Akin to the faculty for creating garden sculpture is the gift for designing those “small bronzes” in which American connoisseurs are now taking a happy interest. The general public also is being made familiar with the best of these pieces; a result reached through the initiative of the National Sculpture Society and the enthusiasm of our American Federation of Arts in sending out traveling exhibitions of small bronzes to various cities. The small bronze may be either a potentially perfect reduction from some full-sized masterpiece, as in the well-known Saint-Gaudens reliefs reduced from larger originals; or it may on the other hand be designed from the start in the ultimate size. Both types are excellent. American sculpture today counts scores of artists with a sure and delightful touch for the latter type. Some of our women sculptors have created little masterpieces in this intimate and friendly form.
Bessie Potter Vonnoh is an acknowledged leader here; one might say that she is the originator of an American genre, in which small size does not for a moment imply either a trifling imagination or a petty rendering. I well remember Mr. Howells’s enthusiasm for Bessie Potter’s figurines when they were first shown at a New York exhibition. Their authentic American note captivated him. “These,” he declared, “are real creations in sculpture.” The same may be said of Miss Eberle’s vivid groups and figures from street and fireside and doorstep; they have the charm and integrity of folk-lore tales told in a plastic medium. Animal form, as in the days of Barye and Frémiet, easily disports itself in this field. Miss Hyatt, Mr. Roth, Mr. Laessle and others press all the imaginable joys of La Fontaine’s fables within the contours of their bronze goats and bears, tigers, turkeys, and elephants. Like the fables themselves, these bronzes are classics, as in the stricter sense, the delightful groups of Manship and Jennewein are classics.
Generally speaking, we do not like a look of toil and endeavor in our small bronzes; we want something spontaneous, whether graceful or humorous. Well and good. Yet here again is a real danger; anyone who has had the sobering privilege, year by year, of reviewing the rank and file of little plastic works presented for exhibition knows very well that many of these pieces utterly lack the solid qualities of construction, workmanship and an understanding of nature’s detail.
One of the brighter possibilities of the small bronze designed in its ultimate size is that it may well be cast by the cire perdue process. That name is not altogether a happy one, because in truth less of the sculptor’s personal touch is “lost” by this method than by the sand process of bronze casting. By the lost wax method, it’s the sculptor’s own fault if there’s anything wrong with the wax figure as it leaves his hands. A mold made of a composition suitable for enduring the subsequent impact of molten metal is then built up directly on the wax figure, which has of course its insoluble core. This stout mold or shell, closely enveloping every knob and crevice of its wax kernel, is subjected to heat; the wax is thus melted out; and, if all is well, an absolutely perfect space is left behind it, between core and shell, ready to receive the red-hot bronze. The cire perdue process theoretically avoids all unseemly seams, all ill-joined joints. At its best, it approaches perfection; and such work is as well done in our country as anywhere on earth.
CENTAUR AND DRYAD
BY PAUL MANSHIP
The small bronze has then its two separate manifestations. It may present itself either as a reduction from some much larger work worthy of wide recognition and ownership, or as a spontaneous first-hand offering of a sculptural thought well-suited for expression within modest confines. In either shape, its cost is not prohibitive for many of our private citizens as well as for our museums. The cause of art and the delights of possession are advanced side by side.
Whether we look at a little book-end bear in bronze, or at a heroic equestrian statue in bronze and stone, or at a colossal monument in granite or marble, the importance of fine craftsmanship is evident. The artist is the last person in the world who can afford to underrate the craftsman.
Not long ago in reading an essay on literary criticism, I was confronted with this impressive query: What has the navel done for modern life? Of course modern literature in its desire to be impressive asks many curious questions of the reader, but this one about the navel seemed unduly wide of the mark. I was disturbed until I suddenly perceived that the printer had used an a for an o; the luckless author had meant to ask about the novel, not the navel. But the artist in words suffers less often at the hands of his helping craftsman than does the artist in paint or clay. The sculptor in particular runs grave risks. Even the forces of nature conspire against him; the fair-faced marble hypocritically hides her blemishes until weeks of carving lay them bare. Even chemistry betrays him; the bronze that should be perfect everywhere has perhaps a spongy place or a “tin spot” or a treacherous seam just where it does the greatest possible damage to his statue.
One of the advantages of the ancient apprentice system was that the beginner in art could learn all the tricks, and not only the tricks but the very serious difficulties of the various trades that help to bring the artist’s work to completion. Our American sculpture, which after all began timidly enough as a kind of craftsmanship, has at certain periods of its immaturity forgotten the importance and dignity of the crafts on which it depends for a fair presentation. Bronze casting has indeed advanced greatly through the fact that modern sculpture has become largely an expression in clay, to be made permanent in bronze; sculptors have demanded good casting, and they have obtained it. In general, the sculptors of the world are no longer masters who release from stone, either hard or soft, the image circumscribed within. To reach their results, they do not as a rule start from the assumption of Michelangelo, as Symonds translates it:
They look on their work as a building-up in clay, rather than as a cutting-down in stone. Well, why not? If the word plastic keeps its old meaning of something shaped, and glyptic its meaning of something carved, surely the sculptor may without reproach choose his approach; always provided that this approach is the one best suited to the matter in hand.
But even here, changes are already visible. On both sides of the Atlantic a few sculptors are harking back to the fine old Gothic tradition which animated Michelangelo, that spirit who was at once a late fruit of the Gothic and a great flowering of the Renaissance. Perhaps we owe to Rodin this modern return from plastic to glyptic? At any rate, the movement is but lightly sketched, except as seen in some of the enormous monuments of Middle Europe, and in particular in the powerful works of the Serbian Mestrovic, as well as in those of recent insurgent followers of Rodin. An odd fact is, that some of these last, in seeking the titanic, have attained the Teutonic, especially when their theory of deformation has betrayed them. And, of course, any new style, vital or not, will breed new errors.
Criticism has had of late a tendency to scold sculptors for not seeing things as Michelangelo did, or as the artist of “Le Beau Sourire de Reims” did. It is perhaps surprising that the eloquent mediæval craftsmanship suitable for Caen stone or limestone, and beautiful in its place, has not attracted a larger interest and a wider experiment among us. However, Miss Hoffman has just completed an important and unusual War Memorial in Caen stone. Mr. MacMonnies’s great Washington monument at Princeton is of limestone, most thoughtfully carved, and not at all in the impetuous new manner; it may prove to be a forerunner of other ambitious enterprises in this material. But ours is an unkind climate. The sculptured forms of Italy and France have not had to endure the extreme changes of heat and cold well-known here. We have interesting varieties of marble and granite, and have made but a beginning in the exploration of their possibilities as adapted to our weather. A very beautiful tradition in marble-cutting has been built up in our country by the Piccirilli family, six brothers among whom are distinguished sculptors and distinguished craftsmen. Their output, which includes both their own original works and their faithful renderings in stone of the works of other sculptors, is known throughout the country, and has inspired good craftsmanship.
Thus in the major crafts of bronze casting and of marble-cutting, American sculpture is fairly fortunate today. In the one, we have come a long way from that first attempt in 1847; in the other, we have craftsmen who for large work to be seen at a distance can sufficiently well translate into stone the sculptor’s finished models. We have also for our salvation a few sculptors, who, like Chester Beach, are peculiarly gifted in wresting from the marble, and with their own hands, their own visions. But Mr. Beach is different again from most of his contemporaries, in that he is successful in his command over all the final materials in which a sculptor’s work may be presented, whether terra-cotta, stone, or bronze. With a modern and highly interesting vision of beauty, and with an absolute understanding of the principles of sculpture, this artist respects both the art and the craft of sculpture. Sometimes it would seem that the finer the artist, the finer his appreciation of craftsmanship.
Of course if one were to judge by the pictures in the Sunday supplements, all sculptors carve their marbles themselves; they seem to do little else. That is not true, alas. Certainly a busy sculptor may well save himself for other matters besides roughing-out a block of marble. But a serious sculptor will generally wish to give the finishing strokes, few or many, a matter of weeks or of months, to any marble work that leaves his hands. In modern stone-cutting, the pneumatic tool is indeed a miracle-worker; and for that very reason, it bears constant watching from the sculptor whose work it translates. Mr. John Kirchmayer, an artist in the field of wood-carving, has described in a recent article the mischief wrought for this art by too great a dependence on the machine, a dependence that atrophies the native genius of the craftsman. His counsel is the same that all arts and crafts must follow: Use the machine but do not abuse it. When the cheapening of production means the debasing of the product, it is time for art and the machine to part company.