AMERICAN MASTERS OF SCULPTURE

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 & Company

INTRODUCTION

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. 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’s 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 Crawford’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 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 reënforced by the environment. At any rate, his action was considered 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 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 firesides—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, 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 École 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 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 development 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 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 sentiment, sustained through every part of the whole, which renders the composition expressional. For convenience one separates the disposition of 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 reënforcement 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 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

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

I

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

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 significance, 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.

To appreciate fully a sculptor’s worthiness in this respect one should realise the peculiar relation 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 naïve 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 rôle 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 procedure 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 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 courageously admitted. And, I believe, it can scarcely be doubted that the quality in Saint-Gaudens’s imagination which has most conduced to his greatness as an artist is this: it is kindled by contemplation 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 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 demonstrated 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, respectively with Dubois’s “Joan of Arc” and with Bartholomé’s “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 naturalistic movement, and imbibed both to the degree that his own temperament and the conditions of his inspiration demanded.

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 Bartholomé, 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 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 freedom 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 controls 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—perhaps it would be truer to say that they have been adapted to—an imagination, which reverences 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 reënforced by the grandeur of the themes that have confronted him, and the result upon his technique is a gravity of distinction which represents the finest kind of style. In that smaller kind of style which is limited to the actual technique 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 coöperate 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 gatekeeper directing us, we threaded our way along the labyrinth of paths, among the chaos of conflicting monuments, so many of which testify 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 shocking 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, purified, elevated, drawn closer to each other by the realisation of the mystery of grief, and with a 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 movement, 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 movement of the troops, whose doglike trustfulness is contrasted with the serene elevation of their white leader.

Behind this group looms up the tremendous issues of the war; they were present to the imagination 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, introducing 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 reënforce the ideal suggestion 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 dignity, ornamental in line and bulk, alive with elevated and inspiring energy. At closer range one may discover the big simplicity and pregnant generalisation of the modelling, also the meaningfulness 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 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 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 confines 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 rendering 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 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 suggested 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, reënforced by knowledge, goes out to reach the artist half-way, thereby lessening the space he has to travel in his idealisation 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 is the general appearance of the founder and benefactor, yet the figure in its loose, slovenly costume, seated in a chair, presents in its solid mass a suggestion 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 numerous 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 execution.