Chapter XIII: The Ideal Motive 209 (2)

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 significance of the clothes and that of the figure. The latter represents Washington in the ceremony of taking the oath of office in 1789, an event which happened near the spot now occupied by the statue. The pose is entirely free from heroics: that of a noble, true-hearted gentleman, conscious of the dignity and responsibility of the occasion. One could have wished that the legs were planted more squarely on the ground, as it would have increased the statuesque assertiveness 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 façade 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 monument 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-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 unflinching 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, respectively, of clothes, form and character. Not 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 suspended 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 preëminence. 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 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 portrait 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 appreciated 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 maintained?

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, 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 monument 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.

IV

DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH

Among 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, 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 _bonhomie_. 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 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.

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 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 something 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 comprehension. 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.

It is an art of this kind which French, if I mistake not, represents--elevated, but passionless; 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 technique, 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

By Daniel Chester French

From the Milmore Monument, Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston]

By Daniel Chester French

Forest Hills Cemetery]

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 opportunities 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, 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 interposes 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.

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 sentiment of the subject is conveyed.

The quality of the sentiment in this particular group is fairly characteristic of French’s range 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. Separated from the turmoil of human passion it touches the theme of humanity with a gracious tenderness that leans toward an elegant idealisation 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 imagination 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, aroused by the previous work, as to whether the sculptor is fortunate in the treatment of a composition 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 intimacy has ripened into very frequent collaboration, so that, although he has executed other commissions, such as that clever character-study, the statue of Rufus Choate, and, in coöperation 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 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 inspiration 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 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 discovered 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 dispassionate 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

By Daniel Chester French

Columbia University]

appropriate, indefinably distinguished, one may detect it in his angels for the Clark monument, particularly 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, compelling 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 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.

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 Macmonnies.

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 accomplished 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” 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 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 École des Beaux Arts and studying under Falguière; 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, 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 enumeration 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 relaxation, 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]

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 craftsmanship.

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 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 represented her in a costume _à la mode_. The statue stood against the sky, a monument of commonplace, 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 long, lean limbs are precisely those of one accustomed 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 antithesis, 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 impulsiveness, 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 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 Macmonnies’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, reënforced with champagne. Truly, this is not an inapt suggestion for a bacchante to make; but we are a long way from the anthropomorphic tendency of the antique mind which 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 suggestion 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 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 imagination, 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 immature. 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 sympathetic 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 picturesqueness 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 Stratford-on-Avon Church and the features from the Droeshout portrait, 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 approximates to it with a certain charm of imaginativeness, 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 exuberant 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 naturalistic rendering of a Parisian model to symbolise the Republic, presented a curious and not uninstructive 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 insufficiency 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 naturalism 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!

VI

PAUL WEYLAND BARTLETT

In 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 movement 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 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 Frémiet. 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 subsequent 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, holding a scroll and resting one hand upon a table of the law; a personification entirely superficial 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 portraying 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 preliminary 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 temporarily erected for the ceremony of presentation 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 pretentious. 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 possession of stylistic qualities. The “Michelangelo” sufficiently proclaimed it, rivalling the skill of technique 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 contrasts 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

By Paul Weyland Bartlett

Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.]

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 “Michelangelo,” 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 illustration has been unfortunately reduced in size); a ruggedness, scarred by time and spiritual conflict with the fever heat of supreme, unsatisfied 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 isolation. 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; unreasonable, too, for we fancy that the old hewer of marble would never have encumbered himself with such sartorial gear, when, as here represented, 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 distinguished in technique, of so sincere and strong appeal.

VII

HERBERT ADAMS

The 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 boyhood 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 Mercié, the pupil of Falguière. 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 frequented the Louvre, not only for the sculpture, but also for the paintings.