uninterrupted in
his work, and at nightfall again set out for the
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM 155
mountains. But the following week, to his
surprise, a visitor called, a school-teacher from
the East, and the result of the visit was first a
commission to paint the stranger's portrait for
five dollars, and secondly, the beginning of a
valued friendship. Next Saturday the teacher
called again, accompanied by two ladies, who
wished to learn to paint. The lessons were
continued weekly at a dollar a visit, and thus for
nearly a year he subsisted, one day of each seven
in his studio and during the others among the
mountains; until, encouraged by his friend, he
made a sale of his drawings, netted sixty dollars,
and therewith packed up his blanket and oil-stove
and set his face toward Cincinnati.
Here he entered the day and evening classes in
drawing and rented a little room. Before long,
however, he was heartsick for the old, free life.
It was beyond his reach; yet, as he went to and
from his work, he passed the United States mail
stables, and the sight of the horses stirred the
old feeling of comradeship. The lights were
kept burning at night in the stables, so morning
after morning before daybreak he lived among
them, drawing and studying. By degrees he
turned to modelling and executed the figure of a
horse pawing a dead one. It was shown to Mr.
Rebisso, the head of the school of modelling,
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who, discovering the young man's ability, gave
him encouragement and advice, permitting him
to work in his own studio and finally making it
possible for him to visit Paris.
Until Borglum's fingers had found their way
to clay he had been groping in the half-light of
unrealised purpose. Now, however, he discovered
at one stride the kind of subject nearest to his
heart and the method of expression best fitted
to his experience and temperament.
For, look you, his experience had been of facts ;
facts, it is true, from which in the aftermath of
memory his temperament was to extract their
romance and sentiment; but, in the first place,
facts of the most direct and vigorous form.
The subtleties, to which painting better lends
itself, were outside the habit of his mind ; whereas
the tangible shape and more simple obviousness
of sculpture exactly fitted his need. He had
reached it through the same natural, unpre-
meditated growth that had characterised all his
development. Such kind of growth is, perhaps,
only possible to one whose boyhood and early
manhood have been spent in the large vacancy
of nature and the natural life. To those who
are bred within the crowded and conscious
civilisation of cities the desire of being an artist
will probably come earlier; it will anticipate the
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM 157
experiences of life ; from the first will shape itself
more definitely and in its course conform to
existing opportunities of instruction. While still
immature in character and manhood the student
will be run through the mould of a matured
system which will turn him out at best an
inexperienced expert.
But with Borglum it was otherwise. The
experience here preceded the expertness, and the
latter is not such as the schools can teach or
possibly should try to teach. His groups have
little of the ordered arrangement of traditional
composition, nor does the modelling show facile
skill or elegant refinement. His work, indeed,
is much more an expression of nature than of art,
the frank, untrammelled expression of a natural
artist giving utterance to the fulness of his
thoughts. He acknowledges with gratitude the
great assistance that he received from Mr. Rebisso,
and when he went to Paris he enjoyed the critical
encouragement of Fremiet and Saint-Gaudens ;
but for the rest he is self-taught. His visit to
Paris lengthened into a sojourn of four years,
during which he took a short course in the study
of the figure at Julien's Academy and frequented
the Louvre and Luxembourg; otherwise keeping
very much to his studio, drawing inspiration from
the memory of his own experiences, and dis-
158 AMERICAN MASTERS
covering for himself a technique that should give
substance to his ideas.
So Borglum's work does not readily line up
with that of other modern sculptors. In its
disregard of symmetrical composition, in the
frequent appearance of passages left suggestively
in the rough and in the vivid naturalness that
characterises it we may for a moment fancy that
we detect the influence of Rodin. Yet it shows
none of the latter' s feeling for subtlety of modelling,
and by comparison is crude; moreover, the point
of view of each is widely different. Rodin's is
profoundly analytical and introspective at the
same time; Borglum's more spontaneous and
instinctive, aiming to interpret in a vigorous
ensemble the vivid impression of an objective
fact. Again, in breadth of handling and in
knowledge of animal structure and movement,
we might compare him with Barye ; only to find,
however, that the latter far excels him in nobility
of line and mass and falls as far behind him in
the expression of sentiment.
For Borglum's work reveals in a remarkable
degree the sentiment which comes of intimate,
habitual companionship. He does not, on the
one hand, invest his animals with any quasi-
human sentimentality, or, on the other, look at
them from the outside standpoint of the hunter
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM 159
or otherwise observant student. He has entered
into the actual sentient part which they play in
the life they share with man. Hence the senti-
ment that his work reveals is most poignantly
affecting. I doubt, indeed, if any sculptor of
animals has ever represented with such fidelity
and convincingness their intelligence and emo-
tions. Note, for example, some of the phases of
character-building in which he represents the
bronco. Here it is full-grown, though still
untamed, but quiet as a lamb, resting its muzzle
on its dam's back. It has not yet come in
contact with the disciplining force of man. Now
it is confronted with a saddle that lies upon the
ground and recoils with a mixture of trembling
and curiosity. There it has been rounded up
and thrown, at first struggling with impotent
fury, then stretched in utter exhaustion. Later
the saddle is on its back, and it is pitting its
strength and cunning against the knowledge and
endurance of man; then finally tamed, and co-
operating with man in the taming of other
horses, or sharing the night watch, or meeting
with him the mortal peril of the blizzard.
But Borglum's power of stimulating our
imagination includes in some cases even a sug-
gestion of the environment of the figures, as, for
instance, in the marble group of a mare and foal
160 AMERICAN MASTERS
caught in a snowstorm. The little one is uncon-
scious of danger, content as it noses close up to
the mother's side for shelter; but the gesture of
the latter is full of solicitude and anxiety. In
the swish of her tail and the droop and stiffening
of the hind quarters, we are made to realise the
force of the blizzard ; while, is it the little mass of
piled-up snow, or the whiteness of the marble,
or the intensity of the sculptor's imagination,
that conveys to our own a sense of white, snowy
desolation all around the two poor creatures?
It is seldom in modern sculpture that one will
find an expression of sentiment so unaffected
and affecting.
And the other notable element in his work is
its rendering of movement. It matters not what
kind of movement — impetuous dash, sudden
arrest of action, alert repose, the vicious fling
of body and heels as the beast prepares to turn
a somersault, the jjmp of pain, the submission of
exhaustion, the supple step to music in the circus,
the pause of doubt, the spasm of baffled rage —
each and all and others are represented with an
intimacy of knowledge and an instinctive cer-
tainty of method. He knows his subject so well
and realises in his mind so vividly the impression
which he seeks to interpret, that all pettiness of
observation is swallowed up in a large compre-
Q a
W .-2
h K
L~ -
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM 161
hension which disregards details, except in so far
as they are essential to the action or the sentiment.
And how characteristic are the details which he
does introduce ! Here, for example, is the figure
of a horse, "tamed." A saddle lies upon the
ground. It is the object which excites, first the
terror, then the anger of the untamed horse.
But this one is conquered and hangs his head
submissively over the instrument and badge of
his defeat. He stands with front feet planted
forward, the legs trembling, the hind ones limp
and sluggish; the line of the ribs exposed as the
flank heaves ; the nostrils distended with the gasps
of breath; the eye listless, the ear fallen. But,
keenest touch of all, note how the saddle-cloth
and girths have left a hot, glossy impress upon
the body, the hair around their edges being clotted
with sweat. It is detail such as this, full of
character, that one finds in all these pieces of
sculpture; and, for the rest, the modelling is
broadly suggestive, yet always distinctly charac-
teristic ; not only rendering structure and action,
but offering varieties of flesh texture, according
to the condition and character of the horse
represented.
Borglum, in a word, is an impressionistic
sculptor, untrammelled by formula or tradition,
seeking nature direct, with an eye habituated to
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essentials and with a degree of sympathetic
comprehension that corresponds with the range
and reality of his life's experiences. His work
is, thus, truly original; a product of his own
manhood, fashioned to artistic fitness.
VICTOR DAVID BRENNER
XI
VICTOR DAVID BRENNER
TN this country, as elsewhere, prior to the
establishment of the French Societe des
Amis de la Medaille, medal-making had sunk
to a department of trade ; or, if something artistic
were attempted, there was a divorce between the
designing and engraving. A sculptor or painter,
with no practical knowledge of the possibilities
and limitations of the cutting process, would be
commissioned to produce the design, while its
execution in the die was turned over to a more
or less skilled operative. The barrenness of the
result may be seen in the majority of medals
produced during many years.
Recognising that the work of the medallist
had been and should be a special department of
art, with very individual qualities of exquisite
expression, the National Academy two years ago
established a class in Coin and Medal Designing
and put it in charge of Victor D. Brenner.
Ten years previously the latter had arrived
in New York, an expert die-sinker and engraver;
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166 AMERICAN MASTERS
now he had just returned from studying under
Roty in Paris. The story of his progress from
artisan to artist is not without a touch of romance.
To the student of personal accomplishment
there is always a particular satisfaction in the
contrast between hard and strait beginnings and
the ultimate success. He forgets, as the artist
himself perhaps does when the sweets of victory
are on his tongue, the long weariness of the
previous struggle, and is philosophically per-
suaded that the pain of parturition must neces-
sarily precede the birth of art as of life. However
that may be, Brenner has had his share of
privations ; and it is well for him that he encoun-
tered them early and surmounted them before
the enthusiasm of youth dwindled.
He was born in 187 1 at Shavly, in the north-
west of Russia, and from his sixth to his thirteenth
year attended the Hebrew school. After three
years of apprenticeship to his father, who was a
general mechanic and seal-cutter, with consider-
able talent in carving, the youth, now sixteen years
old, travelled through the neighbouring towns,
making seals. Then he worked for a jewelry
engraver in Riga, and subsequently migrated to
Mittau, where he found employment in a rubber
stamp and type foundry, cutting dies and illus-
trations for advertisements. In 1889 he estab-
VICTOR DAVID BRENNER 167
lished himself in Kowno as a jewelry engraver
and seal-cutter. By this time he had saved nearly
enough to pay his passage to New York, and the
following year he reached our shores. He was then
scarcely nineteen, without friends, knowledge of
the language or ready funds. For a while he
sold matches on Fulton Street, and then graduated
to the superior opportunities of a sweat-shop in
Brooklyn. He was rescued from this by an
advertisement through which he found employ-
ment with a jewelry firm. Meanwhile his
acquaintance with the language and with the
local conditions was improving, and it was not
long before he obtained a position as seal-cutter.
Then followed an engagement with Mr. H. Popper
as die-cutter and jewelry engraver, during which
he came to the notice of Professor S. H. Oetinger,
the numismatist, whose collection of medals seems
to have awakened in the young man a longing to
be himself an artist. In 1891 he first learned to
handle clay at the Cooper Union night class, but
attended only for a month, and it was not
until 1896 that he studied drawing under Ward
in the night class of the Academy of Design.
Meanwhile, in 1893, he had started for himself
in business, working for jewelry and silversmith
firms; steadily improving his financial conditions,
but becoming more and more impatient under
168 AMERICAN MASTERS
the restraints which the exigencies of trade placed
upon his desire to be an artist. I should judge
that these years of material comfortableness may
have been really more trying to him than the
previous lean years. Then, work and food and
lodging seemed the only desirable things ; now he
was in labour with a desire that exceeded all
others. He had tasted of the sweets of beauty
and become conscious of having something
beautiful within himself, might he but learn how
to express it; and all the while the Gallios of
trade "cared for none of those things."
This period of probation at length came to an
end in 1898, by which time he had saved sufficient
money for study in Paris. A little time before,
in connection with a medal for the Convention
of Charities and Corrections, he had made the
acquaintance of Mr. Samuel P. Avery. But the
latter had for some time been acquainted with
him, keeping watch over his progress and secretly
helping him to commissions. Of the value and
encouragement of Mr. Avery's friendship Brenner
speaks with warm gratitude. Through him he
obtained an introduction to Mr. George A. Lucas,
who befriended him in Paris and introduced him
to Roty, furnishing him with commissions while
he was still studying in the latter's atelier. This
he entered after preliminary studentship in the
PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTON
By Victor David Brenner
VICTOR DAVID BRENNER 169
Julien school, and became the assistant as well
as pupil of the master. His progress was rapid,
and examples of his work are already to, be found
in the Paris Mint, Munich Glyptothek, Vienna
Numismatic Society, the Metropolitan Museum
and the Numismatic Society, New York.
Up to the present time Brenner's best work
has been portrait-plaques and the heads upon the
obverse of medals. In designs which involve a
decorative treatment he has been less happy.
As might be expected of one whose period of
study has been so short, he is weak in composition
and freehand drawing, nor does he display much
inventiveness of fancy. On the other hand, he has
an extraordinarily direct vision, quickened by
experience in so exacting an occupation as die-
cutting, and, moreover, a very mobile sympathy.
The latter helps him to be interested at once in
his subject, and with so much affection and
reverence for the personality that his portrayal
exhibits a very unusual degree of intimacy.
Among the best of his portraits are those of
William Maxwell Evarts, J. Sanford Saltus and
George Aloysius Lucas, whom I place in one group ;
and those of M. Vade\ Edward D. Fulde and
M. Lacour in another. The reasonableness of
the separation is to be found in the difference of
motive, respectively, illustrated in the modelling;
i 7 o AMERICAN MASTERS
the more distinctively sculptural as compared
with the painter-like method.
For in all low-relief work one will find the artist
to be showing a preference either for form and
the structural character of the subject, or for its
colour qualities, represented by delicate variations
in the planes, which produce a corresponding
warmth of delicate light and shade ; in a word, he
feels his subject either in the round or in the flat.
Which you yourself will prefer is a question of
your point of view. Among brother artists who
are painters there will probably be a verdict in
favour of the second group, since it represents
more closely what they themselves strive for,
and are therefore partial to. And its pictorial
quality may equally recommend it also to general
approbation. For, indeed, such a portrait as that
of M. Vad6 is unquestionably fascinating. There
is in it scarce any resort to lines, the modelling
being effected almost entirely by planes, at once
broad and subtle, full of a sense of colour and
giving an expression of dreaminess to the face.
Yet, if one compares this portrait with either of
the three included in the former group, it is to
find in the latter a compensating virility of expres-
sion, a greater dignity of structure and of character.
It is not usual to find these two very opposite
motives of technique united in one artist. But
VICTOR DAVID BRENNER 171
in Brenner's case it seems to result from an
absence of all artistic parti pris, and from the
freshness of interest with which he attacks each
subject, so that the latter itself reveals to him
the more appropriate manner of presenting it.
In the portrait shown in the accompanying
illustration the two motives seem to be combined.
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE
XII
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE
TN all ages sculpture has been intimately allied
with architecture, somewhat as the blossom
with the tree, reaching often its noblest expression
as an efflorescence of decoration upon the surface
of a building or as separate forms within it;
springing up in statue, tomb or pulpit like bursts
of flowery growth in the forest. Nature in a
marvellous way adapts the colour and forms of
the blossoms to the character and structure of
the tree and shapes of the woodland flowers;
for example, the foxglove spiring up amid the
tree trunks to the character of its environment.
In the spirit of this example the sculptor fashions
his designs in conformity with that of the archi-
tecture, whether it be for decoration of the
building's surface or for a separate contributing
feature.
Such cooperation with the architect demands at
once fertility of imagination and considerable self-
restraint ; an appreciation of the larger qualities
of design as displayed in the architecture, mingled
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176 AMERICAN MASTERS
with a natural feeling for the charm of minute and
exquisite workmanship; a personal feeling, sub-
ordinated to the main design, yet in this subordina-
tion finding an increase of force. For the modelled
ornament is itself enriched by its enrichment of
the wall-surface; and the statue which has fine
architecture for its setting receives therefrom
additional dignity, provided always that the
sculptor has adapted the lines of his figure to those
of the architecture. If he miss the spirit of the
latter and design his subject independently his
statue loses the benefit of the alliance and its
importance is overpowered by the necessary pre-
dominance of the architectural effect. Nor is the
failure to secure harmonious relation between the
sculpture and the architecture always to be laid
to the sculptor. The architect's design may be
lacking in taste and dignity; or, if good in itself,
yet without adequate or any provision for sculp-
tural embellishment; the latter being resorted to
as an afterthought. Examples of this kind are
not infrequent.
The best opportunity that we have in this
country of studying sculpture in its relation to
architecture is in the Library of Congress, for
here the design was deliberately planned to
include sculpture and painted decoration, and on
a scale of unusual magnitude. Some critics are
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 177
disposed to complain of an overelaboration in
the decorative scheme, but at least every item of
the sculpture was organic and structural in
intention. We may differ, that is to say, as to the
propriety of introducing so much embellishment,
but the latter everywhere grows naturally out of
its position and has its closely planned function in
the general design.
The sculptural decoration of the staircase hall
was entrusted to Philip Martiny, except the
figures in the spandrils over the main arch which
fronts you as you enter. These were executed by
Olin L. Warner — whose work has been reviewed
in another chapter — and in their Greek-like
monumental simplicity and repose, their freedom
from all accessory aids to decoration and their
avowal of the decorative value of pure form they
are in marked contrast to the French spirit of
Martiny's work. For the latter, a naturalised
Frenchman, represents the French training, com-
paratively unaffected by the American environ-
ment. As a boy he was employed with his father
in modelling and carving ornamental designs ; thus
gaining a familiarity with ornament before he
proceeded to study it systematically as a designer,
from which stage he passed on to the further
studies of a sculptor of the figure. The feeling for
decoration is with him an instinct, cultivated in
178 AMERICAN MASTERS
the best of all schools, that of practical experience ;
his knowledge of historic forms a habit of memory,
and his versatility in adapting, skill in device
and manipulative facility, the product of habitual
practice.
For the newel posts of the staircase he executed
the female figures holding a torch aloft ; but these
reveal mainly the results of good teaching. They
are not a personal expression of himself. In a
seated figure, however, designed as a Soldiers'
and Sailors' Memorial for Jersey City, he reached
a very considerable degree of monumental dignity ;
yet it still appears to be true that his real bent is
toward decoration. In this he displays creative
fancy and a most charming faculty in the use of
form. Witness this marble balustrade, divided
into compartments by a series of plain posts,
between which are suspended festoons of fruit
and flowers, with baby forms astride them. Each
in a vein of playful fancy personifies some occupa-
tion, art or science, and the emblems typifying
them are introduced as accents of surprise in the
composition. The whole is alive with graceful
animation and yet preserves a rhythmical dignity,
a variety in uniformity, like the play of notes in
succeeding bars of music.
Its freedom of fancy and rich effect recall the
qualities shown in Lorado Taft's decoration of the
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 179
Horticultural Building at the World's Fair; a
decoration of rare distinction. Indeed the prime
feature of this artist's work at its best is the decora-
tive character of the composition ; as in " The Soli-
tude of the Soul," which involves an ideal motive,
but is perhaps happiest in the grouping of the
nude figures around the mass of unhewn rock.
The relief ornament in the ceiling of the dome
and in the frieze of the entablature was
modelled by Albert Weinert. He was limited by
the architect to the well-known Roman forms
revived by the sculptors and painters of the
Italian Renaissance, but has treated them with so
much individual feeling that one may regret he
was denied the opportunity of creating the designs.
For one cause of the dearth of decorative sculptors
in America may very reasonably be attributed to
the hesitation of architects to permit the use of
any forms except such as they can find authority
for in historic ornament. Martiny, we have seen,
was allowed to invent the design for the staircase ;
a quite unusual privilege, which has resulted in a
memorable work of art, almost unique in the
country. Usually the architect from books and
photographs indicates what forms shall be adopted,
and these are reproduced by the draftsmen in
working drawings, which are handed over to a
contractor to be executed by journeymen modellers
180 AMERICAN MASTERS
Their business is to copy the drawing exactly. If
they have any individuality of feeling it is sup-
pressed; the divorce between design and crafts-
manship is perpetuated, and dry conventionalism
results. In the degradation of design which
ensues from this slavish adherence to historic
precedents, producing, be it noted, not a revival
of the precedent but, for the most part, a dead,
inert copy, a thing not to be taken seriously as
decoration, the sculptor is discouraged from
associating himself with design. He may have
the gift of decoration, but it lies uncultivated,
since he will not work except with reasonable
liberty. And he is right, for the only decoration
that is of any vital worth is such as grows under
the hand of a man whose brain has conceived it
and is controlling continually its growth. He
may be influenced by historic precedent or be
working in the freedom of his fancy ; in either case,
his work has personal, vital significance. Signifi-
cantly bad it may be, and this I suspect is the
architect's apprehension; yet, provided it have
significance, there is some prospect of improve-
ment : just as we reach what measure of virtue we
have through our faults. For of all men the most
exasperating is he who, without character enough
for fault or virtue, methodically maintains a level
of innocuous mediocrity. Equally exasperating
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 181
is decoration of this kind, and it is a kind that is
prevalent everywhere.
The dome of the Library is supported on eight
piers, each formed of a cluster of columns, one of
which projects more prominently than the rest
and is surmounted by a figure personifying some
department of civilised life or thought. Its func-
tion seems to be to prolong the upright line of
the pier to the bottom of the triangular penden-
tive which connects the spread of the arches; at
any rate, those figures which most simply suggest
the vertical direction, with as little play of contour
lines as possible, appear most conformable to their
position. The one that most thoroughly fulfils
this condition is the figure of "Philosophy," by
Bela L. Pratt. One arm hangs down, the other
is drawn up at the elbow supporting a book; the
line of the drapery on one side comes squarely
down to the feet and on the other is slightly varied
by the drawing back of the leg from the knee. The
figure is of ample proportion, with a sweet gravity
of mien ; the head, being slightly bowed, which,
as it is viewed from below, brings the face agree-
ably within the line of vision ; a point that has been
overlooked in some of the other statues. Without
having any particular force, the figure nevertheless
impresses by the sobriety of its lines and mass
and by its reserve of feeling. The value of these
i8 2 AMERICAN MASTERS
qualities can best be appreciated when one is
actually standing in the dome and able to compare
the figure with the other corresponding ones, all of
which by reason of more varied contours seem
inferior to it in decorative appropriateness.
This same sculptor was entrusted with the
designs of the six spandrils over the entrance
doors. The forms are graceful and repeat with
pleasant variation the curve of the arch, but
they do not adequately fill the space, and are
wanting in architectonic character. Just what
I mean can better be understood by comparing
them with Warner's spandrils, mentioned above.
Then one can scarcely fail to notice how much
more structural in feeling are the latter, organic-
ally related to the arches and to the space, truly
architectural in their character. Pratt's strong-
est point seems to be expression of sentiment,
exemplified in his busts of Colonel Henry Lee
and of Phillips Brooks; in some low-relief por-
traits of children and in the heroic figure of a
soldier for St. Paul's School, Concord, New
Hampshire. In all of these it is not so much
the characteristics preeminently sculptural that
we are conscious of, as the quality of the senti-
ment; and this same quality, portrayed with
graceful inventiveness, represents the measure
of his architectural decoration. It is, therefore,
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 183
in such examples as the medallions in the pavilions
of the Library, personifying the four seasons,
that he appears at his best; for in these the
sentiment is expressed not only by suavity of
line, but by a sensitive treatment of the various
planes. Like his low-relief portraits they have
very strongly the pictorial quality. That he
has, however, a feeling as well for the sculptural
quality of form is evident from two nude female
figures which he has executed in marble, "Study
of a Young Girl" and "Study for a Fountain,"
in which the charm of sentiment and form are
very happily united.
It is not within the scope of this essay, which
is considering the principles of architectural
sculpture, to note each of the remaining seven
statues in detail, especially since most of them
are by sculptors whose work has been reviewed
elsewhere. And the same applies to the sixteen
bronze statues that stand below upon the marble
balustrade of the gallery. These represent real
or imaginary portraits of men illustrious in the
departments of civilised life and thought, personi-
fied above, and their function is to relieve by a
series of spiring forms the level lines of the balus-
trade. And here again, if I am not mistaken,
those which with least disturbance of contour
conform to the character of a simple shaft are
i8 4 AMERICAN MASTERS
the most effective. Thus we may be disposed
to feel that, viewed in relation to its position
and function, the "Solon" by F. Wellington
Ruckstuhl protests too much its own individuality,
and that the greater reserve of C. E. Dallin's
"Newton," of John J. Boyle's "Bacon" and
"Plato," of Paul W. Bartlett's "Michelangelo,"
of Edward C. Potter's "Fulton," of Charles H.
Niehaus's " Gibbon," of George E. Bissell's " Kent"
and the "Henry" by Herbert Adams, makes
them more valuable as sculptural adornments
to the architecture. And, after all, this qualifi-
cation is the most important one in the interest
both of the architecture and of the statue itself.
If it were possible to study the statues inde-
pendently of their surroundings we might find
that some I have mentioned are intrinsically
inferior to some of those omitted; and I well
remember that some which now fill their present
position with quiet effectiveness seemed less
interesting before they were put in place. For
the ultimate test of the statue, as a part of the
architectural scheme, depends less upon its
intrinsic than its extrinsic value; not so much
upon what it is as upon how it cooperates with the
architecture, lending it some accent of piquancy
or elaboration and drawing from it dignity and
enforcement. Nor is the truth of this weakened
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 185
by the fact that you visit many a church in Italy
solely to study some piece of sculpture without
one thought of the architecture, unless it be a
regret that the shrine is not worthy of its treasure.
In such a case the intention of the sculpture was
not architectonic; whereas in the Library of
Congress, as in all other buildings in which the
cooperation of the sculptor has been deliberately
included, the ideal is to make the two arts mutu-
ally reenforcing. The architecture being neces-
sarily predominant, the sculpture which does
not conform to the limitations imposed upon it
will suffer by comparison, while, on the other
hand, through conformity it will secure additional
measure of impressiveness.
Of the elaborate decoration of the rotunda
clock by John Flanagan I cannot speak from
knowledge; and, without having seen it in place,
it is unfair to judge of the effect of the mingling
of precise elegance in the lower part with the
florid arrangement above of Father Time and
two female figures. But before leaving the
Library we may find in the corridors of the
entrance hall four relief-panels, by R. Hinton
Perry, personifying Greek, Roman, Persian and
Scandinavian "Inspiration." They seem to me
to represent this sculptor at his best, displaying
a gift of imagination and very charming treat-
1 86 AMERICAN MASTERS
ment of form, regulated by reserve and taste;
for these last qualities are not so conspicuous in
some of his work. The fountain group, for
example, which embellishes the terrace in front
of the Library, is a clever exhibition of technical
skill in the representation of form and movement,
but pretentious. Its lack of cohesion as a group
may have been less the affair of the sculptor than
of the architect, since the latter had provided for
the figures three equal-sized niches; but on the
other hand the sculptor seems to have regarded
them as features to be ignored. His central
figure of Neptune is entirely outside the arch,
while the sea-nymphs on their restive steeds
seem to be trying to get clear of the architectural
restraint. Restiveness, indeed, is the chief sug-
gestion of the whole; an uneasy collocation of
aggressive forms, out of keeping with the some-
what severe character of the Library facades.
Yet one should not overlook the indubitable
power and vigour of these figures, especially of
the Neptune; only regretting that imagination
has entered so little into its composition. In
this respect the " Primitive Man and Serpent,"
a later statue, is much more acceptable. It also
has power, the more effective that its energy has
been controlled, and the sculptor, in thinking out
this conflict between creatures of such different
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 187
forms, has produced a composition which is full
of imagination and very statuesque. Again
he exhibits his mastery of form in a statue of
"Circe"; a finely poised, supple figure, with a
superb action of voluptuous invitation. More-
over, the conception is satisfactorily idealised, a
quality which does not always characterise his
treatment of the female form. The one, for
instance, in the group of "The Lion in Love " is a
very ordinary reproduction of the model; nor
can I find in his Langdon doors for the Buffalo
Historical Society's Building, the same imagina-
tive control of form as in the Library reliefs.
Perry, in fact, seems to be an impetuous, forceful
person, drawing largely upon his temperament
and with the unevenness of result very usual in
such cases. Yet he has a mastery of technique
so much above the average that, when he regu-
lates it with reserve and kindles it from his
imagination, he produces work which is full of
interest.
In this brief survey of the decorative sculpture
of the Library of Congress it has been possible
to touch only upon some of the most conspicuous
features, but much else that is worthy of study
upon the spot will be found scattered over the
big building, especially in the private reading-
rooms of the Senate and of the House of Repre-
188 AMERICAN MASTERS
sentatives. The scheming and supervision of
this vast amount of beautiful detail was the work
of Edward Pearce Casey, an architect with
considerable knowledge of decoration and feeling
for it. In some cases he was cooperating with
sculptors who had had no previous experience
in decorative work, and he was himself
without practical experience, having but re-
cently returned from his studies at the Ecole
des Beaux Arts, and the bias of his taste,
if I mistake not, was toward the exuberance
and profuseness of Roman ornament. When,
therefore, we take into consideration the vast-
ness and varied features of the undertaking,
we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that it has
been upon the whole very well carried out;
probably quite as well as was possible under the
conditions of having to complete so huge a work
by a given date. For one of the difficulties with
which our artists, architects, sculptors and
painters alike have to contend is the inexorable
public demand that the building with all its
embellishments shall be "turned over " on con-
tract time. Very few men are sufficiently sure
of their position, and likewise possessed of suffi-
cient conscience in the matter, to insist upon
adequate time for the development of their
decorative scheme.
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 189
This insistence upon securing as far as possible
an ultimate perfection of detail, guided by a
judgment and taste of unusual refinement, is a
notable characteristic of the architect, Charles
F. McKim, as it is also of the sculptor, Augustus
Saint-Gaudens. Hence to this day the pedestals
in front of the Boston Public Library are without
the groups of statuary that the latter is to exe-
cute. Again, as an example of choiceness and
reserve in the sculptural decoration of a building,
one may cite McKim's treatment of the facades
of the University Club, New York. Indeed,
they are quite too choice and reserved to satisfy
the popular taste, and it is the latter which
unfortunately regulates in the majority of
instances the character of our public buildings,
with an inevitable tendency toward pretentious-
ness of mass and floridness of detail. On the
other hand, from the point of view of the sculptor,
McKim's influence has been too personal, too
exclusively along the line of reproducing the
style and feeling of antique art, to have been of
much direct benefit to the development of deco-
rative sculpture in this country. He is, perhaps,
too intolerant of failure to venture upon
experiments.
For certainly the development has been at-
tended with some results to which it is impos-
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sible to point with appreciation. Do we find an
example of this in the Appellate Court in New
York? Its exterior is profusely covered with
sculpture ; but can one truly feel that it is decora-
tive ? On the contrary, it may occur to some
that the building would have had more dignity
unadorned; that it is overloaded; its quiet lines
disturbed by the flutter of forms against the sky ;
that the figures themselves lack the decorative
quality, dryly formal in some instances and in
others without sufficient reserve of line and mass ;
overpowering, in fact, the structure, while indi-
vidually, at the distance from which they are seen,
of not much moment.
Civic pride, doubtless not uninfluenced by the
discovery that there is a commercial value in
esthetics, has led to the embellishing of office
buildings and hotels with sculpture. With the
former continually increasing their vertical direc-
tion, it has been no easy matter to devise for them
a suitable kind of plastic decoration. Perhaps
the most appropriate has been the flat orna-
mentation, occasionally burgeoning into rounded
forms, which Louis H. Sullivan, a Chicago archi-
tect, has used. He has the advantage of being his
own designer for decoration as well as for struc-
ture; and having a very logical mind he designs
both with a strict regard for organic propriety,
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 191
while his fecund imagination enables him to
create freely forms of inexhaustible variety and
full of the charm of vital freshness.
In the case of many office buildings, especially
those erected some years ago, the sculpture has
the appearance of being added as an afterthought,
so inadequate is the provision made for it. There
is a conspicuous instance of this on lower Broad-
way, New York, four colossal figures in bronze
by J. Massey Rhind being placed upon a pro-
jecting cornice some twenty feet above the level
of the street. They have no structural relation
to the building and thereby lose much of their
effectiveness.
This sculptor, a native of Edinburgh, where
his family, as architects and otherwise, have long
been identified with the civic improvements that
have gradually made the modern city so con-
spicuously handsome, is one of the most skilful of
our architectural sculptors. He has not the play
of fancy nor the graceful facility in decorative
forms displayed by Martiny; but, instead, a
strong instinct for big simplicity of design, and
for the constructional value of the figure as an
adjunct to the architecture. When, as in the
spandrils for the Smith Memorial Arch at Phila-
delphia, he is elaborating a part of the struc-
ture, he works with as much of the feeling of an
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architect as of a sculptor, showing an unmis-
takable appreciation of the material. In the case
of these spandrils it is granite, and the treatment
of the drapery and wings has been admirably
adapted to the quality and character of the
material and to the exigencies of cutting. A
similar recognition of the claims of the material
is displayed in some granite lions, designed for
the Ehret mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery,
and again in the caryatides, executed in pink
Tennessee marble for the Macy Building in
New York. The latter, moreover, are particu-
larly successful in suggesting their architectural
function of carrying a superincumbent weight,
rigidity of form and grace of line being fortunately
mingled. Among the varied subjects which have
occupied this sculptor is an elaborate fountain
for " Georgian Court " at Lake wood, New Jersey.
The design comprises a male figure, almost nude,
standing in a chariot formed of a huge shell,
these parts being in bronze, while the sea-horses
that he drives and the attendant Nereids are of
marble. The composition, enclosed within a
circular basin and rising pyramidally toward
the centre, is full of spirit, with especial
force and freedom of movement in the marble
portions. Yet it is probably true that J. Massey
Rhind discovers his best qualities as a sculptor
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 193
in less exuberant designs. Indeed, his most
impressive work, within my knowledge, I should
take to be the recumbent portrait-statue of Father
Brown in the Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin in
New York. It is very truly monumental, with
an exquisite placidity and tender gravity of
feeling ; the lines of the figure severely simple, the
vestments, notwithstanding some elaboration of
delicate detail, subordinated so completely to the
form, and the latter in its supple fixity express-
ive of the eternal calm of the head. It is a
figure from which emanates a very unusual
atmosphere of spirituality.
I wonder if there is not more incentive to revere
the memory of a man in a memorial like this,
representing him folded in the sleep of death,
than in one which figures him as he lived ! Yet
the latter is the more usual method in this coun-
try, possibly because of the lack of space in city
churches. Saint-Gaudens has done some mem-
orable work in this direction, notably in the
portrait-panels of James McCosh at Princeton,
and of Doctor Bellows in the Church of All Souls,
New York; so too have French and Herbert
Adams. Again in mural tablets, bearing instead
of a portrait some ideal figure, work of technical
merit and of very beautiful spirit has been done
by Clement J. Barnhorn of Cincinnati. Especially
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would I mention an angel design of his for the
Poland Memorial and a " Madonna of the Lilies."
In both these low reliefs he displays a quite
exquisite appreciation of the beauty of sim-
plicity of design, of the expression of tender
differences of plane, and of the mingling of firm
and vanishing lines. Nor in the refinement of
treatment is the structural character of the
figure and drapery lost.
DOMESTIC DESIGN
Among the various decorative designs by
Barnhorn is one for a cottage piano, carved in
wood. Conventionalised tree-forms compose the
legs, extend a bough from each side along the lower
part of the keyboard and then mount up the sides
and spread their foliage in a canopy along the top,
a draped figure occupying the centre of the front.
The design has one good feature, that it growl
out of and expresses the character of the material.
Yet it deviates from what experience suggests to
be worth regarding as an axiom: that in such
objects as are actually a part of the structure of a
room, for instance a mantelpiece, or in those
which by their size and importance emphasise
their structural character, the contours should
conform to the straight and curved lines, which
experience has found necessary in architecture.
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 195
In a word, that the structure of the object should
be first attained and the decoration then sub-
ordinated to it, instead of the latter being allowed
to encroach upon the structural lines. An ivy-
mantled tower takes its place suitably in an open-
air setting ; and, on the other hand, a small object
indoors, such as a clock on a shelf, may assume
any variety of outline ; but with the larger, formal
ones, whether built into, or detached within, the
room, you cannot indulge in irregular contours
without making them amorphous, more or less
clumsy or else trivial. And this piano seems
open to the charge of cumbersomeness, which
again offends the instinct of the musician, who
would feel in the instrument a suggestion of
yielding to the vibrations of the music — a feeling
so prominent in the delicate simplicity of the
violin and to be desired in the form of all instru-
ments. Yet one welcomes in this piano the
inventiveness of fancy displayed, and the skill
and individuality of the craftsmanship, delighted
to find an American sculptor applying his art to
the intimacies of domestic design.
Among the few sculptors who have used the
figure decoratively in the arts of minor design
none has displayed a livelier imagination or a
more charming facility than Henry Linder. His
little conceptions for candlesticks, inkwells,
196 AMERICAN MASTERS
electric-light stands and other objects of domestic
use are full of grace and spirit. Another decora-
tive sculptor of rare feeling and unusual technical
resources is M. M. Schwarzott. I remember well
a panel of his representing fishes sporting in the
waves, which, as Mr. Hartmann fitly observes, it
worthy of a Japanese coppersmith.
That very few sculptors have devoted them-
selves to domestic design is due as well to the
dearth of really decorative genius among them
as to the claims of other commissions upon the
time of those few who possess it. Partly,
perhaps, to a prevalence of "high-art" notions,
which regard a statue as, of itself, more worthy
than a decorated object, irrespective of the skill
and craftsmanship or the beauty of the design
involved. Yet, I doubt if a prejudice of this
sort would deter a man really possessed of the
decorative instinct. It is the lack of this and of
appreciation on the part of the public for personal
work which forms a bar to our advancement in
the arts of design ; this and the preference of the
architects for reproducing commercially the time-
honoured forms. Encouraged by them our rich
people prefer a room in which every detail is
dryly imitated from a dead period to one animated
by the art and spirit of to-day. So they take
their morning coffee a la Louis Quinze; their
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 197
luncheon in a Dutch kitchen; drop into an
affectation of Japan for a cup of afternoon tea;
dine in the splendour of the Grand Monarque;
sip their liqueurs in Pompeii, and rest at length
from this jumble of inert impressions in a chamber
a VEmpire. Small wonder if their appreciation
of art should be a pose and their actual encourage-
ment of it nearly null !
OPEN-AIR DECORATION
The first great opportunity in this country for
sculptors to prove their capacity in the larger
field of outdoor decoration was presented by the
World's Fair at Chicago, and it brought into
prominence three animal sculptors, E. C. Potter,
Edward Kemeys and A. Phimister Proctor.
The first named collaborated with French in the
quadriga above the water-gate and in the groups
of the "Bull" and "Farm Horse" in front of the
Agricultural Building, displaying in the one case
a fine command of spirited movement and in
the other a feeling for large simplicity. These
qualities he combined most effectively in the
equestrian statue of Washington for the Place
de Jena in Paris, in which again his collaborator
was French. The "Wild Cats" by Kemeys,
which stood upon the ends of two of the bridges,
were quite extraordinary examples of animal
1 98 AMERICAN MASTERS
sculpture. Their stealthy, supple movement, as,
bellies low to the ground, they advanced with
that slow, clinging step which precedes the spring,
represented the closest study of the naturalist,
while the treatment of the lines and masses was
altogether a sculptor's, monumental in a high
degree.
Proctor also is a naturalist and ardent sports-
man, camping alone for weeks together in the
forests and studying the big game at close quar-
ters. Perhaps his instinct is naturalistic rather
than sculptural. At any rate, the strongest fea-
ture of his work is its realism ; yet his " Pumas, " at
one entrance of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, shows
a fair measure of monumental feeling. The
quadriga which he modelled for the United States
pavilion at the Paris Exposition was dwarfed
by the structure, but when reproduced for the
Ethnological building at the Pan-American
Exposition proved extremely effective. On this
occasion, however, it was only a part of the
structure's embellishment and not a single
emphatic note, for which purpose it was too
slight in composition, unduly stringy and deficient
in cohesion. Proctor himself had felt it to be
so, and the lesson was not lost upon him, for in
his next opportunity of essaying an important
composition he produced something of much
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 199
more sculptural import. This was a group
executed for the Pan-American Exposition, which
embodied the idea of "Agriculture," representing
a man at the plow-tail, while a boy urged on
the team, a horse and an ox. It was a very-
remarkable example of the force of realism, when
governed by the sculptural intention. The mass
was most imposing and full of variety of move-
ment, through the contrast afforded by the figures :
the horse vigorously straining at the traces,
the ox exerting his slow, lumbering weight ; the
boy in free action, while the man's was con-
centrated and checked. Moreover, it told its
story so simply and directly, with such complete
recognition of the essential points. As a piece
of artistic realism, it was alive with the spirit of
Millet — altogether a most memorable work.
At this exposition was also seen a quadriga
by Frederick G. R. Roth. His previous work
had consisted of statuettes executed in bronze,
revealing a close study of unusual kinds of action,
such as that of an elephant balancing himself
upon a tub. He modelled a pair of these in
which the mass is poised, respectively, upon the
forelegs and the hind ones. Although they are
very small in size they are large in feeling, with
breadth of modelling and enforcement of the
suggestion of bulk and weightiness. The
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expression of movement is admirable: felt con-
tinuously throughout the mass and varying to
characteristically, according as each part con-
tributes to the action. Nor does he neglect to
secure the surface-charm of colour and texture
in his bronzes ; and these little objects of art make
very choice appeal to sight and touch. This
charm of surface is accompanied by a more
vigorous display of movement in a group, which
represents "The Combat" between an elephant
and a rhinoceros. The latter, with hind legs
planted as firmly as trees, is ramming his horn
into the belly of the other beast, who has rolled
over on his side and is lifting head and trunk in
a spasm of pain. Again our interest is divided
between the extraordinary realism of the repre-
sentation and the beauty of the surfaces, shown
especially in the slabs and corrugations of the
rhinoceros. The stress of movement is carried
still further in the quadriga. It is an incident
of a " Chariot Race " ; the vehicle has been whirled
on to one wheel, and the driver is throwing his
weight upon the opposite side to restore the
balance, at the same time holding back with all
his force against the strength of the four galloping
horses. This group, of full size, executed in
plaster, cannot fail to impress one both by its
daring and by the knowledge and power displayed.
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 201
Whether it completely convinces one's imagination
is less certain. The figure of the man does, so
also that of the horse which is plunging in mid-
air; but the hind legs of the others and the chariot
wheel seem rooted to the ground, thereby clogging
the impetus of movement. The group, in fact,
raises an interesting point as to the limitation
of the sculptor. A painter could give the wheel
an appearance of revolving, could raise a cloud
of dust around the heels of the horses and by
the introduction of atmosphere resolve the
rigidity of lines. Correspondingly, if this group
were raised to an elevation so that the juncture
of the wheels and legs with the ground were not
observable, and the whole by distance were
enveloped in atmosphere, the effect upon the
imagination would be vastly increased, probably
complete. But when it was seen at Buffalo,
on a low pedestal close to the eye, the deficiencies
of illusion were as apparent as they are in the
accompanying illustration. However, granted
that the illusion would be complete, we may
question the propriety of expressing in """-Jpture
such violent movement of progression. If
stationary, an equal vehemence might still be
monumental; but can one imagine any structure
upon which, without detriment to its stability
and impressiveness, this restless mass, hurling
202 AMERICAN MASTERS
itself forward from its position, could be placed?
Therefore, the sculptor seems to have landed
himself in the predicament of needing something
which he has made it impossible for himself to
procure; due, if I mistake not, to his having
forced the medium beyond its characteristic
limits.
Eli Harvey's observation of wild animals in
confinement has resulted in some excellent statues
of lions, jaguars and leopards, all of which would
be eminently suitable for the embellishment of
public parks. In two cases he has used lions
as the motive for decorating pediments intended
for the lion house of the New York Zoological
Society. His work is at once very true to life
and thoroughly sculpturesque.
In all probability, however, the finest animal
group which has yet been produced in this country
is the "Buffaloes" by H. K. Bush-Brown. It
has been reproduced as a statuette in bronze,
and in this form is a powerful and impressive
work, but to appreciate to the full its con-
spicuouslv monumental character, the dignity
of its bulk and of its massed and rooted energy,
one must have seen it in the original colossal
size. Well placed in the natural surroundings of
a park, it would present a spectacle of re-
markable grandeur. This sculptor, like his uncle,
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 203
Henry Kirke Brown, the sculptor of the
equestrian statues of Washington and General
Scott, is a horseman, and his own equestrian
statues display a thorough knowledge, but scarcely
that imposing dignity of mass, which the
build of the buffalo made possible for this
group.
Whereas at the Chicago Exposition the gaiety
of the sculptural embellishment, with the
exception of the Macmonnies's fountain, was
concentrated on the buildings, and the arrange-
ment of statues and groups about the grounds
had been regulated with reserve, one motive of
the Pan-American was to demonstrate con-
spicuously how sculpture could be used in the
decoration of open spaces. There must have
been many who felt that this feature was over-
done ; that the dignity of the vistas was disturbed
by the multiplicity and variety of forms, and
that what had set out to be gay finished by being
fidgety. The more so that there was little relief of
greenery, the whole scheme being too exclusively
architectural without the assuaging influence
of landscape gardening. If in lieu of so much
sculpture trees had been imported into the scene,
it* beauty would have been increased, and the
discomfort of the visitor, unsheltered from the
sun, correspondingly diminished. The value of
204 AMERICAN MASTERS
greenery in displays of this sort is at once an
esthetic and a practical consideration.
The sculpture at this exposition was under
the supervision of Karl Bitter, and his equestrian
"Standard Bearers," surmounting the pylons of
the Triumphal Bridge, were the most arresting
features of the scheme. Ten years earlier he
had modelled the colossal groups that stood at
the base of the dome on the four corners of the
Administration Building. They presented a fan-
fare of form against the sky; and these rearing
horses at Buffalo, with their riders holding aloft
a draped flag, had the same fling of action, only
more controlled by experience. Instead of an
explosion of limbs and movement, there was a
sustained and concentrated energy, infinitely
more impressive. It is in decorative subjects of
this sort, which permit a certain heroic exaggera-
tion, that Bitter seems at his best. An Austrian
by birth and training, he has the Teutonic
exuberance, touched with the gaiety of the French
influence, and it is when the occasion warrants
the exercise of both qualities that he finds his
best chance. When he is deprived of an excuse
for festivity he is liable to abandon himself to
an excess of force, as in the "Atlantes" of the
St. Paul Building in New York, which are uniting
their titanic strength with contortion of limbs
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 205
and muscles to support — one little balcony ! Or if,
as in a memorial to the dead, he is constrained to
moderation and set toward the expression of
sentiment, his work is apt to be characterised
by sentimentality and ineffectualness. Yet, in
the sitting statue of Doctor Pepper, he has made
a sincere attempt to render in straightforward
fashion the personality of the subject. The
figure is realistically treated, even to the adoption
of an awkward pose, which, however, fairly cor-
responds with the meditative suggestion, while
the expression of the head unquestionably enlists
our interest. Nevertheless, it is in such a group
as Bitter furnished for the Naval Arch at the
Dewey celebration, full of stirring action and
heroic suggestion, that he is to be seen most
characteristically.
Isidore Konti's groups at the Buffalo Exposi-
tion proved him to be a decorative artist of
unusual versatility. He does not show the same
varied familiarity with ornamental forms as
Martiny, but his technique is scarcely less facile
and sure than the Parisian's, while touched with
much of the Italian naivete. Gay or serious,
according to the subject, his inventiveness of
fancy inclines toward that slightly idealised
realism which characterises the work of many
sculptors of the modern Neapolitan school; a
206 AMERICAN MASTERS
realism that is less the product of any theory
of art, than of the natural adaptability to
impressions — a quick perception coloured by
temperament. Thus Konti seems to me at his
best when his fancy moves most simply. A first
impression of his group, " The Age of Despotism, "
was very satisfactory. Bold and simple in design,
it represented a man seated in a chariot, erect and
cold, with eyes fixed sternly ahead, and at his
side a woman (a courtesan, I took her to be)
lashing on the team of human cattle, while women
were dragged in chains behind. Amid so much
trite symbolism here seemed to be a touch of very
naive and forcible realism. But closer inspection
discovered that the realism was impaired by
artifice and artfulness ; the woman in the chariot
had wings, and one of the captives carried a pair of
scales, a lapse into abstractions that for myself,
at any rate, lessened the value of the group. On
the other hand, in the group upon the Temple
of Music, while abstractions were introduced,
they had no other meaning than a decorative
one. The youth with a lyre might represent
Apollo, but there was no need to recognise the
fact; he was simply one of a joyous band of
figures, animated with the grace of gaiety, of
music and the dance. These groups were as
refined in composition as they were exuberant,
THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE 207
exhibiting the genuine creativeness of an artist
who has an instinct for decoration and a lively
delight in the pure expression of line and form,
regulated by an instinct also of artistic propriety.
It is eminently a Latin trait, in which the American
is as deficient as the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton.
Our tendency is to desire a motive in decoration
beyond the decorative one. So we make our
statuary expressive of patriotism or what not.
Well and good ; but we do so without that instinct
of propriety which should be as careful of the
setting of the statue as of the statue itself. Thus
in city squares and public parks we multiply our
memorials without adding, as effectively as might
be, to the beauty of their environment. It was
this fact which, by a display of the opposite, the
Buffalo Exposition was designed to enforce. In
another chapter I have alluded to our preference
for portrait-statues with their prosaic accom-
paniment of tailor-made trimmings to statues
which, while commemorating the individual,
would be more essentially decorative. But it is
equally to be desired that better use should be
made of such statues as we decide to encourage;
for a statue set down promiscuously in a public
square or thoroughfare, facing in no particular
direction, forming the termination of no vista of
sight, supported and isolated by no architectonic
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arrangement, loses the greater part of its impress-
iveness. Indeed it is very generally forgotten
that there is an element of formality in a statue,
which necessitates some formality in its placing,
and that the accompaniment of wriggling paths
and of the haphazard sprinkling of trees, such as
we find in our New York smaller parks, is directly
opposed to the spirit of the statue. It is equally
a violation of propriety and a waste of good
material to set a fine statue on the line of a
thoroughfare, where it is seldom seen from
the front, but continually passed by unnoticed.
Yet these and similar incongruities are only
too frequent.
THE IDEAL MOTIVE
XIII
THE IDEAL MOTIVE
npHE value of the imaginative quality in a
work of sculpture must depend chiefly
upon the degree to which it is governed and
prompted by, impregnated with, the sculptural
feeling. This is, of course, true of any other work
of art : that it should be the offspring of a wedding
of the thought with the medium ; a union in which
the medium is not compelled into alliance with
the thought, or dallied with in a more or less
honourable concubinage, but fitly mated in the
liberty of mutual dependence. Yet it is so
habitual with us to clothe our thoughts in words,
actually to think in words, that the artist finds
it difficult to shake himself free of the verbal
subjection and to think in the language of his
particular medium. Some evade the difficulty by
not burdening themselves with thought; others
succumb to it and force their medium and
technique to a literal rendering of their ideas,
whether shallow ones or deeper; while a few
succeed in deriving motive from the medium, or
211
2i2 AMERICAN MASTERS
in so moulding their thought to it, that both
become indissolubly blended and mutually
enforcing.
Thus in those signal examples of Michelangelo
upon the Medici tombs, we may call them " Night "
and "Day," "Dawn" and "Twilight," for con-
venience of reference, but it is because the concep-
tions embodied in them cannot be captured into
the precision of words that they have so profound
a significance. Consciousness grows upon us first
of huge, bony structures and elastic muscles; of
torso and limbs contorted; more developed than
the normal; in attitudes impossible to it, or well
nigh so. We derive from this consciousness an
impression of struggle; but no emblem or visible
cause for it is introduced ; only it is borne in upon
us by the forms themselves. With this clue to
understanding we note the more than human
strength, the superb sensuousness, the eternal
fixity of these supple figures and, again, their dis-
tortion, and the struggle which they body forth is
realised as one of spirit, a conflict of soul. But to
have discovered this is not to have captured the
conception. It still eludes all exact compre-
hension; vague, limitless, the lapping up upon our
shore of sense of an ocean that stretches to
immensity.
This is to cite the example of a genius, beside
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 213
whom the wits of most other men seem petty ; yet
surely it contains the principle upon which all
truly imaginative work must be based. It is thus
that Rodin bases his ; bodying forth in structure,
modelling and expression of movement his imagin-
ings, just so far as they are to be made palpable to
sight, but with a residuum always of what the
mind alone can conceive or approximate to.
In every work of art there should be present
the imagination of the artist, arousing our own
imagination, directing it and then leaving it to
its own unhampered speculation. This quality is
not to be confined to the so-called "ideal " subject,
it must appear in every bust or statue to make it
vital. For while it is given to but few men to
have creative imagination, we have a right to
expect in the artist that degree of imagination
which can penetrate beyond the outer integument
of his subject, and find inside the tailor-made or
millinery outworks the man or woman, the revela-
tion in the flesh, however infinitesimally fractional,
whether divine or devilish, of infinity.
How many American sculptors have infused
their work in portraiture with this vital quality
has been reviewed elsewhere. But the number
is not complete without mention, at least, of
W. R. O' Donovan, Samuel Murray, Charles
Calverly, Henry H. Kitson and his wife, Alice
2i4 AMERICAN MASTERS
Ruggles Kitson, R. E. Brooks, A. A. Weinman
and Birtley Canfield. The last named's treatment
of the child in portraiture is full of tender
imagination.
And elsewhere I have treated of some of our
sculptors whose decorative works have exhibited
imagination; the sweet and gaysome kind of it
that plays like sunlight upon water ; or, if occasion
demands it, the kind of deeper, serious import.
But there is a kind of decorative sculpture for
which we can have little patience: the nude or
draped inanities that spread themselves over
space, exploitations of brainless facility; or, again,
the figure which would be meaningless except for
the added symbols, and which we only recognise
as a model, posturing with something borrowed or
stolen from the Old World property-room.
Yet one of the shibboleths glibly passed around
the studio is "ideal sculpture," and it is largely
applied to just such sculpture as this; to works
which are barren of ideas, or in which the subject
of the statue is declared only through some time-
worn symbol. Not that the introduction of a
symbol is of itself objectionable, though it is a
fact that the works of finest imagination, as
Saint-Gaudens's "Grief," to quote a modern
example, are free of such aids to suggestion.
But I am thinking of that vast majority of statues
BUST OF A CHILD
By Birtle/ Caniield
THE STONE AGE
By John J. Boyle
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 215
in which the figure would convey no hint to our
imagination if it were not for the symbol
introduced. And how far, I wonder, does the
symbol succeed in leading us? We are apt to
find it either trite or, as in the case of some
of the mystically symbolic work of modern
times, abstruse. With religious symbolism it
is different. In old days, at least, the artist
and the public had a common starting-ground
of knowledge, and the symbol awoke a clear
impression, invested by religious habit with a
weighty import.
But what of the frequent statues, representing
"Law," "Truth," "Justice" and the like by a
draped model, alternately holding a tablet,
serpent, mirror, scale and swords, or what not;
or that countless family of undraped statues,
clever studies merely of anatomy and academic
composition ? Their only suggestion to the culti-
vated imagination is one of weariness, yet they
pass in the studios for "ideal." Let us clear our
minds of cant and see these things for what they
really are — more or less skilful imitations of the
model, but of creative imagination, of the faculty
to give expression to an idea, possessing nothing.
On the other hand, some sculptors, in their
avoidance of the trite, run to the opposite extreme
of the abstruse — to that occult and mystic symbol-
2 i6 AMERICAN MASTERS
ism, which has been sporadic for half a century in
Europe and has found at least two exponents in
this country.
Here again, if the artist makes the figure the
main source of expression, establishing a chord
of communication between his own imagination
and ours, and uses the symbolic object solely as
an accessory, the latter may possibly help our
act of appreciation, or, at least, will not hinder it.
But, when it usurps the chief function in the
composition and we find in the figure no clue to
any line of imagination, having to turn to the
symbol for assistance, it is then that our distress
begins. We may or may not recognise the object,
and, if we do, may be baffled in our attempt to
discover its allusion in the present case ; haunted
meanwhile by a disagreeable doubt as to whether
it was really intended to be allusive or only
introduced for decorative effect. It is not by
such little stepping-stones to understanding,
slippery and insecure, that the truly creative
imagination proceeds. It takes its leap into the
air, clear of obstructions, relying upon its own
power of flight. For, even if we comprehend the
meaning of the symbol and its allusion, how far, I
wonder, does it carry us? When from the
mysteries of Egypt, for example, the modern
artist borrows a symbol to garnish his modern
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 217
thought, I wonder if we are much impressed ? He
uses, we will say, the device of the winged globe.
We know that it once stood to people as a sign of
immortality ; we recognise that much, but does it
touch our feeling — will it increase our belief in
immortality or promise anything to our yearning
after it? The statue itself must do that, and if
it does, the symbol is likely to be felt intrusive.
I do not forget that Sargent in his Boston
decoration has made noble use of symbolism.
Yet I feel strongly that the earlier part of the
work which involved Egyptian, Assyrian and
Judaic symbolism is inferior to the subsequent
work, which is impregnated with the Byzantine.
For in the latter the artist has identified himself
so completely with the medieval mind, that he is
thinking in it, while working in the modern
technique; consequently his work is veritably a
reincarnation of the old thought. Compared with
this his earlier use of symbolism appears only
scholarly and ingenious. So, one may infer, it is
not the use of symbolism that is alien to the
modern mind, but that use of it which borrows
from the past and does not reproduce the ancient
spirit or incorporate the old with modern thought.
In his " Fountain of Man" at the Pan-American
Exposition, Charles Grafly combined a cryptic
motive with what was otherwise simply and
ai8 AMERICAN MASTERS
intelligibly sculpturesque. The crowning and
most prominent feature of the composition, to
which the remainder served as an elaborate base,
was a draped mass, which on nearer view proved
to be two figures back to back, their heads
covered with perforated casques, joined together
over the top by what had the appearance of a
handle. The faces were visible, but from the rim
of the casques descended curtains of drapery,
enshrouding the figures, but leaving exposed the
hands, which grasped short cylinders. There
can be no doubt of the general suggestion of the
symbolism, the twofold nature of man, the
mystery of it; but I must confess that I am
baffled by the headgear and the cylinders. Yet
the mass was impressive as a finial to the fountain,
having something of the character of a low
obelisk. Indeed, for decorative purposes it might
almost as well have been a shaft, the special
aptitude of the human form for the expression of
ornamental design having been obliterated by the
drapery. Not so, however, in the lower part of
the composition. The pedestal on which the
figure rested was surrounded by nude forms of
youths and maidens intended to represent the
seasons, while the platform on which they rested
was supported by crouching male and female
forms, personifying, I believe, the virtues and
THE IDEAL MOTIVE aig
vices. Yet with all Grafly's inclination toward
symbolism, there is very little expressional sug-
gestion in his treatment of the nude. He becomes
preoccupied with the model and his imagination
seems to leave him. However, in one statue at
least, "The Vulture of War," he has shown what
he can accomplish, when he permits his imagination
to control. Here the nude is made a vehicle of
emotional force: a male figure stooping forward,
as if he were on some lofty crag and about to
hurl himself to earth; his face treacherous and
cruel ; the limbs constricted like a beast of prey's.
There is a largeness of design in this figure as well
as expression ; something infinitely finer than mere
close studies of anatomy, accompanied with
accessories of abstruse suggestion ; a real incentive
to one's imagination which is lacking, if I mistake
not, in such compositions as "Symbol of Life,"
"In Much Wisdom" and "From Generation to
Generation." On the other hand, in his busts
Grafly exhibits a directness of insight into
character and a vigorous, very personal technique
that make them most distinguished.
Nor does the symbolism of F. E. Elwell, as
shown for example, in his " Goddess of Fire," stir
more in me than an interested curiosity. Why
should he have drawn the type of his figure and
its accessories from the art of ancient Egypt?
2 2o AMERICAN MASTERS
Had he the intention of fashioning something
beautiful, or that should pique the appetite for
surprise? Was his motive to allure or tantalise
our imagination? For my own part, I admit
the fascination of this spritish figure, so queerly
bedizened, but am not conscious of any appeal to
the imagination. On the other hand, when his
work is not abstruse it is apt to be too obvious.
The "Orchid Dancer" is clearly posing for effect,
looking for applause, and, I should judge from the
expression of her face, quite unable to under-
stand why any one could withhold it. However,
while the movement of the figure lacks expression,
there is a very pleasing fancifulness in the treat-
ment of the drapery, curling across the body
and upward from the feet in petal-like volutes.
I think I do not fail to appreciate the sentiment
which inspired this statue, and, if I speak of it as
being too obvious, it is because it seems to me
that the sentiment stands out clear of the sculp-
tural feeling. Thought and technique are not
wedded in such manner, that you not only
cannot feel them separately, but would find it
impossible to distinguish how much had been
inspired by the one, how much by the other.
Elwell's work suggests a man of poetic and
intellectual capacity who has resorted to sculpture
to express his ideas, and this is a different thing
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 221
from the sculptural instinct, influenced by intellect
and poetry. Accompanying this lack of a pre-
dominant feeling for form is a lack of mastery
of it, which becomes apparent when he confronts
his model. The latter does not act as stimulus
to sculptural motive, but becomes something
to be reproduced, and his invention is absorbed in
the details which shall convey a suggestion of the
intellectual and poetic motive. One may even
feel that this intellectual or poetic motive becomes
an obsession, which interferes with his receiving
sculptural stimulus from the model. For among
his later works are two in which evidently the
same model has been used; but in one case he
has been filled with an idea, and the use he has
made of the model is tame, whereas in the other
case it would appear to have been the model
herself which engaged his imagination. He has
made a close study of her head and bust, pro-
ducing something in which the nobility of form
and flesh are very apparent, which, in fact, has
very strongly the sculpturesque feeling. He
calls the finished work "Mary Magdalen," but
this, one feels sure, was a convenient afterthought,
and that the original intention, as I have said,
was simply a study of form and flesh; and his
temporary escape from the prepossession of an
idea has given free course to the sculptural pur-
aaa AMERICAN MASTERS
pose. Two earlier works, regarded as being his
most important productions, were the Dickens
Memorial and a statue of General Hancock
at Gettysburg.
These two, Grafly and Elwell, are the only
American sculptors within my knowledge who
have been drawn toward symbolic mysticism;
for the mysticism that appears in Barnard's
work, and must have been present in the colossal
"Spirit" by John Donoghue, a work known to
me only by report, is of a grander, deeper charac-
ter, growing out of and penetrating the form
itself. This statue of Donoghue's, a seated,
winged figure thirty feet high, represented the
Spirit, the "Thou" of Milton's apostrophe, who
"from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like, satst brooding on the vast abyss,
And madst it pregnant. "
Described as a work of great impressiveness, with
suggestion of sublimity, benignity and mysterious
power, it was executed in the artist's studio on
the Roman Campagna and sent to this country
for exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair.
But for some reason it never reached its desti-
nation, and was allowed to crumble away in the
warehouse of a Brooklyn wharf. Other works
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 233
of his also— "Sophocles," " Diana, " "Venus"—
for lack of appreciation lie in storage.
Working fitfully and with painful hindrances
from insufficient facility in the handling of his
medium, Theodore Bauer has produced some
works full of imagination. Nature gave him the
gifts of music and of dreaming; and, nursing these,
he slipped on into middle life, without ceasing to
be a child. The grit of manhood, the practicality
of the world and the need of responding to it in
kind, are outside his comprehension. He lives
within himself in a world of his own: a world of
rosy lights and purple shadows; soft, ^Eolian
breezes, whose wailing arouses a rapture of mild
despair; distant mountains, whose inaccessible
snows prompt sweet imaginings of purity and
high endeavour, while he meditates in his valley
of unlaborious delight and delicious, pleasurable
pain. A world of reverie, darkened, however,
at times by storm-clouds and disturbed by the
deep moan of thunder along the distant heights.
For in Bauer's work delicate fancy alternates
with sadness, as one may see in his two statues
in the Library of Congress. "Religion" is
represented as a young girl peering into the far
beyond with wistful, visionary gaze and holding
before her a poppy flower with leaves and seed-
pod. In her grasp is the pride of life and the
224 AMERICAN MASTERS
narcotic with which the world lulls its pain; but
she looks beyond them to the ideal and to the
balm of spiritual ecstasy. In the "Beethoven,"
however, is expressed the world-wearied yearning
of the artistic soul. The well-known face, rugged
and graven with the lines of time and suffering,
is slightly bowed, and the right hand is held to the
ear as it listens intently for the far-off strain of
inspiration, while the other hand is poised as if
above a keyboard, the fingers searching to express
the music in his brain. A heavy cloak with high-
standing collar gives breadth and picturesqueness
to the figure. It is, indeed, too picturesque, one
may feel — with too expanded a composition and
too much play of movement, to satisfy its
architectonic function of relieving by a vertical
line the horizontal of the balustrade. But, how-
ever that may be, as the portrait of a great
musician and an idealisation of his art, it is a
statue full of suggestion — a work of imagination,
elevated, tender, deep and true.
Bauer had long pondered a series of four groups,
representing "The Tragedy of the Sphinx";
her awakening to love, her passion, disillusion
and death; and in one of the buildings of the
Chicago World's Fair, amid the chaos of
the construction period and in a winter of unusual
severity, a winter of veritable discontent to him,
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 225
he worked upon the first of these, "The Sphinx
and the Cupid." During the exposition months
it stood in a retreat of foliage near the Art Palace
unnoticed. Yet, even unfinished as it was, it
exerted an extraordinary fascination. The little
Love God was whispering in the creature's ear,
and as the honey of his words sweetly melted
her slow imagination, a smile of aroused appetite
began to play upon her lips, hunger shone in her
eye; a passion hot and cold, eager with desire,
callous to everything but its own satisfaction;
a cruelty that would not be appeased until it
had consumed itself.
I have said that Bauer is painfully hindered
by a lack of facility in the handling of his medium ;
but I doubt if it is from lack of skill in technique,
as is sometimes said. He is, in fact, a very rapid
and sure worker up to a certain point, that of
bodying forth his conception in its broad, general
aspect ; and the subsequent embarrassment is due
to the subtlety of the expression for which he is
striving ; a kind of subtlety, often alien, I expect,
to the expressional capacity of his medium. For
Bauer has long wished that fate had made him
a painter instead of a sculptor, and there is no
doubt that the quality of his imagination is more
suited to the medium of colour.
In contrast with the mysticism and subtlety
226 AMERICAN MASTERS
of imagination, more or less displayed in the
work we have been considering, is that form of
imagination which turns to earth and to the facts
of things for its inspiration. How it has operated
in the work of some of our sculptors has been
noticed elsewhere, as well as the fact that the
Indian subject has made frequent appeal to their
imagination. A further example of the latter is
"The Medicine Man," by C. E. Dallin, which was
a prominent feature on the grounds of the Paris
Exposition. Mounted on a stringy pony, the
man himself lean and gaunt, the group counted
very little as a mass, yet compelled attention by
the keenness of the characterisation. Amid the
extreme modernness of the scene and its variety
of impressions, the impassiveness of this figure,
survival of an age so remote, was strangely
moving; a proud, stern figure, conscious of its
dignity, in pitiful, solemn protest against the
inexorable march of destiny; the last echo of an
unrecorded epic. No sculptor has succeeded
better in combining with complete naturalism
the poetry of the Indian subject. Gutzon
Borglum in his statuettes has represented with
realism and vigour its actualities, and H. A.
Mac Neil has reached inward into the thought
of the Indian; but Dallin has given us the
realism, spirit and some suggestion of the Indian
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 227
environment, such as Brush did in his early
paintings.
In Philadelphia, however, is an Indian group
representing "The Stone Age," which involves
some further suggestion. A woman stands grasp-
ing a hatchet and clutching her infant to her
breast, as she looks into the distance with wary,
resolute courage, while a little child crouches up
to her on one side, and on the other a bear's cub
lies dead. It is by John J. Boyle, one of his few
ideal subjects, a work of powerful imagination.
This sculptor has essayed decorative subjects,
but with less success. His control of composition
does not seem to extend beyond the treatment
of a single figure or of a group in which one is
predominant ; and his strong point is the expres-
sion of character or sentiment. Thus his seated
statue of Benjamin Franklin is one of the most
interesting examples of portrait-sculpture in the
country. It possesses a considerable share of
monumental dignity and a very remarkable
intimacy of feeling. The pose is informal, the
expression of the head and body quite natural,
yet the conception has no trace of obviousness,
much less of commonplace. It is invested with
just sufficient idealisation to preserve the impres-
sion of a statue; that it is not the counterfeit
presentiment of a man, but a memorial of his
228 AMERICAN MASTERS
qualities and what they imply to his admirers.
And the qualities are expressed with admirable
decision; the intellectual dignity of the head
well sustained by the erect torso and the broad,
firm carriage of the arms; the easy negligence of
the costume according so well with the benevo-
lence and genial humanity of the face. Indeed,
in this portrait-statue Boyle reveals a penetrating
and sympathetic insight and a choice of treatment
that are the products of an active imagination;
and when in a subject like the "Stone Age" his
imagination can work as it lists, it reaches to that
point where the particular becomes merged in
the universal suggestion.
For in this group we pass from interest in the
episode to a realisation of the rude grandeur of
the primitive nature, the physical grandeur of un-
trammelled development and the natural instinct
of the mother animal. I recall another group of
his: a modern peasant woman with her baby
folded in sleep upon her broad bosom and another
child nestlmg at her feet. Here, too, the mother
is vigorous and ample, but rounded and softened
by more genial environment. Yet in the generous-
ness of her form as in the strenuousness of the
other's, we feel the same suggestion of the earth-
mother, the mother in closest affinity with nature.
Only, as nature progresses from rigour to amenity,
THE IDEAL MOTIVE
229
the primal instinct of preservation of her young
has passed into the all-pervading tenderness of
maternal solicitude. It is, in fact, the typical
conception of motherhood, as compared with the
merely individual representation that appears in
each of these groups.
The conception, moreover, is coloured with
modern thought, not a spiritualised abstraction,
like Raphael's, but enriched with the passion and
fecundity of earth. Raphael may have sought
his models among the girl-mothers of Trastevere
or the Campagna ; but his idea of motherhood he
brought down from the region of artistic and
intellectual speculation. On the other hand, the
tendency of the modern artist is to set back his
model in her actual environment and to discover
her affinity thereto. Or, if his model be nature,
he no longer attempts to spiritualise it by arrange-
ment of lines and forms that accord with his
abstract theories of beauty, or by investing it
with atmosphere and sunlight, drawn from his
own imagination. Nor is he satisfied with the
objective nature-study of the Dutchmen of the
sixteenth century; but, observing nature no less
closely than they, he peers further into it in the
search for a soul and heart within her that shall
correspond to the heart and soul within himself.
The main current of the poetic imagination in
2 so AMERICAN MASTERS
modern art is to find the soul in the fact and it is
a phase of the general tendency of modern
thought. Our gaze is earthward; to the beauty,
poetry and desirable goodness that are in nature
and the natural life, and to the spiritual suggestion
in the actual.
There are minor currents, too, little streams of
rebellion that flow contrary to the general
direction. The superesthetic and the super-
intellectual, equally are protests against the trend
toward naturalism. The one responds to what
there is in us of world- weariness, of a jaded
epicureanism that needs the subtlest stimulants
to its imagination ; the other would emphasise the
quality by which, it assumes, we are differentiated
from, and superior to, the natural world. Disre-
garding the Universal Intellect which regulates
the law of natural growth and of natural habits,
it would force the little unit of intellect into
premature development, into lifelong estrange-
ment from the wholesomeness of nature. For facts
it would substitute names; words, words and
continually words, until they take the place of
knowledge, of ideas and of all religious, moral
and esthetic consciousness.
In American art there is scarcely any trace of
the superesthetic; but more than a little of the
superintellectual, a phase and product of our
THE IDEAL MOTIVE 231
infatuation for words, which binds the imagina-
tion with wrappings of borrowed thought and
checks the free flight of original ideas. For the
end of art is not to teach, but to make us feel ; to
refine and elevate the operation of the senses,
helping us through visible, tangible and audible
beauty to catch at something of the mysterious
infinitude of beauty. Even as man's intellect
reaches ever wider and further until knowledge is
merged in speculation; so by the promptings of
the senses we reach from appreciation of material
things to that detachment of feeling which exists
in the ideal.
INDEX
Adams, Herbert, 99-115, 184,
193
Ball, Thomas, vi, 56
Barnard, George Grey, 21-36
Barnhorn, Clement J., 193, et
seq.
Bartholomew Albert, 6, 7
Bartlett, Paul W., 89-95, l8 4
Barye, Antoine Louis, 158
Bauer, Theodore, 223, et seq.
Bissell, George E., 184
Bitter, Karl, 204, 205
Borglum, Gutzon, 153, 154,
226
Borglum, Solon Hannibal,
149-162
Boston Public Library, 81, 83
Boyle, John J., 184, 227, et
seq.
Brenner, Victor David, 165-
171
Brooks, Richard E., 214
Brown, Henry Kirke, vi, 43,
203
Bush-Brown, H. K., 202, 203
Calverly, Charles, 213
Canfield, Birtley, 214
Canova, v, 56
Carpeaux, Jean Baptiste, 134
Casey, Edward Pearce, 188
Cavelier, Jules Pierre, 28
Centennial Exhibition, v, viii,
136
Chicago World's Fair, 61, 65,
75, 84, 197, 203, 222, 224
Coloring Sculpture, 102, et seq.
Crawford, Thomas, vi
Dallin, Cyrus E., 184, 226
Donoghue, John, 222
Dubois, Paul, 6, 7, 15
Elwell, F. Edwin, 219, et
seq.
Falguiere, Jean Alexandre
Joseph, 75, 100, 134
Flanagan, John, 185
Fr6miet, Emmanuel, 90, 157
French, Daniel Chester, 55-70,
193
Grafly, Charles, 217, et seq.,
222
Greenough, Horatio, 4
Harvey, Eli, 202
Jouffroy, Francois, 134
Kemeys, Edward, 197
Kitson, Alice Ruggles, 213
Kitson, Henry H., 213
Konti, Isidore, 205, et seq.
Library of Congress, 74, 83,
90, 113, 128, 142, 176, et
seq., 223
Linder, Henry, 195
Macmonnies, Frederick, 73-
85
MacNeil, H. A., 226
Martiny, Philip, 177, et seq.,
179, 191, 205
McKim, Charles F., 65, 66, 189
Merci6, Marius Jean Antonin,
100, 134
233
234
INDEX
Metropolitan Museum of Fine
Arts, New York, 81, 89, 169
Michelangelo, 21, 26, 27, 102,
212
Murray, Samuel, 213
National Sculpture Soci-
ety, 40
Niehaus, Charles Henry, 119-
128, 184
O'Donovan, W. R., 213
Pan-American Exposition,
149, 203, 207, 217
Paris Exposition of 1900, 6,
77. J 49
Perry, R. Hinton, 185, et seq.
Potter, Edward C, 66, 184,
197
Powers, Hiram, vi
Pratt, Bela L., 181, et seq.
Proctor, A. Phimister, 197,
198, 199
Rebisso, Louis T., 155, 157
Rhind, J. Massey, 191, et seq.
Rinehart, William Henry, vi
Rodin, Auguste, 8, 35, 102,
139, 158, 213
Roth, Frederick G. R., 199, et
seq.
Roty, Louis Oscar, 168
Ruckstuhl, F. Wellington, 184
Rude, Francois, 134
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 3,
17, 21, 49, 74, 75, 157, 193,
214
Schwarzott, M. M., 196
Sullivan, Louis H., 190
Taft, Lorado, 178
Ward, John Quincy Adams,
39-52, 167
Warner, Olin Levi, 109, 131-
146
Weinert, Albert, 179
Weinman, Adorph A., 214
The Country Life Press
Garden City, N. Y.
>
No. /;■ ■• Sect. Ou Shelf.
CONTENTS
Lincoln National Life Foundation
Collateral Lincoln Library
JOHN HOWELL
IMPORTER ,
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