DIANABy Olin Levi Warner
DIANABy Olin Levi Warner
DIANA
By Olin Levi Warner
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 balancedensemble. 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 abolitionist, perhaps the most important work of his career, sums up the diverse characteristics of his art.
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.
IT 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 independence and original effort on the part of ourselves. Again, originality does not act by blind jumps in midair, as in that species of dreamwith 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 mentalterra firma—conscious or unconscious experience; and, according 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, nevertheless 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 experiment; either he meets a realised need or quickly suggests a need through the analogy of our every-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,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 distinguishing 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 appreciation. When a gap has been made by some bell-wether in the hedge of stubborn intolerancewhich 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 appreciators 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, resourcefulness 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 MOUNTINGBy Solon Hannibal Borglum
COWBOY MOUNTINGBy Solon Hannibal Borglum
COWBOY MOUNTING
By Solon Hannibal Borglum
LOST IN A BLIZZARD (marble)By Solon Hannibal Borglum
LOST IN A BLIZZARD (marble)By Solon Hannibal Borglum
LOST IN A BLIZZARD (marble)
By Solon Hannibal Borglum
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 thefascination 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 themountains. 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,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, unpremeditated 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 theexperiences 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 Frémiet 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 discovering 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 vigorousensemblethe 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 hunteror otherwise observant student. He has entered into the actual sentient part which they play in the life they share with man. Hence the sentiment 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 emotions. 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 coöperating 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 suggestion of the environment of the figures, as, for instance, in the marble group of a mare and foalcaught in a snowstorm. The little one is unconscious 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 limp 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 certainty 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
TAMEDBy Solon Hannibal Borglum
TAMEDBy Solon Hannibal Borglum
TAMED
By Solon Hannibal Borglum
comprehension 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 characteristic; 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 toessentials 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.
IN this country, as elsewhere, prior to the establishment of the French Société 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;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 persuaded that the pain of parturition must necessarily 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 encountered them early and surmounted them before the enthusiasm of youth dwindled.
He was born in 1871 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 considerable 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 illustrations for advertisements. In 1889 he established 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 employment 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 underthe 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’satelier. This he entered after preliminary studentship in the
PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTONBy Victor David Brenner
PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTONBy Victor David Brenner
PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTON
By Victor David Brenner
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. Vadé, 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;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. Vadé 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 expression, 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. Butin Brenner’s case it seems to result from an absence of all artisticparti 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.
IN 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 architecture, whether it be for decoration of the building’s surface or for a separate contributing feature.
Such coöperation 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, mingledwith a natural feeling for the charm of minute and exquisite workmanship; a personal feeling, subordinated to the main design, yet in this subordination 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 predominance 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 sculptural 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 aredisposed 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, comparatively unaffected by the American environment. 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 inthe 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 occupation, 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 theHorticultural 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 decorative character of the composition; as in “The Solitude 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. Their business is to copy the drawing exactly. If they have any individuality of feeling it is suppressed; the divorce between design and craftsmanship 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. Significantly bad it may be, and this I suspect is the architect’s apprehension; yet, provided it have significance, there is some prospect of improvement: 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 exasperatingis 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 function seems to be to prolong the upright line of the pier to the bottom of the triangular pendentive 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 agreeably 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 thesequalities 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, organically related to the arches and to the space, truly architectural in their character. Pratt’s strongest point seems to be expression of sentiment, exemplified in his busts of Colonel Henry Lee and of Phillips Brooks; in some low-relief portraits 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 preëminently sculptural that we are conscious of, as the quality of the sentiment; and this same quality, portrayed with graceful inventiveness, represents the measure of his architectural decoration. It is, therefore,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, personified above, and their function is to relieve by a series of spiring forms the level lines of the balustrade. And here again, if I am not mistaken, those which with least disturbance of contour conform to the character of a simple shaft arethe 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 qualification 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 independently 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 coöperates with the architecture, lending it some accent of piquancy or elaboration and drawing from it dignity and enforcement. Nor is the truth of this weakenedby 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 coöperation of the sculptor has been deliberately included, the ideal is to make the two arts mutually reënforcing. The architecture being necessarily 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 treatment 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 suggestion of the whole; an uneasy collocation of aggressive forms, out of keeping with the somewhat severe character of the Library façades.
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 differentforms, 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. Moreover, 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 imaginative 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 regulates 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 Representatives. 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 coöperating with sculptors who had had no previous experience in decorative work, and he was himself without practical experience, having but recently returned from his studies at the École 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 vastness 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 contract time. Very few men are sufficiently sure of their position, and likewise possessed of sufficient conscience in the matter, to insist upon adequate time for the development of their decorative scheme.
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 execute. Again, as an example of choiceness and reserve in the sculptural decoration of a building, one may cite McKim’s treatment of the façades 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 pretentiousness 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 decorative sculpture in this country. He is, perhaps, too intolerant of failure to venture upon experiments.
For certainly the development has been attended with some results to which it is impossible 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 decorative? 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 individually, 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 direction, it has been no easy matter to devise for them a suitable kind of plastic decoration. Perhaps the most appropriate has been the flat ornamentation, occasionally burgeoning into rounded forms, which Louis H. Sullivan, a Chicago architect, has used. He has the advantage of being his own designer for decoration as well as for structure; and having a very logical mind he designs both with a strict regard for organic propriety,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 Broadway, New York, four colossal figures in bronze by J. Massey Rhind being placed upon a projecting 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 conspicuously 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 Philadelphia, he is elaborating a part of the structure, he works with as much of the feeling of anarchitect as of a sculptor, showing an unmistakable 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 particularly 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 Lakewood, 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