Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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SCULPTURES. 
 
5 
 
GREAT 
 
 MERICAN 
 
 CULPTURES 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM J. CLARK, JR 
 
 WITH TWELVE SUPERB STEEL ENGRAVINGS, INDIA PROOFS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 Gebbie & Barrie, Publishers 
 
 i8 7 8 
 
LIST OF ENGRAVINGS, Page 7 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE, Q 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTORS POWERS AND GREENOUGH, 45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CRAWFORD AND RANDOLPH ROGERS, 6 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WILLIAM WETMORE STORY, 8 1 
 
6 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 ROBERTS, BAILLY, HARNISCH AND RUSH, 96 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BROWN, WARD, PALMER, CONNELLY AND MOZIER, Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GOULD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND AKERS, 122 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HARRIET HOSMER AND OTHER FEMALE SCULPTORS 
 
ARTIST. ENGRAVER 
 
 Beatrice Cenci, H. Hosmer, W. Roffe, . . . Frontispiece. 
 
 The Greek Slave, Hiram Powers, TV. Roffc, Page 45 
 
 Nydia, Randolph Rogers S. J. Ferris, ... 61 
 
 A Sibyl W. W. Story E. W. Stoddart, . 81 
 
 Medea, W. W.Story, J. Serz 89 
 
 Premiere Pose, Howard Roberts, J. Dndensing, . . 96 
 
 The Angel at the Sepulchre, Palmer, R. A. Artlett, . . 1 1 1 
 
 Ophelia, Connolly, S.J. Ferris, ... 115 
 
 The Prodigal Son, Jl f osier, W. Roffe, 121 
 
 The West Wind, Gould, J. Serz, 125 
 
 Ganymede, Bartholomew J. H. Baker,-. . . 129 
 
 Jochebed, F.Simmons, W. Roffe 137 
 
 7 
 
AMERICAN SCULPTURES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE 
 
 HOSE who are unwilling to go further back in their speculations 
 upon the origin of sculpture than positive evidence will carry 
 them, attribute the invention to the ancient Egyptians, and they 
 find an argument in the highly-finished system of hieroglyphic, 
 or image-writing, which that people carried to such perfection, and imagine 
 it to have furnished the first rudiments of sculpture. That this is a probable 
 and natural origin of the practice, (as, beyond all question, it is,) furnishes 
 no argument which is not perfectly available to those who would contend 
 for the probability of its having existed from a period far more remote. 
 All the most ancient writings extant are in a language which, without 
 regard to the characters by which these writings were described and per- 
 petuated, is hieroglyphic or picture-writing — every word being, as respects 
 its expression, as nearly as possible a picture or an image. It is in vain 
 to inquire now how such figurative words should have first occurred to 
 the imagination ; but their having done so shows the natural resort of 
 
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 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 the mind to express immaterial thought by material forms, and one sen- 
 sible object by means of another, — and goes, in the next stage, to explain 
 the reason which suggested the figurative mode of their written transmission. 
 " The author of a figurative expression must have a figurative idea in his 
 mind ; and that is a hieroglyphic which might as well be painted or 
 sculptured as written, and with infinitely greater effect on the reader." But 
 the very same necessity for hitting on expedients for the transmission of 
 thought must have existed long before the days of the Egyptians ; and 
 the universal principles of the human mind, impelled by the same urgency 
 and subjected to the same natural and moral influences,- would probably 
 act uniformly, and tend to similar results. That such was the case with 
 the Mexicans, who practised an ideal, or picture-writing similar to that of 
 the Egyptians, when first discovered by the Spaniards, strongly supports this 
 view of the case ; and it may be added, in reference to the first step of 
 this theory, that the language of our own Indian, when first he was seen 
 on his hunting-grounds, had a figurativeness of thought and expression 
 more than Orientally picturesque. It is impossible to conceive (even were 
 there none of what may be called secondary evidence to the contrary) 
 that man should have lived between sixteen and seventeen hundred years 
 from the Mosaic era of the creation to the Flood of Noah, without in- 
 venting some method for the perpetuation or transmission of his thoughts ; 
 and not likely that he should, under identical influences, have been led to 
 different modes from those which we know to have uniformly suggested 
 themselves, in the same circumstances, elsewhere. In falling in, therefore, 
 with the general belief that hieroglyphic writing furnishes the first rudiments 
 of sculpture, we find in it a reason for supposing that the latter must 
 have existed, as an art, amongst the nations of the antediluvian world. 
 For ourselves, indeed, and as a matter of conjecture, we can have very 
 little doubt that, like the other arts, it had in all probability attained a point 
 of perfection ere the flood far beyond that to which the inferences already 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 mentioned lead, and at which they leave us. The manner in which the 
 Arts of Design grow out of each other (the principles of two of them — 
 painting and sculpture — being precisely the same, up to the point at 
 which they separate, one for the imitation of colour, and the other for 
 that of actual and rounded forms) renders it unlikely, — admitting what 
 we have endeavoured to argue for, that the first stage had been at- 
 tained, — that the restless and enterprising mind of man should have 
 paused over its imperfect knowledge, for a period of which the post- 
 diluvian world furnishes no example. But, the fact is, we find mention 
 made in the Scriptures, long before the flood, of a city built by Cain, the 
 inhabitants of which are distinguished from " such as dwell in tents," in a 
 manner to create the inference that it must have been composed of 
 dwellings having some architectural pretension; and, but a few genera- 
 tions later, we have it stated that Jubal was "the father of all such as 
 handle the harp and organ," and Tubal Cain the "instructor of every 
 artificer in brass and iron," leaving it to be undoubtedly deduced that 
 the arts, both of life and taste, were progressing in influential con- 
 nection. And in truth the inference is irresistible, that both art and 
 science must have made considerable progress amongst a people fur- 
 nished with the skill and possessed of the implements necessary for the 
 construction of such a vessel as the ark. We find, too, at a period 
 little remote from the subsiding of the waters, works undertaken of such 
 gigantic enterprise, and implying such an acquaintance with the princi- 
 ples, at least of science, and their practical application, as do not permit 
 us, from any other experience which we have of the progressive nature 
 of knowledge, to believe that such an acquaintance could have been 
 the entire growth of the period since the flood, and compel us to suppose 
 that it formed a part of that legacy from the old world to the new, 
 which Moses — the orphan of the one and the patriarch of the other — 
 was appointed, by the aid of his family, to take charge of and dispense. 
 
AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Two generations only after the flood, " when men began to multiply upon 
 the earth," we are told that Nimrod's followers built, on the plain of Shinar, 
 " a city, and a tower whose top should reach unto heaven ;" and we have 
 allusion to the manner in which they made bricks and prepared mortar for 
 that purpose. We have, at any rate, evidence to show that the Chaldeans 
 were in possession of the art of sculpture, at least in its early stage of 
 hieroglyphic writing, before the Egyptians. Berosus relates that the temple 
 of Belus, at Babylon, exhibited on its walls, representations, both in 
 sculpture and painting, of all the terrific and monstrous forms which peopled 
 chaos, previous to the creation. And as Chaldea was the first region of 
 the earth which was peopled after the flood, and it further appearing, from 
 Berosus and from Pliny, that the art of engraving on bricks, baked in the 
 sun, was there carried to a considerable degree of perfection, at a very 
 early period (not to mention the eastern tradition which asserts that Terah, 
 the father of Abraham, was a sculptor), the probability seems, for all the 
 reasons which we have given, very strong, that that people derived their 
 knowledge of the rudiments of sculpture from their antediluvian progenitors, 
 and transmitted the art to their Egyptian neighbours. 
 
 Mr. Bromley, in his History of the Fine Arts, has laboured to prove 
 that the invention of sculpture, as an art, is due to the Scythians ; who, 
 according to him, as early as 300 years after the deluge, extended their 
 conquests over the greater part of Asia, under Bruma, a descendant of 
 Magog, the son of Japhet, and author of the Braminical doctrines, and 
 diffused the principles of the Scythian Mythology over Egypt, Phoenicia, 
 the Asiatic Continent, and Greece. Herodotus, on the other hand (whose 
 researches on this subject were made in the countries themselves of which 
 he speaks, and whose veracity and correctness of view have been confirmed 
 by each new accession which has been made to our knowledge of them, 
 in modern times), expressly assigns its origin to the Egyptians. It seems 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 13 
 
 useless, however, to follow up an inquiry the links of which are so involved, 
 at times, and at others so broken and scattered, by the casualties of ages, 
 over the countries to which it refers. We have alluded to these conflicting 
 theories, as showing that, wherever a vestige of substantial evidence can 
 be traced, or an argument from inductive evidence drawn, they at least 
 combine to prove the universal existence of the practice of sculpture, 
 however derived. For ourselves — believing, as we have already said, in 
 the first instance, that it is one of those modes which would most obviously 
 suggest themselves, everywhere, in' the earliest stages of society, for the 
 expression and communication of thought, and that it would, in an order 
 as natural and uniform, be very early advanced into a vehicle for the 
 perpetuation of feeling and sentiment, whether religious or domestic, 
 whether of the imagination or the heart; and believing, also, as regards 
 the apparent order of its real and actual transmission, that it must have 
 attained some degree of perfection before the flood, and been reproduced, 
 with the other arts of life or taste by its survivors, upon the plains of 
 Chaldea, and by them, of course, carried in their migrations to those 
 other lands which they peopled; — believing, thus, that the chain of its 
 existence is unbroken, at least in the East, it must still be admitted that 
 the chain of evidence is not; and, were we writing a history of the art 
 (which we are not), we should be compelled to place the commencement 
 of its authentic records in Egypt or Hindustan, where first begins the 
 positive testimony derived from a vast body of actual remains. From 
 this period, we are able — notwithstanding the ruin and desolation which 
 have overwhelmed most of the Asiatic empires, and brought the desert 
 on to the site of their stately cities — to trace, in a tolerably connected 
 series, the steps by which it has descended to Western Europe, and to 
 our own day. And though this is the office of the historian, rather than 
 the purpose of these introductory remarks, yet a slight sketch of its 
 progress, will, necessarily, be given in our attempt to point out the principal 
 
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 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 periods at which it flourished, and the long and painful march by which 
 it attained to perfection. 
 
 The earliest written mention of the arts of design which we possess 
 is in the oldest of our books — the Bible; and (pointing to a period 
 antecedent to that at which the descendants of Abraham had the opportunity 
 of learning the arts and the idolatry of the Egyptians by residence amongst 
 them) comes in corroboration of our belief that the art in question had 
 been saved from the wreck of the old world, by the original dwellers in 
 Chaldea. The first notice of images occurs in the book of Genesis, where 
 Rachel is said to have stolen the Teraphim, or idols, of her father Laban, 
 the Syrian, and carried them with her into Canaan: — and, shortly afterwards, 
 we have an order of Jacob's, to his household, to deliver up to him their 
 idols. In the same book, mention is also made of the signet of Judah. 
 From this time the Sacred Scriptures furnish us with continual allusions 
 tO) and evidences of, the practice of sculpture — both in the service of 
 idolatry, such as the Israelites had learnt it in Egypt (as in the case of 
 the golden calf, made by them, under the directions of Aaron, during the 
 absence of Moses in the mount, and which, no doubt, represented the 
 Egyptian Apis), and in the service of their own religion, as appointed by 
 the express ordinance of the true God. The earliest sculptors whose 
 names have come down to us, Aholiab and Bezaleel, received their 
 commission and their inspiration directly from the same source; and were 
 appointed by the Most High himself to fashion the works which He 
 prescribed as the adornments of His tabernacle, and to sculpture the 
 cherubim, whose wings were destined to shadow the ark of His covenant. 
 It cannot be overlooked, in any work which professes to describe, however 
 cursorily, the progress of this art, that it was thus early adopted by God 
 himself into the service of His own religion, and promoted by Him to 
 the must important purposes — the representation of divine attributes, or 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 IS 
 
 of the symbols of divine providence. After the establishment of the 
 Israelites in Canaan, there are continual indications of Hebrew art — from 
 the allusion contained in the Song of Deborah and Barak, to those who 
 delineate with the pen or pencil of the writer; and the mention of the 
 images (graven and molten) made for Micah, down to the account of that 
 most magnificent production of all, the Temple of Solomon, on which 
 were lavished all the resources of surpassing wealth, and, it is not to be 
 doubted, of consummate art. Of these specimens of early sculpture, 
 however, we have nothing left but the written records, which derive — as, 
 in this case, they happily need — no corroboration from existing monuments. 
 The utter devastation which has overwhelmed the lofty cities of Asia, once 
 the seats of arts and science, has swept away all memorials of the old 
 Patriarchs — of Moses the deliverer, and even of the gorgeous Solomon, 
 whose works were so many and so vast, that the traditions of the East 
 suppose him to have ruled by talismans, and worked by the aid of genii. 
 Of the whole labors of Jewish art, but one solitary remain has come down 
 to our times — viz. the sculptured bas-relief on the arch of Titus. As for 
 the monuments known as the Sepulchres of the Prophets, which exist in 
 Syria, at the present day, they bear undeniable evidences of Roman or 
 Greek origin, and must have been erected at a period long subsequent to 
 the days of the prophets. Neither is our research after the sculptured 
 memorials of Nebuchadnezzar, of Semiramis, or of Belus, more satisfactory. 
 We are, again, confined to the written record. We have no means of 
 knowing what kind of a "golden image" it was which "Nebuchadnezzar, 
 the king, set up." From Herodotus, we have a description of the temple 
 of Jupiter Belus, at Babylon, with its statues of solid gold; and Diodorus 
 Siculus has described the sculptured palaces which Queen Semiramis built 
 in the city of the Euphrates. But Babylon herself affords no evidence of 
 her former grandeur; — "the wild beasts of the desert lie there," as Isaiah 
 prophesied they should — the "daughter of the Chaldeans" hath long since 
 
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 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 "gotten her into darkness" — the "virgin daughter of Babylon" hath, indeed 
 and literally, "come down to sit in the dust"; — and from her buried soil, 
 the "lady of kingdoms" yields up no memorials of her ancient sculptures. 
 
 The Persians are not supposed to have ever made any distinguished 
 figure in the arts of design; for which two reasons have been assigned. 
 The long, flowing robes which composed their dress, and concealed the 
 person, prevented them from paying much attention to the beauties of 
 form; and the genius of Mithraism, their religion — in which the Deity 
 was worshipped, in the symbol of fire, and which taught them that it was 
 impious to represent him under a human form — rendered their exercise 
 of the art of sculpture, at least in the branch of statuary almost impossible 
 in that country — it not being their custom to raise statues to their illustrious 
 men. Herodotus says that the Persians had neither temples nor statues. 
 
 Nevertheless, although totally absent amongst them one of the 
 impelling causes to which the arts, elsewhere, have owed their encourage- 
 ment and progress (though not, as has been said, their origin), the giant 
 ruins scattered throughout the dreary solitude of the vast deserts which 
 form a great part of the site of the ancient empire, present sufficient 
 remains of sculpture to enable us to form a correct notion of the degree 
 of excellence to which it had attained amongst this people. They exist, 
 as may be supposed, from what we have said, principally in the 
 embellishment of the "house of feasting" and the "house of mourning" 
 — the palace and the tomb. Of these, the ruins of Persepolis offer, in 
 what remains of its palace (the ancient abode of the Persian monarchs, 
 described, by the Persian writers, as the "palace of a thousand columns," 
 and destroyed by Alexander), a good example, as do also the sculptures 
 on the Tombs of the Kings. They are very rude, giving the idea of art 
 in its infancy, although their antiquity is not supposed to go higher than 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 17 
 
 the period when the seat of empire was removed from Babylon to Shushan, 
 by Darius Hystaspes, the Ahasuerus of Scripture. They are, like everything 
 about them, on a giant scale; and the basso-relievos on the walls are 
 said to have some resemblance to the style of the Egyptian basso-relievos, 
 found amongst the ruins of Thebes. Memes speaks of them as bearing 
 decided traits of the Grecian school, and assigns them to an age subsequent 
 to that of Cyrus. Thirteen hundred figures of men and animals have 
 been counted, as remaining in the vast ruins of the palace of this pillared 
 Persepolis alone, once amongst the wonders of ancient Asia, and now 
 one of the miracles of the desert But few sculptured remains are found 
 amid the gigantic masonry of Baalbec — the ancient Heliopolis, or City of 
 the Sun. Palmyra, the Tadmor of the wilderness, mentioned in the Book 
 of Kings, as having been built by Solomon, exhibits ruins more properly 
 architectural than sculptural; but what there are of the latter are referable 
 to a far later period, belonging to the times of Hadrian, and the other 
 Roman emperors, who rebuilt this city. The Tadmor of Scripture has 
 long since disappeared. Of the ancient Tyre — the "joyous city" — the 
 "renowned city" — as the prophet calls it (destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar), 
 and its Hercules, described by Ezekiel, no relic is left; although Herodotus/ 
 who sailed in search of it, saw and describes the temple, but without its 
 god. 
 
 As examples of Hindoo art, it is only necessary to allude to the 
 stupendous excavations of Ellora and Elephantis, and the vast caverns 
 cut everywhere along the banks of the Ganges, sculptured all over with 
 mythological personages and allegorical figures, illustrative of the religion 
 of Brahma. In Egypt, — which, according to Herodotus, is said to have 
 once contained 20,000 populous cities, and where everything connected 
 with the labour of man appears to have been on a scale which has something 
 like the same relation to modern artificership, as that presented by the 
 
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 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 giant features of American nature when brought into comparison with the 
 more minute and beautiful character of European scenery, — we have still, 
 besides the Pyramids, the remains of five immense palaces and thirty-four 
 temples, including gigantic statues, and sculptural representations innume- 
 rable, to astonish and instruct us. From Herodotus, besides, we have 
 minute descriptions of much that is now lost or scattered by the lapse of 
 ages and the tempests of war. It is not possible here to do more than 
 allude by name to some of these amazing works ; and neither is it 
 necessary, as the lights thrown of late years upon Egyptian antiquities by 
 many publications have rendered them more familiar to most of our readers 
 than are the monuments of our own country. In Egypt all is colossal. 
 The two statues mentioned by Herodotus as placed, one in front of the 
 temple of Vulcan, at Memphis, and the other in the city of Sais, each 
 seventy-four feet in length ; the two supposed statues of Memnon, at 
 Thebes, each fifty-eight feet high ; the Sphynx, modelled upon a rock 
 ninety-five feet in length, and having thirty-eight feet in height, from the 
 knees to the top of the head, are (to say nothing of the Pyramids) examples. 
 The great temples of Karnac and Luxor, on the right bank of the Nile 
 (which, together with those of Medinet Abou and the Memnonium, on the 
 left bank, are supposed to occupy the site of the ancient Thebes) ; the 
 temples of Hermopolis, Dendera, Latopolis, Apollonopolis ; and those of 
 the islands of Philae and Elephantine, all present ruins, crowded with 
 statues, and covered in pillar and portico, within and without, with hiero- 
 glyphical representations, connected with the mysteries and sacrifices of 
 their worship. The earlier of these statues, those executed previous to the 
 conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, and, indeed, we may 
 say, down to the time of the Macedonian conquest, under Alexander the 
 Great (for the Persian sway rather put a negative upon the exercise, than 
 changed the forms of sculpture), exhibit the entire absence of almost all 
 those resources by which the art was finally perfected, including the total 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 19 
 
 want of anatomical, and lamentable deficiency of mechanical, knowledge. 
 Yet an air of imposing grandeur and majesty is communicated to many 
 of them, in the absence of all symmetry and all expression, not only by 
 the breadth and simplicity of their proportions, but by the air of passionless 
 calm and superhuman repose which that very absence creates. Of Egyptian 
 art, in general, we may add, that it wears a character of the sublime, and 
 creates an impression of the awful, at once from the vastness of its 
 dimensions, and the solemn nature of the purposes to which it is applied. 
 The sculptures of Egypt are chiefly employed either in the decoration of 
 the tomb, or the illustration of a religion whose mysteries are almost as 
 dark and awful as those of the grave itself; and, in either case, the effect 
 is heightened and solemnized by the manner in which this species of 
 illustration is employed. The whole of the Lybian mountain is pierced, 
 from its base to three-fourths of its elevation, with sepulchral grottos, 
 containing long passages, supported on innumerable columns or pilastres, 
 and conducting, gloomily, to chambers of the dead. In a ravine of the 
 mountain, flanked by the bed of a torrent, stand the Tombs of the Kings, 
 composed of galleries and corridors, crowded with pillars, and opening on 
 saloons, whose walls are covered with pictures and sculptured hieroglyphics. 
 The quarries of Silsilis, in Upper Egypt, present, also, funeral chambers 
 and passages, containing figures, as large as life, cut in the native rock ; 
 and all along the borders of the Nile are found tombs, similarly piercing 
 the bases of the heights, and surmounted by porticos, entablatures, and 
 cornices, all hewn out of the solid granite. Such are the sublime 
 characteristics of the art, in a country in which the natural quarry itself 
 has been made the chamber of sculpture, and the living mountain the 
 block ! 
 
 On the subject of Egyptian sculpture we can only add, that after 
 having been ransacked by the Macedonian Conqueror, for the purpose of 
 
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 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 adorning his rising city of Alexandria, it puts on new forms, or rather 
 modifications of form, under the influence of Greek art, in the reigns of 
 the Ptolomies; and more conspicuously so under the dominion of the 
 Romans, in the days of their emperor Hadrian. 
 
 Of Chinese sculpture, as of everything else relating to that singular 
 and ingenious people — who lay claim to a higher antiquity and earlier 
 cultivation than any other nation — our knowledge is, from their exclusive 
 policy, too limited to speak with anything like certainty. Specimens of 
 their ornamental carving have reached us, of the most minute and elaborate 
 beauty of finish ; but in sculpture, as an intellectual art, or in any of its 
 higher walks, we have no reason to suppose that they have attained to 
 any proficiency. As the best authorities concur in the belief that China 
 was originally colonized from the banks of the Indus and the Ganges, it 
 is probable that they took with them, at a very remote period, the arts of 
 India, in their earliest state of advancement; and the jealous system of the 
 empire, which has so long shut them within their own limits, and prevented 
 that intercommunication by which knowledge is promoted, has, in all 
 probability, in this — as we know it has in other things — confined them to 
 ancient forms, and retained amongst them primitive modes of thought. 
 Unchanging customs, of the standing of thousands of years, and manners 
 such as might have existed soon after the Deluge, are, in all probability, 
 connected with manifestations of feeling and methods of expression, in the 
 article of art, which might introduce the antiquary— could he obtain leisure 
 and unlimited access to them — to something like an acquaintance and 
 communion with the immediate descendants of Noah. This belief receives 
 confirmation from such of their medals and bronzes as we have seen. 
 Within the last few centuries, however, they are supposed to have received 
 some glimpses of European improvement, through the teaching of Christian 
 missionaries from the west— and more especially of the Jesuits, who went 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 over in the beginning of the seventeenth century ; so that even this 
 remote and inaccessible nation may be said to have felt the universal 
 influence of Greek art. In the reign of Louis the Sixteenth, a number of 
 Chinese were sent to Paris, to be instructed in the European arts of 
 designing, light and shadow, optics, colour, and perspective ; and, since 
 then, it is generally believed (and probable) that, both in painting and 
 sculpture, they may have improved their ancient modes, by a more spirited 
 cultivation of these arts, and an assimilation to the practice of European 
 nations. The tendency of their participation in all recent International 
 Exhibitions, including that of Philadelphia in 1876, shows a marked 
 departure from their old exclusiveness. 
 
 We have now reached a part of our subject which presents more open 
 and beaten ground ; and which, for that reason, as well as on account of 
 our limited space, must be passed over in a rapid review. The point at 
 which we have arrived may, in fact, be said to divide the subject into 
 two parts ; — our past inquiries have been limited to that species of evidence 
 which arises from the post mortem examination of the ruined works them- 
 selves, or from the analogies which their condition presents, but receiving 
 no light from the positive testimony of written and contemporary annals ; 
 whereas we are able, from a period shortly subsequent to that which we 
 have now attained in this sketch, to trace our onward way by the light 
 of history, and to follow, with something like certainty, the progress of the 
 art in the hands of that extraordinary people who stamped it — as they did 
 so many others — with the seal of their own unrivalled genius; and brought 
 it to a perfection undreamt of old, and unsurpassed since; who rendered 
 it, in a word, a fitting vehicle for the expression of the purest and most 
 beautiful and ideal mythology which the world had, or has ever invented. 
 
 Of the earliest state of Greece, the accounts which we have are, in a 
 
22 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 great measure, fabulous; but there is little doubt that she was, originally, 
 civilized by colonics from Egypt and Phoenicia; who brought with them 
 the religion, letters, and arts, of their parent country, and sculpture among 
 the rest. That the gods of Greece were of Egyptian and Phoenician 
 extraction, is undeniable. Of the condition or progress of art in Greece, 
 however, previous to the time of Daedalus, we have but few hints, — although 
 it is probable that the little state of Sicyon (whose academy of design 
 became, subsequently, one of the most famous in the land, and on which 
 has been conferred the venerable appellation of "Mother of the Arts"), 
 was signalized by the earliest school of Greek sculpture, as it was certainly 
 the most ancient of the Greek republics. The beautiful story narrating 
 the accidental circumstance in which this school had its origin, and which 
 makes love the parent of the arts of Greece, must not be omitted here. 
 Its foundation is attributed to a Sicyonian potter named Dibutades ; to 
 whom the practice of modeling is said to have been suggested by an 
 ingenious device, imparted to his daughter by her own fond and grieving 
 heart. On the eve of bidding farewell to her lover, who was about to 
 depart on a distant journey, her eye was caught by the profile of his 
 features, thrown upon the opposite wall, from a lamp, by whose light she 
 watched him as he slept; and affection inspired her with the idea of fixing 
 the outline there, by tracing round the shadow, for the solace of her 
 lonely hours in his absence. This outline the father subsequently filled 
 up with clay, — thus forming the most ancient medallion ; and this specimen 
 of antique art existed (and both from the pathetic nature of its origin, and 
 the important results to which it subsequently led, was regarded with the 
 highest interest) down to the time of the elder Pliny. Such is an example 
 of the beautiful traditions which, in this country insensibly sprang up, and 
 associated themselves with all the doings of its refined and spiritually 
 minded people; and the fine sentiment in which they originated, constitutes 
 the true charm by which they worked their miracles, in every department 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 23 
 
 of art, and whose various manifestations have invested all the scenes and 
 records of the land with the poetry of graceful and undying thought. 
 
 Another of the oldest of the Greek schools of sculpture, and one 
 which, likewise, subsequently arrived at the highest eminence, arose in the 
 small commercial island of /Egina ; and was early illustrated by the labours 
 of Smillis, whose works are said, even in that remote age, to have displayed 
 "a gravity and austere grandeur, the principles of that style visible, still, 
 in the noble marbles which once adorned, in yEgina, the temple of Jupiter 
 Panhcllenius." But the first epoch of improvement in Athens — afterwards 
 the metropolis of the arts — is connected with the name of Daedalus, the 
 famous builder of the Cretan labyrinth, and cotemporary of Theseus, whom 
 he accompanied from Crete to Athens (having, it is said, previously 
 executed a fine portico to the temple of Vulcan, at Memphis), and settled 
 there about 1200 years before Christ. According to the testimony of 
 Pausanias, his works, though rude and uncouth, had yet " something as 
 of divinity in their appearance;" although his statues (as well as those 
 of his disciple, Endaeus) were merely formed of wood. The Ionian school, 
 about 777 years before Christ, produced, at Samos, Rhascus, who first 
 obtained celebrity as a sculptor in brass; and in the following century, 
 at Chios, Malas, the father of a race of sculptors, and who first introduced 
 the use of the material to which sculpture mainly owes its perfection — 
 viz. marble. Towards the commencement of the next century, the school 
 of Sicyon was illustrated by the most famous of her ancient masters, the 
 brothers Dipaenus and Scyllis, " whose age," says Memes, " forms an era 
 in the history of the ancient art, making the first decided advances towards 
 the mastery of the succeeding style." Of the previous condition of the 
 art, in which the genius of these brothers is stated to have effected so 
 material an improvement, some idea may be obtained from an examination 
 of the colossal busts of Hercules and Apollo (conjectured to be the work 
 
24 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 of these masters), now existing in the British Museum. "The fiftieth 
 Olympiad," says the author above quoted, "shows all the necessary 
 inventions and principles of mechanical art fully known, and universally 
 practised." Cotemporary with the slow progress of art in Greece, the 
 school of Magna Grsecia, — whose chief seats were at Rhegium and Crotona, 
 in Italy ; and in Sicily, at Syracuse and Agrigentum, — had been rising into 
 importance and excellence, through a period of 2000 years. During the 
 former part of the sixth century, the school of Sicyon retained its pre- 
 eminence ; sending forth from its bosom numerous artists, who maintained 
 its cause in other states. Among these were Perillus, at Agrigentum, who 
 cast the famous bull of Phalaris. The close of the same century produced, 
 at Chios, the two brothers Bupalus and Anthermus, who threw all preceding 
 sculptors into shade. In their hands the discovery of their ancestors, 
 sculpture in marble, made rapid strides to perfection ; and from their days 
 down to the period of the battle of Marathon, the art was exercised, 
 throughout the whole of Greece, with a vigour unknown before, and 
 continually gaining strength. It was during this period, that, under the 
 enlightened patronage of Pisistratus (a prince, or tyrant as he was called, 
 who first sought to give his country the empire of literature and the arts), 
 the foundations were laid, at Athens, of that greatest school, whence 
 afterwards issued the miracles and canons of sculpture. Amongst the 
 names of the illustrious men whom he assembled around him, we find the 
 famous one of Callimachus; whose sculptural compositions were distin- 
 guished by that lightness and grace, the perfection of which, in the hands 
 of Praxiteles, subsequently gave the finishing and unsurpassable charm to 
 this, at length, enchanting art. Out of the numerous productions of the 
 same period, in other parts of Greece, we must select, for mention, the two 
 Muses of Canachus and Aristocles, issuing from the school of Sicyon, — 
 esteemed, in that day, the finest statues as yet executed, and one of which 
 is conjectured to be the famous antique now in the Barbarini palace. But 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 2 5 
 
 rich as this period is in names and works which history has transmitted 
 to us, we must hasten forward to the last grand era in the upward progress 
 of Grecian sculpture. Indeed, our limits have not permitted our doing 
 more than pass hurriedly over the ground which conducts to this point; 
 our object being to trace the progress of sculpture, by its eras, without 
 permitting us to give a list of the many names who contributed to 
 produce them. 
 
 From the time of the battle of Marathon, 490 B.C., down to that of 
 Phidias, we find amongst the names of those who illustrated and carried 
 forward the art, in its now rapid and energetic march, those of Calamis, 
 famous for his horses, and whose statue of Apollo Alexiacos, the Deliverer 
 from Evil, mentioned both by Pliny and Pausanias, is believed by the 
 learned Visconti, to be the famous Apollo Belvidcre ; Pythagoras of 
 Rhegium, whom Quintilian places only below Myron ; and Myron himself, 
 whom Dr. Memes calls, "the last and greatest of the early school." Of 
 this artist's works nothing has descended to us ; and our only means of 
 forming a personal judgment of his skill are derived from the antique 
 repetitions of his Discobolos, more than one of which have reached our 
 times, and of which there is an ancient example in the British Museum. 
 But we learn from the writers on that period of art that sculpture, as far 
 as it is a representation of external form, was perfected by him, and 
 prepared for the infusion of that spirituality — that fire from heaven — which, 
 in a few years more, it was to receive at the hands of the Prometheus of 
 the art. 
 
 The merits of this great artist (born about the 72nd .Olympiad) are 
 too well known to require that we should dwell upon them. It is sufficient 
 to observe that Phidias brought to the exercise of an art, already advanced 
 before his day to an excellence far surpassing anything of which the 
 
26 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 ancients had left an example, a genius of the very highest order, steeped 
 in the inspiration of the poets, and tutored by the wisdom of the philoso- 
 phers. By communicating to the perfect forms which his predecessors had 
 bequeathed to him that inspiration, governed by that wisdom, he raised 
 sculpture to take her place amongst the very first forms of art, — aye, on 
 a throne than which there is none higher; communicating to it all the 
 power which the highest poetry has for elevating the imagination, or 
 touching the heart. In addition to this he gave, in his execution, a softness 
 to flesh, and a flow to drapery, unknown before his day. Two of his 
 productions, the most esteemed amongst his cotemporaries, were his ivory 
 statues of the Athenian Minerva and the Olympian Jupiter; of which 
 Quintilian says, that they "seemed to have added something to religion — 
 the majesty of the work was so worthy of the divinity." The latter, and 
 most colossal of these, is described by Flaxman as follows : " The great 
 work of this chief of sculptors, the astonishment and praise of after-ages, 
 was the Jupiter at Elis, sitting on his throne, his left hand holding a 
 sceptre, his right extending victory to the Olympian conquerors, his head 
 crowned with olive, and his pallium decorated with birds, beasts, and 
 flowers. The four corners of the throne were dancing Victories, each 
 supported by a Sphynx, tearing a Theban youth. At the back of the 
 throne, above his head, were the three Hours or Seasons, on one side, 
 and on the other, the three Graces. On the bar between the legs of the 
 throne, and the panels or spaces between them, were represented many 
 stories; — the destruction of Niobe's children, the labours of Hercules, the 
 Delivery of Prometheus, the Garden of Hesperides, with the different 
 adventures of the heroic ages. On the base, the battle of Theseus with 
 the Amazons; on the pedestal, an assembly of the gods, the sun and 
 moon in their cars, and the birth of Venus. The height of the work was 
 sixty feet. The statue was ivory, enriched with the radiance of golden 
 ornaments and precious stones, and was justly esteemed one of the wonders 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 27 
 
 of the world." Dr. Memes describes it as " in a reposing attitude, the 
 body naked to the cincture, the lower limbs clothed in a robe gemmed 
 with golden flowers; the hair also was of gold, bound with an enamelled 
 crown ; the eyes of precious stones ; the rest of ivory. Notwithstanding 
 the gigantic proportions, every part was wrought with the most scrupulous 
 delicacy ; even the splendid throne was carved with exquisite nicety." The 
 Minerva of the Parthenon was a figure forty feet in height, similarly 
 executed, in mixed materials, some years later, and wrought with equal 
 delicacy and beauty. Of both these statues we have minute and laudatory 
 descriptions from Pliny and Pausanias. Yet, the fact of the Athenians 
 having preferred these splendid productions (in which the effect was 
 sought to be heightened by the meretricious use of foreign accessories) to 
 the unrivalled specimens of pure and self-expressive sculpture which the 
 same master produced, proves that they were behind the sculptor, as 
 regarded the true principles of taste ; and that the great artist (who is 
 said to have disapproved of this mixed style) had the weakness to suffer 
 his own judgment, at times, to be controlled by the less-instructed spirit 
 of his age. But it may be that he gave way only to obtain a vantage 
 ground, from which he might lift up the public mind to his own standard ; 
 and his subsequent example did much to establish those canons of pure 
 taste, which the world has not yet seen reason to alter. Both these 
 magnificent works, together with the whole of the statues executed in 
 bronze, by Phidias (a branch of the art which he is said to have carried 
 to a perfection never rivalled), have perished ; and our personal inquiries 
 into the style of this consummate artist are limited to those marble remains 
 of the produce of his chisel, which have survived his labours on the more 
 durable material. Fortunately, they exist in unquestioned authenticity and 
 sufficient abundance for our purpose, — although in this department, also, 
 many of his finest performances have been lost. Indeed, the number 
 and extent of the works performed by, or under the immediate direction 
 
28 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 of, Phidias, are so great as to fill the mind with wonder, and almost 
 disbelief; and, true it is, that so numerous and active was the school of 
 art which he founded, and so illustrious were its pupils, that we are not 
 able, with the assistance of the ancient writers, to separate, in all cases, 
 the actual works of the master from those of his scholars, which he 
 superintended, and to which he gave the finishing touches. 
 
 Of the scholars and cotemporaries of Phidias, and of the distinguished 
 artists who, from the death of the great Athenian, carry forward the history 
 of sculpture to the age of Alexander, we can do little more than merely 
 allude to the names of a few. The Venus Aphrodite, which has given 
 fame to Alcamenes, the pupil of Phidias, is said to have received its last 
 touches from the master's hand. To Polycletus, one of his cotemporaries, 
 has been, by some, attributed a grandeur of style approaching to that 
 of Phidias himself. Of his two celebrated statues, the Diadumenos and 
 the Doryphorus, the latter formed the famous "canon of proportion," to 
 which all succeeding artists referred, as to an unerring rule. The celebrated 
 statue of the " Dying Gladiator " (more properly, as Winckelman thinks, 
 a dying herald or hero), one of the finest examples of Greek art in existence, 
 has been commonly ascribed (some think erroneously) to Ctesilaus, a rival 
 of Phidias. Of the artists who flourished during the troubles of the 
 Peloponnesian war we have accounts, or casual notices, of nearly fifty, in 
 the writings of Strabo, Pausanias, Pliny, and others. To Scopas are ascribed 
 the Townley Venus or Dione, now in the British Museum, and the beautiful 
 group of Niobe at Florence. Winckelman has well divided the history 
 of Grecian art into four periods, distinguished by four styles. These he 
 calls the Ancient style, which ascends from the time of Phidias back to a 
 period beyond authentic record; the Grand style, formed by Phidias himself; 
 the Beautiful, introduced by Praxiteles and Lysippus ; and the Imitative, 
 practised by those artists who copied the works of the ancient masters. 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 29 
 
 Between the second and third of these the name of Scopas may be placed, 
 as conducting us, by a gentle gradation, from the school of the Grand to 
 the school of the Beautiful ; and already exhibiting, in his works, much of 
 that seductive softness and winning grace which characterized the practice 
 of Praxiteles, to whose name we must at once turn. 
 
 This great sculptor (the place of whose birth is uncertain, though 
 supposed to have been one of the towns of Magna Graecia) has a name 
 in Greek art second only to that of Phidias ; and which, perhaps, need 
 scarcely be placed in a lower rank, when it is considered that he selected 
 for himself a somewhat different walk, probably not more from the bent 
 of his taste than from his wish to avoid such a comparison. The highest 
 point of the sublime had been touched by the chisel of the Athenian ; and 
 his successor devoted himself to the worship and illustration of beauty. 
 His compositions are full of a tender and voluptuous grace, corrected and 
 chastened by a spirituality which redeems them from the charge of the 
 sensual. The most celebrated of his works, which have perished, are the 
 two statues of Venus, one draped and the other naked, which he made 
 for the selection of the Coans, who chose the clothed figure. The other 
 was subsequently purchased by the citizens of Cnidos, and became one of 
 the most celebrated statues in the world, to see which Cnidos was visited 
 from many parts beyond seas. This figure was placed in a temple open 
 on all sides, that it might be seen in every point of view. It is known 
 to us by the description of Lucian, and by a medal of Caracalla and 
 Plautilla, in the cabinet of France, on which it is represented. It remained 
 in Cnidos as late as the reign of the Emperor Arcadius, four hundred 
 years after Christ; and is supposed to have furnished the first idea of 
 the Venus de Medicis, which is considered likely to be a repetition of 
 another Venus, mentioned by Pliny as having been executed subsequently 
 by Praxiteles. The Venus of Cos is supposed to be the same as that 
 
3° 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 one, with an apple in her hand, who is represented on the reverse of 
 the Empress Lucilla's medals. The works of this artist which remain, 
 either as originals or in repetition, are his Cupid, Apollo, the lizard-killer, 
 Satyr, and Bacchus, leaning on a fawn. 
 
 Of the 610 works, chiefly in metal, ascribed to Lysippus, the cotem- 
 porary of Praxiteles, and his rival in the favour of Alexander, we have 
 no remains. He was, like Praxiteles, a worshipper of the beautiful, and 
 has left behind him a reputation scarcely inferior to that of the great 
 founder of the school in question. Notwithstanding, however, the exquisite 
 delicacy of conception which has been ascribed as one of his characteristics, 
 there appears, at times, in the selection of his subjects, and his manner 
 of executing them, an occasional leaning towards the more sublime style 
 of their illustrious predecessor. Amongst his works were a statue of 
 Jupiter, 60 feet in height, and twenty-one equestrian statues of Alexanders 
 body-guard, who fell at the Granicus. 
 
 That the earliest inhabitants of Italy, whencesoever sprung, were 
 sculptors after the rude fashion, which we believe to be common to all 
 barbarous nations, we have no doubt; but the practice of sculpture, as 
 anything like an art, is commonly supposed to have travelled westward 
 to them by the road of Greece. The accounts given by the Greek writers 
 concerning the emigrants into Italy, who settled along the western part 
 of that coast (forming the colony, of whose later school of art we have 
 already spoken, as that of Magna Graecia), together with the evidence 
 derived from an inspection of their remaining works, have led admitted 
 authorities to the conclusion that the Etruscan remains are either the 
 productions of the Greek colonists themselves, or of those who received 
 instruction in art at their hands. There is, however, good reason to suppose 
 that the transplanted art found a soil more rapidly propitious than that 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 3i 
 
 from whence it had been derived; and that the school of sculpture in 
 Etruria had early arrived at a degree of refinement not attained by Greece 
 until a later period. The Etruscan gems and medals of that period, 
 which have come down to us, are of wonderful beauty for so remote an 
 age ; but the most numerous class of these remains are their engraved 
 bronzes, or sacrificial vessels, called Paterae. Of the ancient statues and 
 relievos which have been discovered in Italy, there is some difficulty, 
 from this relationship and identical character of the two schools, in 
 separating those which are of Etruscan workmanship from those which may 
 be of Greek importation. The figures of the Roman kings and other 
 illustrious persons of early times, mentioned by Pliny as standing in the 
 Capitol — together with the terra-cotta figure of Jupiter Capitolinus — are 
 supposed to have been from the schools of Etruria; as well as most of 
 the other works of sculpture executed for the early Romans ; * whose 
 acquaintance with Grecian art seems to have been very limited before 
 the time of the Scipios. The arts of Etruria flourished in her twelve 
 capitals in emulous and increasing splendour, until her once extensive 
 empire, which had gradually given way before the encroaching power of 
 the Romans, was finally overthrown by that people, and the earliest school 
 of art established in Italy was destroyed, 480 years subsequent to the 
 building of Rome. 
 
 As early as the thirteenth century, in the republican cities of Italy, 
 the love and practice of the fine arts had been advancing with the progress 
 and sense of freedom. The Tuscan spirit of elegance, relieved from the 
 imperial chain which had so long enthralled it, had begun to revive ; 
 and, towards the close of that century, Pisa, with other neighbouring 
 cities of the old Etruria, — its ancient seats, — were already, once more, 
 distinguished for art. The founder of this new school (the first of restored 
 sculpture in Italy), or, at least, the sculptor by whose name it is earliest 
 
32 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 illustrated, was Nicolo Pisano ; and it may be observed, for another proof 
 of the influence of Greek art upon every subsequent school, that he and 
 his successors formed their taste, and modelled their style, after the spoils 
 of ancient art which the Pisans had brought from Sicily and Greece. 
 From Pisa, the principles and precepts of Nicolo were carried to Florence, 
 by his grandson and pupil, Andrea: and in this city, — the future Athens 
 of restored art, — about the middle of the next century, was erected the 
 first academy of design, from whose bosom issued forth sculptors who 
 spread the practice of the art over the whole of Italy, and even made their 
 way into France, Germany, and, as we shall have occasion hereafter to 
 mention more particularly, England itself. The unparalleled rapidity with 
 which it extended itself, within a period (from its first revival to its final 
 triumph in the fifteenth century) so short, marks the difference between an 
 already perfected art, re-awakened by a crowd of propitious circumstances 
 from the slumber of ages, and the slow and laborious march of the same 
 art, from infancy to its similar state of maturity, in its native Greece. It 
 is less our business, in a limited sketch like this, to point out the train of 
 moral causes which aroused and bore onward the spirit of intelligence, in 
 every form of its manifestation, than to record their results in that one 
 which is our subject. But we may just mention, as one of the accidental, 
 aiding the moral, influences, that, about this time, or shortly afterwards, 
 many of the finest fragments of ancient art were recovered from the oblivion 
 in which they had lain from the days of the barbarian or religious icono- 
 clastes. An enumeration was made in the year 1430, by desire of Eugenius 
 IV., of all the remains of former magnificence then existing in Rome, and 
 amongst them were found only five statues, — which may give some notion 
 of the number subsequently restored from the bowels of the earth, or dug 
 out of ruins. The Laocoon was discovered in the year 1506. Amongst 
 the names of those whom we find contributing to the progress of art, 
 from John Pisano (the son of Nicolo) to Michael Angelo, we may mention 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 33 
 
 the illustrious ones of Brunelleschi and Ghiberti (to the latter of whom it 
 is indebted for the magnificent bronze gates of the baptistry, at Florence, 
 one of the finest works of all modern art, and to which has been given, 
 from an enthusiastic expression of Buonarotti's, the title of the " Gates of 
 Paradise"), the far greater one of Donatello (the most illustrious of all the 
 Italian predecessors of the mighty Florentine, second, in the whole history 
 of that era of revived art, to him alone, — and of whom it was said, in 
 reference to the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration, that " either 
 Michael Angelo's soul energized in his body, or his in Michael Angelo's"), 
 and that of Dominic Ghirlandaio, less for the sake of his own genius 
 (which was displayed more in painting than in sculpture) than because he 
 was the master of Buonarotti, and shares with Bertoldo, a pupil of Donatello, 
 the proud distinction of being the source from whence that matchless artist 
 derived such portion of his art as was not direct inspiration. 
 
 It is impossible not to be struck, at once, by the resemblance which 
 the period immediately antecedent to the labours of the great Florentine 
 bears, morally and politically, to that which preceded the advent of Phidias, 
 — by the identical condition at which the art itself had arrived, in each 
 case, — and by the similar style adopted by the two great masters — that 
 of the Grand, as contrasted with that of the Beautiful, practised by an 
 illustrious successor of each, Praxiteles and Canova. In each case, the 
 spirit of freedom had evoked a host of intelligences; long strides had been 
 made in moral, intellectual, and political knowledge ; miracles of poetry 
 had been achieved; and the Pericles of the one period has his parallel in 
 the Medici of the other. In each case, too, the art, as regarded the mere 
 forms of imitation, had attained perfection; and awaited but the coming 
 of a master-mind to invest those forms with a living intelligence, and 
 animate them with the spirit of immortality. 
 
34 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 The long and crowded annals of the fine arts have charge of no 
 reputation more vast and indestructible than that of Michael Angelo; but 
 his crown is composed of a wreath culled from each of their three fields. 
 — Sculptor, painter, architect, — the energy which he infused into, and the 
 influence which he exercised over, each of these departments, — together 
 with the fact that, in each, his genius was exercised upon, and has left 
 perfected, the most sublime memorials ever undertaken in honour of our 
 own religion, — have gained for him a name surpassing every other name 
 in art, and not to be pronounced without a feeling of solemn veneration. 
 The sublimity and originality of his genius, as well as the unprecedented 
 range of his powers — his profound scientific attainments, and bold anatomical 
 displays; the elaborate complication and wonderful grandeur of his 
 grouping; the unequalled rapidity and novel character of his execution; and 
 the lofty and daring subjects to whose achievements he bent this unrivalled 
 combination of great and singular qualities — have separated and set him 
 apart from all other artists, and placed him, as regards comparative 
 criticism, in a category by himself. No name can be found to place by 
 the side of his who built the Cupola, sculptured the Moses, and painted 
 the Last Judgment, — a work which, taken in connection with the paintings 
 on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, with which it forms one great whole, 
 has no competitor, for vastness and sublimity, in any production of art, 
 throughout the whole extent of its history, in ancient or modern times. 
 True it is, that the noblest efforts of this overwhelming genius are those 
 which he executed in colours. As a sculptor alone, and merely judged 
 of by the works of that kind which he has left, we should, in many of the 
 qualities which unite to form the perfection of that art, according to the 
 recognized canons, be compelled to assign him a place below that of 
 Phid 
 
 i as > — although no work of sculpture, ancient or modern, approaches 
 the Moses in point of grandeur. But it is a troubled grandeur — distinct 
 from the sweet and solemn majesty of ancient and perfected art. In fact, 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 35 
 
 the severe and simple rules which long experience and enlightened study 
 had pointed out and established, as best adapted to the limited resources 
 and uniform materials of the ancient and dignified art of sculpture, were 
 of too cold and passionless a character to suit the fiery temperament of 
 this wild and winged genius; and the grand and daring effects which his 
 fervent imagination sought, were to be reached at the expense of any 
 particular canon which might restrain him in their attainment. The result 
 of all this has been, that he has left behind him works which are amongst 
 the miracles of genius ; and that startle the mind into an admiration that 
 leaves it but little inclination to question the legitimacy of the means by 
 which they were produced, or to contend for the unvarying application of 
 the principles, in whose absence results so great and impressive have been 
 achieved. But, at the same time, by setting at nought the safe and con- 
 firmed rules of pure and established practice, and teaching (by his own 
 bright and dazzling example) inferior spirits to venture upon the adoption 
 of conventional and fantastical modes in their place (as in the case of 
 his Neapolitan successor, Bernini), he prepared the way for the rapid 
 deterioration, and final and certain extinction, in other hands, of that art 
 which in the meantime, and in his own, he carried to the highest reach 
 of the sublime ; and left the gigantic monuments of his own mind, 
 towering along the edge of that gulf in art which he had himself dug to 
 furnish forth their materials. 
 
 As the most striking example of these marvellous works, let us return 
 to the Moses, sculptured by Michael Angelo for the tomb of Pope Julius 
 the second, — a monument which, had it been executed after the sketch 
 furnished by that artist, would have been the most magnificent work of 
 sculpture which modern times have produced; but whose composition was 
 afterwards reduced to one-fourth of the original design, and whose figures 
 were executed by inferior sculptors, with the single and stupendous exception 
 
36 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 of the Moses itself. About this wonderful statue there is a sublimity 
 not to be penetrated. It cannot be looked at steadily. We involuntarily 
 think of Moses, as he came down from the mount. We feel that we are 
 gazing on one invested with a portion of the awful attributes of the dread 
 Being with whom he is permitted to converse ; and cannot, for an instant, 
 think of him as of a man fashioned like unto, and having sympathies 
 with, ourselves. The idea is present of something beyond a human leader 
 or law-giver. The figure seems filled and expanded with the inspiration 
 of prophecy. His nature seems to have grown beyond mortality beneath 
 the influence of its awful communications. No mortal hand had dared to 
 try such a subject but his own; and no other hand of mortal could have 
 succeeded. It is to be remembered that the gods whom the heathens 
 sculptured were the subjects of a somewhat familiar intercourse with 
 mankind ; and invested with none of those unimaginable attributes which 
 forbid all approach, even in thought. The Jupiter, at Elis, as a work of 
 mere power, — as an effort of the imagination,— will admit of no comparison 
 with the Moses. For effect produced, the world has nothing like it. The 
 sculptor must have been in a state of mind, when he worked upon it, 
 too highly excited to think about the canons of his art, — or care for them, 
 if he had. True it is, that the superhuman effect is obtained by means, 
 though different, yet strictly as far from being in accordance with those 
 rigid canons, as are the golden hair and jewelled eyes of the Elian Jove. 
 Yet, scarcely to preserve those rules from utter oblivion, — and, certainly, 
 not for the sake of securing their application in the case before us, — 
 would the world consent to part with this great and matchless monument. 
 
 But we must not delay ourselves over an examination or description 
 of works so well known as those of Michael Angelo. The productions 
 of his chisel are few in number, and for the most part unfinished; for 
 his unwearied industry exhibited itself in the multitude and variety of the 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 37 
 
 conceptions which it was called on to express, while his restless and 
 creative spirit would not pause upon the slow labour of perfecting its 
 own rapid designs. Amongst the finest of his sculptured works are the 
 recumbent figures expressive of Daybreak and Night, in the monument 
 of Julian di Medici, in the Medici Chapel, at Florence; and the group 
 of the Madonna, with the dead Christ on her knees, in St. Peter's, at Rome. 
 
 With the name of Michael Angelo our task, in these introductory 
 remarks, is drawing to a close. His death was followed by the rapid 
 decay of the last great school of sculpture, previous to those of the age 
 which had its direct influence on the American school. Over the expiring 
 efforts of that school our limits do not permit — nor does their dignity 
 require — that we should pause. It is little to be wondered at, that a 
 mind of so overpowering an order should have left its impression on the 
 greatest part of the century which followed him ; and that every sculptor 
 for the fifty years succeeding his death should be a copyist of his style. 
 Accordingly, we find that style, within a very short period after his decease, 
 extended by his scholars and imitators into the various cities of Italy; 
 and transported into France by Rustici, the master of Leonardo da Vinci, 
 and by John of Bologna, the most eminent of all the pupils of Buonarotti, 
 and the sculptor who, after his death, became the leading master of his 
 art in Europe. Among the most distinguished of the contemporaries and 
 survivors of Michael Angelo, must be mentioned the name of Bandinelli ; 
 and having found room for that of Benvenuto Cellini, who united the 
 professions of a goldsmith and sculptor in metals, we must take leave of 
 the Florentine school, which gradually languished, and, towards the begin- 
 ning of the seventeenth century, finally became extinct. 
 
 After the decay of the great school of Tuscany, from a crowd of 
 obscure names we single the more illustrious one of Bernini (to which we 
 
38 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 have already alluded), who, with great talent and wonderful fancy, departed 
 from all the rules of severe and simple taste, which had been established 
 as the standards of excellence in his art, in an attempt to imitate Michael 
 Angelo, by the introduction of a school of his own ; and having been 
 originally himself a painter, threw away the high fame which he had all 
 the qualities, except judgment, for attaining, by an absurd and impracticable 
 endeavour to embody, in sculpture, the style of Correggio's painting. His 
 followers were Rusconi, Algardi, Moco, &c. ; and, in their hands, the art 
 continued to deteriorate and decay; till, finally, for want of that encourage- 
 ment which it had ceased to deserve, it fell into a lethargy during great 
 part of the eighteenth century; from whence it was only to be re-awakened 
 by a mind wise enough to go back to the first principles of nature, — 
 instructed enough to bring into comparison with, and test by them, the 
 - various principles which had been offered as the standards of art, — and 
 with taste and judgment sufficient to aid him in his selection from both. 
 And such a one the close of the eighteenth century produced in — Canova. 
 
 But, at this point, our task of tracing the progress of the art down to 
 the time at which its past history exerts an influence on the American 
 sculptors terminates, and with a rapid sketch of the little that had been 
 done in sculpture in the other countries of continental Europe down to the 
 formation of their modern schools, and a hasty review of its progress in 
 England to the same period, we must bring these introductory remarks 
 to a close. 
 
 In France, from its proximity to Italy, as well as from the intercourse 
 maintained between its early kings and the Greek emperors, a taste for 
 fine art had at all times been kept alive. In the reign of .Francis I., a 
 school, similar to the improved one of Italy, was founded by Leonardo da 
 Vinci, Benvenuto Cellini, and Primaticcio. The native sculptors of eminence 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 39 
 
 whom it shortly produced were Goujon, Pilon, and Cousin, — the first of 
 whom executed the works on the Fountain of the Innocents, at Paris. 
 Jacques D'Angouleme was contemporary with Michael Angelo. Towards 
 the close of the sixteenth century, John of Bologna, as we have already 
 mentioned, established the principles of his great master in France ; and 
 Girardon and Puget perpetuated them to the age of Louis XIV. Sarasin, 
 one of the most distinguished sculptors of France, executed the Caryatides 
 of the Louvre ; and from this time, down to the Revolution, we have the 
 names of Les Gros, Theodon, Le Peintre, Desjardins, Vaucleve, Couston, 
 Bouchardon, and Pigal. 
 
 In Germany, before the seventeenth century, we find no sculptors 
 worthy of the name, and no works deserving of notice. Subsequent to 
 that period, we have the names of Rauchmiiller, in Vienna; Leigebe, in 
 Silesia ; Millich, Barthel, and others, at Berlin ; and Alexander Collins, at 
 Mechlin, — whose monument of the Emperor Maximilian, in the Church 
 of St. Anthony, presents a striking and magnificent example of sepulchral 
 sculpture. In that country a modern school of art has latterly arisen, 
 which bids fair to extend its reputation in the department of sculpture, 
 and has already produced works which will suffer little by comparison 
 anywhere, in immediate connection with all but the best of modern times. 
 
 In Spain, as in France, the art of sculpture was derived from Italy. 
 Their great sculptor, Paul de Cespides, issued from a school of art 
 established in that country by a pupil of Michael Angelo. 
 
 England is rich in examples of ancient sculpture from a very early 
 period ; but wearing, for the most part, traces of a foreign origin, and 
 having the impression to that effect — which is derived from the works 
 themselves — frequently confirmed by such evidence as exists. A minute 
 
40 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 and critical inquiry into the abundant and interesting remains of this art, 
 which embellish the cathedrals and churches of England, would be out 
 of place and proportion in this general view of sculpture, — in which that 
 of Britain, up to a recent period, forms but an unimportant, and not very 
 distinct or original episode. For particulars of great interest connected 
 with these old English sculptures, we refer our readers to the view of that 
 subject taken by Professor Flaxman, in his lecture delivered from the chair 
 of the Royal Academy; and for examples of the same, to the valuable 
 publications of Mr. Britton. For ourselves, we must skim over the surface 
 to a conclusion. 
 
 What kind of native sculpture may have existed amongst the early 
 Britons, if any, there are no remains to show; the remotest examples of 
 this art that have come down to us being (according to Flaxman) some 
 rude coins, apparently imitations of the Tyrian or Carthaginian, with which 
 countries they had commercial intercourse. That they subsequently imitated 
 the arts which they had learnt from their Roman conquerors, there is abundant 
 evidence to prove, both from the works of historians, and from a vast body 
 of remains discovered in various parts of the kingdom, — notwithstanding 
 the general destruction of the vestiges of Roman grandeur by the Saxons 
 who succeeded them. What traces still remain of the architecture and 
 sculpture of these Saxons themselves are, however, rude and barbarous 
 imitations of the very works which they destroyed ; and the same are also 
 imitated in the Norman productions, but with more skill. It was imme- 
 diately after the Norman conquest that figures of the deceased were first 
 carved in bas-relief on their gravestones, examples of which remain in 
 Westminster Abbey and Worcester Cathedral. From the return of the 
 Crusaders down to the age of Henry III., sculpture increased in popularity 
 and consequent excellence ; and the reign of that monarch exhibited 
 examples not undeserving of praise even in the present day, — allowance 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 4> 
 
 being made for the imperfect lights under which they were produced. An 
 instance of this may be found in Wells Cathedral, which Bishop Joceline 
 rebuilt before the middle of the thirteenth century. The magnificent stone 
 crosses erected, in the reign of Edward I., on the spots where the body 
 of his queen, Eleanor, rested on its journey to its tomb in Westminster 
 Abbey (and of which three still remain), and the tomb and statue of Henry 
 III., in the same place (together with many other works of this, or later 
 date), bear evident traits of the school of Pisano; and are generally 
 supposed to have been executed by some of those numerous travelling 
 scholars, whom we have already mentioned as having spread the principles 
 of that school over the whole of Italy, and finally extended their wanderings 
 and labours over the west of Europe, until they reached Great Britain. 
 In the reign of Edward III., the encouragement given to the arts was 
 general ; and the richness, novelty, and beauty of the sculptures of that 
 day may be seen in York and Gloucester Cathedrals, as well as in many 
 other churches and monuments. There is reason to believe, however, 
 that these also were the work of Italians. But it is said that the artists 
 employed by Edward III., in his collegiate church of St. Stephen (now the 
 House of Commons), were for the most part Englishmen. The tomb of 
 Henry VII., in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey, is the work of 
 Torrigiano, an Italian ; but Flaxman is of opinion — from a variety of 
 interesting circumstances relating to it, which are mentioned by Britton, 
 in his Architectural Antiquities, and from other evidence — that Torrigiano 
 was concerned in the tomb and statues alone, and not in the building 
 which contains them, or the remaining statues with which it is embellished. 
 The chapel and its sculptures, he thinks, were probably native productions. 
 Henry VIII., in the early part of his reign, had for his Master of Works 
 an Italian, John of Padua, a scholar of Michael Angelo ; but, towards the 
 close of his reign, and throughout that of Edward VI., the iconoclastic 
 spirit was let loose in England, and many of the noblest and most 
 
4 2 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 magnificent efforts of British art perished. It is probably owing only to 
 their great number, which baffled the destroyer, that so many of them are 
 still left to the present day. This spirit of destruction continued to rage, 
 with more or less violence, down to the period of the civil wars; when 
 its furious orgies desecrated most of the temples in the island, and finally 
 extinguished the genius of liberal art amongst her sons. When, therefore, 
 on the Restoration, the ravages of this demon of devastation had to be 
 replaced, she was compelled again to visit the land of the foreigner for 
 that proficiency in art which her own soil could not furnish. During this 
 abasement of native sculpture, we find the names of three Englishmen — 
 Christmas, Stone, and Bird ; but their labours only tend to make conspicu- 
 ous the wretched condition to which the art was reduced. Steevens, De 
 Vere, Caius Cibber (the sculptor of the Kings at the old Royal Exchange, 
 the bas-relief on the Monument of London, and the celebrated figures 
 of Melancholy and Madness in the Hall of Bedlam), Scheemacher, Roubiliac, 
 Carlini, Locatelli, Rysbrack, — nearly all the sculptors, in fact, who flourished 
 in England during the greater part of the eighteenth century, — were 
 foreigners. 
 
 Thus, not until towards the conclusion of the last century, can there 
 properly be said to have existed a school of British Sculpture; and she, 
 like the rest of Europe, was indebted — both under the emperors, and at 
 the period of the restored arts — for the treasures of that kind with which 
 she is enriched, to Greek art, passing through Roman hands, and modified 
 by Roman forms. The British school may be considered as commencing 
 with Banks (for Wilton was educated abroad), whose works have eclipsed 
 nearly all his continental contemporaries, as they have since been far 
 surpassed. We have had occasion to notice that, in many countries 
 of Europe besides Italy, there is just now an awakened and improving 
 spirit in this walk of art, which promises well for the extension and 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 
 
 43 
 
 perpetuation of right principles; and, in our enumeration, Denmark must 
 not lie omitted, for the sake- of her great son Thorwaldsen, although he 
 was an adopted citizen of Rome. 
 
 The rapid sketch, which we must now close, has brought down the 
 history of the art, in a general and cursory way on all sides, to the time 
 of the American school of sculpture, with a view to whose promotion, 
 and to make the public better acquainted with which, these illustrations 
 have been undertaken. We are anxious that the publication and encour- 
 agement of modern, and above all of native art, should, at least, be 
 concurrent and co-extensive with the publication and encouragement 
 bestowed upon that of the ancient and the foreigner; and that the general 
 public should have an acquaintance with the beautiful specimens of 
 sculpture which enrich and exalt our own day and land, at least equal to 
 their knowledge of those immortal works which they replace, or by the 
 side of which, in many cases, they may boldly challenge to stand. A 
 school of sculpture has at length, as we have observed, and with almost 
 unexampled rapidity, grown up in America, — based upon the purest prin- 
 ciples of the best days of Grecian art, and in harmony with the feelings 
 and habits of our land. In the service of religion this art never was used 
 amongst us, from a feeling (whether right or wrong) that such application 
 of its resources savours of idolatry, or may lead to it; or, perhaps, from 
 a belief (which is certainly right) that subjects of that nature are of too 
 sacred a character for a mode of illustration so palpable and substantial 
 as sculpture. But, in the service of the tomb — in the embellishment of 
 our homes — in the illustration of our affections — in the perpetuation of what 
 is great and tutelary amongst us — it has assumed an aspect and a tone 
 well suited to add to the sources of our intellectual enjoyment at home, 
 and to elevate the national character abroad. Sculptors have arisen amongst 
 ourselves, and in our own day, second only to the very greatest masters of 
 
44 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 the art in all time ; and works have been produced, in its various kinds, 
 which we dare almost place beside their best in the same. At the present 
 moment, no school of sculpture in Europe can claim to take the lead of 
 that of America; or promises, with due encouragement to this latter, so 
 fair for progressive excellence. Once more, then, we call upon that part 
 of the public to whom the elegant and intellectual arts are a solace and 
 a joy, — again we demand of their wealthy patrons to extend the cheering 
 influence of their encouragement, in every mode of its exhibition which 
 may be in their power, to the sculptures of their native land ; to do what 
 in them severally lies for the promotion of an art adapted, in a language 
 so delightful, to enforce the lessons of wisdom and virtue, and -embalm 
 and utter the records of the heart. 
 
TIB GREEK SLATE. 
 
 EN&RAVED BYVE07IE FROM THE STATUE 
 INMAKBLE BYHTRAM POWERS . 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 POIVERS AND GREENOUGH 
 
 IRAM POWERS was the first American sculptor who achieved 
 a European reputation, and a European reputation in 1843, 
 when he finished his Greek Slave, meant much more for an 
 American than it means to-day. We have not yet got beyond the time 
 when the cordial endorsement of Paris or London is worth very much to 
 an American artist or author, but we certainly have got beyond the time 
 when such endorsement is necessary in order to obtain for an American 
 artist or author the cordial appreciation, hearty commendation and liberal 
 patronage of his own countrymen. It was the special good fortune of 
 Mr. Powers that, at a most opportune moment, he was able to rivet the 
 attention of European, and particularly of English connoisseurs, with a 
 purely ideal work, full of grace, tenderness and pathos, which was in every 
 way worthy of himself and of his country. The Greek Slave opened the 
 eyes of European art lovers and art critics to the fact that there was a 
 rising school of American sculptors, which asked nothing of Europe except 
 the instruction which its great galleries, filled with the fragmentary re- 
 mains of antique art, alone could give, and which yielded nothing to 
 modern European art in invention, ideality or technical skill. 
 
 45 
 
4 6 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Powers' Greek Slave was completed at a fortunate time. The 
 woes of the Greeks and the liberation of Greece from the Turkish yoke 
 were subjects concerning which enlightened people, both in Europe and 
 America, thought deeply — and no theme that the young American sculptor 
 might have chosen for his first important ideal work could have so touched 
 popular sympathies as the singularly happy one he did choose. He 
 addressed a public that was ready to admire and to praise, and that did 
 admire and praise without stint. The Greek Slave was a famous statue 
 before the opening of the great International Exhibition of 1851 in London; 
 at that exhibition it was the one work of art by an American that did 
 credit to America. To say that it well held its own with the contributions 
 of European sculptors, would be to do it scant justice. In some of the 
 highest artistic qualities it was not surpassed by any piece of sculpture 
 in the Exhibition, while in many other high qualities it surpassed any 
 of them. The critics praised it and accepted it as a promise of greater 
 things to come, not only from the same hand, but from the hands of 
 Mr. Powers' countrymen; English wealth gave appreciation a substantial 
 value to the artist by purchasing it; the English public admired it and 
 frankly said that it did; and the greatest of English female poets wrote 
 a sonnet on it. When Mrs. Browning sincerely and heartily admired 
 anything it was not her custom to express her admiration in vain and 
 halting words. There was that in Hiram Powers' Greek slave which 
 touched her deeper than her mere artistic sympathies. Gazing at this 
 statue, her thoughts flew from Greece to the native land of the artist, 
 and the marble chains on those fair marble hands seemed to be a reproach 
 on the artist's countrymen. She felt that Mr. Powers had given her his 
 best, and had also given her an opportunity to do a little preaching, and 
 so she gave him her best in the shape of the following sonnet — a sonnet 
 which no poet but Mrs. Browning could have written: — 
 
POWERS AND ORE EN OUC II. 
 
 47 
 
 "They say Ideal beauty cannot enter 
 The house of anguish. On the threshold stands 
 An alien Image, with cnshacklcd hands, 
 Called the Greek Slave! as if the artist meant her 
 (That passionless perfection which he lent her, 
 Shadowed, not darkened, where the sill expands) 
 To so confront man's crimes, in different lands, 
 With man's ideal sense. Pierce to the centre, 
 Art's fiery-finger ! — and break up ere long 
 The serfdom of this world! appeal, fair stone, 
 From God's pure heights of beauty against man's wrong! 
 Catch up in thy divine face, not alone 
 East griefs, but West, — and strike and shame the strong, 
 By thunders of white silence overthrown." 
 
 The strong genius of Mrs. Browning was in one of its greatly grotesque 
 moods when she wrote that. "Thunders of white silence " — what a figure! 
 It ought to have been worth more to the heart and brain of Powers than 
 all of the applause of the populace, or than all of the gold which his 
 statue brought him. 
 
 The Greek Slave was Powers' first ideal work, or at least the first 
 with which he was willing to make an appeal for recognition to the public. 
 Whether the fame which it won for him cramped his genius instead of 
 expanding it, it is impossible to say, but it is certain that he never 
 surpassed, and never equalled it by any subsequent performance. His 
 California, his Fisher Boy, his Eve Disconsolate, and his Last of the Tribe 
 are all works of considerable excellence, but they are all inferior to the 
 Greek Slave in that nameless something which raises a work of art far 
 above the level of the commonplace. The Greek Slave was sculptured 
 nearly half a century ago, and it now more than justifies its original 
 reputation, when placed in comparison with the many ideal statues that 
 
4 8 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 have been made by men who have risen to fame since Powers startled 
 Europe and America with this masterpiece. Not long ago we saw the 
 replica of this statue which was purchased many years ago by Mr. 
 W. W. Corcoran, and which is now in the Corcoran Art Gallery in 
 Washington, and early impressions of it were fully confirmed. There 
 was, it is true, feeble modelling in parts, indicative of crude and 
 imperfect training, and of a lack of knowledge on the artist's part of some 
 of the refinement of the human form; but after all deductions were 
 made, the purity, expressiveness, and truly ideal grace of the statue 
 remained to testify that the one-time enthusiastic admiration of Europe 
 and America was not misapplied or wasted on a mere piece of artistic 
 trumpery. 
 
 It has been claimed for Powers by some of the least judicious of 
 his admirers, that, when he went to Italy, his ideas were fixed, and too 
 firmly fixed, for him to be influenced in any material degree by the great 
 works of the classic and renaissance periods which he found there, and 
 which, for the first time, he was afforded an opportunity of studying. It 
 has also been claimed that in nature, rather than in classic art, did he 
 obtain the inspiration for his ideal statues. These claims are distinctly 
 unfounded, and they have certainly been made on the strength of the 
 artist's pretensions, rather than on the strength of a critical study of his 
 performances. Powers was quite in the habit of speaking in a very dogmatic 
 way concerning himself, his work and his theories, and as he undoubtedly 
 believed all that he said, it is not to be wondered at, perhaps, that he 
 should have persuaded others to coincide with him in his beliefs. Powers, 
 however, when he went to Italy had absolutely no art training worth 
 speaking of — for the wax-works and the few busts which he modelled before 
 crossing the ocean, can scarcely be considered as having initiated him into 
 the mysteries of the alphabet of his art. He was profoundly ignorant of 
 
POWERS AND ( / A' E EN O U G H . 
 
 49 
 
 the human figure as a whole at the outset of his artistic career, and although 
 he used living models in his studio, he certainly gained most of his 
 knowledge of the figure from a study of the antiques. It was most creditable 
 to him, that, with his very imperfect training, he was able to accomplish 
 what he did, and to claim for him more than he was entitled to, is to 
 injure, rather than to advance his fame. His full length figures are lacking 
 in just those very qualities that would certainly mark them, had the artist 
 been a close, careful and thorough student of nature, while they are marked 
 by the very qualities that will always be found in the works of a man of 
 real talent who bases his study on the antique. When the Greek Slave 
 was first exhibited there were, of course, plenty of disparagements uttered 
 against it. The most important of these — or what would have been the 
 most important, had there been any truth in it — was that it was a mere 
 imitation of the Venus de Medicis. Except in the matter of the position 
 of one of the hands of the Greek Slave, there was no foundation whatever 
 for this accusation ; and when we call to mind that the arms of the Venus 
 de Medicis are modern restorations, and are so palpably inferior to the 
 antique portions of the statue that no artist of judgment and taste would 
 think of copying them, the accusation is reduced to an absurdity. Not 
 only are the motives of the two statues totally different, but, except that 
 they both represent young and beautiful women, and that they are both 
 idealizations of the female form, they have no essential points of resemblance. 
 It is nevertheless true that the Greek Slave is an idealization in the classic 
 rather than in the renaissance or modern sense. For its exemplars we 
 must look to the remains of Greek art, and not to nature or the performances 
 of artists of the modern school, of which Michael Angelo was the father. 
 While this statue, however, is undoubtedly an attempt in the classic style 
 — whether Powers intended it to be so or not — it is exceedingly interesting 
 to note that the head is unmistakably American in its type. Consciously 
 or unconsciously Powers refused to go to either ancient or modern Greece 
 
5 3 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 for the head of his ideal Greek Slave, but ehose a type with which he 
 was much more abundantly familiar. 
 
 The production of The Greek Slave marked the turning-point of 
 Powers' fortunes. That statue brought him not only fame, but, what was 
 of quite as much importance to a struggling artist in a foreign land, 
 pecuniary independence, if not wealth. Orders poured in upon him, and 
 in a comparatively short space of time he was able to charge his own 
 prices, and to decline work for which he had no inclination. It became 
 the fashion with wealthy Europeans and Americans to have their busts 
 done by Powers, and the number of works of this class which were turned 
 out from his studio must have been enormous. It is undoubtedly upon 
 his busts that his fame as a sculptor will chiefly rest. As has been before 
 stated, he never surpassed nor equalled the Greek Slave in any ideal figure 
 — full-length figure, we mean, for his bust of Proserpine is a very charming 
 work, which is quite up to the standard of the Greek Slave — but some 
 of his portrait busts are masterly, and have probably been surpassed by 
 few similar performances of later American sculptors. 
 
 In referring to Powers as the first American sculptor who was successful 
 in gaining a European reputation, it would be unjust to the memory and 
 fame of a man to whom he undoubtedly owed much, and who was an 
 artist of broader views, more liberal culture, and finer genius, to leave 
 the impression on the mind of the reader that he ought to be considered 
 as the father of the American school of sculpture. To Horatio Greenough, 
 who had been residing for some time in Italy when Powers went there, 
 Powers was indebted for a great deal more than the mere sympathies, 
 advice and social courtesies, which one American artist of high attainment, 
 and a large-heartedness of disposition that harbored no thought of any 
 but the most honourable rivalry, would naturally extend to a fellow- 
 
POWERS AND G RE EN O U GH. 
 
 5 1 
 
 countryman on meeting him in a strange land. Greenough, when Powers 
 made his acquaintance, if he did not have the thorough training as an 
 artist which it is considered indispensable that an artist in our day should 
 have, at least did have some training — and that very good of its kind — 
 while Powers, beyond a moderate amount of skill in manipulating clay 
 and wax, had absolutely none at all that was of any real value to him. 
 There can be no doubt that Greenough's assistance in directing his studies, 
 and in correcting his work, was of the greatest value to Powers, and 
 that the kindly interest which Greenough took in him and his affairs had 
 a most potent influence in shaping his future career, and in promoting 
 his pecuniary as well as his financial success. Greenough, if less fortunate 
 than Powers in achieving a European reputation at a time when a 
 European reputation was particularly well worth having, was more fortunate 
 than he in obtaining from the United States government two very important 
 commissions. He was especially fortunate in this, for, while most of 
 Powers' works are hidden from the public in private collections, and are 
 only known through the medium of engravings and photographs, 
 Greenough's master-pieces belong to the nation, and are so placed that 
 it is possible for every one to study and enjoy them. These two works 
 are the statue of Washington, in the open space facing the east front 
 of the National Capitol, and the imposing group entitled The Rescue 
 which is one of the adornments of the east front of that noble building. 
 
 The fame of these two exceedingly fine performances is increasing 
 with the increase of artistic culture in the United States, but it is a fact, 
 that they never have as yet been appreciated in accordance with their great 
 deserts by the mass of the artist's countrymen. For many years, indeed, 
 the Washington was an object of ridicule by the ignorant and unthinking, 
 who were incapable of understanding the poetical aim of the artist, and 
 we presume that the people who undertake to show strangers the " sights " 
 
52 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 of the city of Washington are still, as they were many years ago, in the 
 habit of cracking a very ancient and a very poor joke about the Father 
 of his Country playing ball with the Columbus of Persico's group of 
 Columbus balancing the World, which is at the head of the steps, on the 
 south side, leading up to the eastern main entrance of the Capitol — 
 Greenough's group of The Rescue being on the north side. Despite the 
 ridicule that has been abundantly heaped upon it, and despite the jestings 
 of small wits with regard to it, Greenough's Washington is the grandest 
 and greatest piece of sculpture that has been executed by an American 
 artist — -just as the group of The Rescue is grander and greater than any- 
 thing in its particular way that has come from the hand of any American. 
 When we say of a modern statue that it is a great work of art, we necessarily 
 put it in comparison with the world's masterpieces, and tried by this severe 
 test, it may be that Greenough's Washington cannot with propriety be 
 called great. Compared with the best that Greenough's contemporaries and 
 successors have been able to do, it assuredly is great in all that goes to 
 the making up of the illustration in marble of an ideal and poetical theme. 
 In this statue the artist has attempted something more than a portrait, 
 or even an ideal portrait, of Washington. He has sought to represent 
 Washington in the character of the Father of his Country, as the guardian 
 genius of the nation which he founded ; and if we can bring ourselves to 
 view the statue from his stand-point, it will be found to have infinitely 
 more meaning than Crawford's Liberty, which surmounts the towering 
 dome of the Capitol, or any of the thousand and one attempts that are 
 being made day after day and year after year to embody abstract ideas 
 in bronze or marble. 
 
 That Greenough's Washington has not made a more profound impres- 
 sion on all classes of Americans — uncultivated as well as cultivated — is 
 due in a great measure, we think, to the most unfortunate position in 
 
POWERS AND GREENOUGH. 
 
 53 
 
 which it is placed. Grcenough intended the statue to stand in the rotunda 
 of the Capitol, just under the centre of the dome, and as that is so obviously 
 the right place for it, it is marvellous it was ever put where it is, or 
 that it has been permitted to remain where it is for so many years without 
 any attempt whatever having been made to give it a housing in its proper 
 shrine. When the artist heard that it had been dumped — dumped is the 
 only right word in such a connection — into the shabby little park to the 
 east of the Capitol, he was horrified and grieved beyond measure. He 
 declared that it would be impossible for the figure to produce the effect 
 he desired and intended in such a location, or in any open air location; 
 that in a few years, through the influence of frosts and heat, rain and 
 sunshine, the marble would in all probability be injured beyond repair; 
 and that, had he proposed to sculpture an open air figure, he would 
 certainly have represented Washington on horseback, and in his uniform, 
 as the generalissimo of the Continental armies — that is, he would have 
 represented him as a reality rather than as an Ideality. What Greenough 
 had to say about the unfortunate placing of the noble work upon which 
 he expended so much thought and labour is particularly worthy of attention, 
 as it abundantly proves that, in making this statue what it is, he worked 
 with the intelligence of a true and really cultivated artist, and that he was 
 not carried away and induced to perpetrate an artistic absurdity by any 
 pseudo-classical notions or theories. 
 
 A mere glance at this statue makes it evident that the artist had in 
 his mind the descriptions that have come down to us of the famous 
 chryselephantine statue of Jupiter by Phidias, which was undoubtedly the 
 greatest piece of sculpture ever executed. The pose and the arrangement 
 of the draperies are almost, if not quite the same, and even the details 
 of the ornamentation of the chair suggest the accessories of the crowning 
 effort of the sculptor's art. Had the statue of Phidias, or even an 
 
54 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 authentic figurement of it, been in existence Greenough probably would 
 have hesitated about attempting an imitation of it in his Washington. 
 Having, however, nothing but the descriptions he probably thought himself 
 justified in at least borrowing a suggestion from Phidias for a work totally 
 different in idea and aim from that of the Athenian sculptor — for the 
 Washington of Greenough is not a Jupiter, nor was it intended to be, 
 but it is an idealization of the real Washington with a view of representing 
 him as the guardian genius of his country. It was a bold attempt this, 
 to even suggest an intention of imitating the Olympian Jupiter, but the 
 boldness of the artist had its ample justification in the admirable result 
 which he achieved. The Washington of the Capitol, if it is, as it should 
 be, viewed as an ideal work, is satisfying — how much more than that can 
 be said of any but a very few of the artistic masterpieces which the world 
 contains at the present time ? 
 
 Greenough has represented Washington as seated in an arm chair, 
 severe in its outline, but richly ornate in its details. The figure is nude 
 to the waist, but the lower limbs are clothed in a drapery which falls in 
 ample yet graceful folds. The left hand rests on the lap and holds a 
 sheathed sword of antique pattern; the right hand is raised and points to 
 heaven. The countenance is full of dignity and benignity. It has all, 
 and more of that nobility and grandeur which are revealed to us in the 
 best portraits of Washington, — and there is both nobility and grandeur in 
 them. The torso, which is modelled with remarkable boldness, united 
 with refinement, is fit to be that of a Jupiter, or better still, of the idealized 
 representation of a great nation's greatest hero, a true father of his country. 
 Greenough said that he intended to symbolize by the peculiar attitude of 
 the figure, the resignation by Washington of his commission, and his 
 recommendation of his countrymen to the care and guidance of God. 
 This explanation is as good as any, but in this as in every truly ideal 
 
POWERS AND GREENOUGH. 
 
 55 
 
 work of art, there is much more suggested than the artist was willing, 
 or perhaps able, to put into words concerning it. The chair in which 
 the figure is seated is beautifully and most appropriately ornamented, 
 although not in such a manner as to attract the eye in preference to 
 the statue itself. The chair, as an essential but subordinate part of the 
 composition, has been kept in strict subordination to the main incident, 
 and nowhere more than in the management of it, in all its details, have 
 the refined taste and true artistic skill of the sculpture shown themselves 
 to better advantage, or in a manner more instructive to those who desire 
 to study the masterpieces of art with a view to something beyond the 
 mere transient delight of the eye. The. back of the chair is of open 
 work, very rich but very chaste in its antique suggestiveness. One end 
 of the back is supported by a small figure of Columbus intently gazing 
 at a globe which he holds in one of his hands; the other end is supported by 
 the figure of an Indian chief. Both of these statuettes are exquisitely carved, 
 as are the bas-reliefs on the sides of the chair, one of which represents the 
 infant Hercules strangling the serpent, and the other Apollo guiding the 
 chariot of the Sun. The whole is cut from a single block of the finest 
 marble that the famous quarries of Carrara were able to afford to the 
 sculptor, and the composition in all its parts is finished with a refinement 
 of skill that does not admit of fault-finding. Greenough fully appreciated 
 the great honor done him when the commission for this statue was given, 
 and he determined that through no lack of effort on his part should it 
 be less than a masterpiece. 
 
 A masterpiece it assuredly is, and it is a thousand pities that it has 
 not long ere this been taken in from the exposed and most unsuitable 
 location where some blundering official dumped it, and put where it was 
 originally intended to go, in the centre of the rotunda. What the artist 
 feared with regard to the effects of the weather has already been to some 
 
56 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 extent realized. The statue has been damaged, but, as yet not irreparably, 
 but it undoubtedly will be damaged beyond repair before many years go 
 by if it is permitted to remain unhoused. As this is by all odds the 
 finest work of art that the government possesses, and, as the entire nation 
 has an interest not only in its preservation, but in having the intentions 
 of the artist with regard to it carried out, it is much to be hoped that 
 a very serious effort will be made, and made soon, to persuade the proper 
 authorities to take it into the Capitol building, and to give peace to 
 Greenough's ghost by standing it where it belongs, under one of the 
 most magnificent domes that has ever been constructed. 
 
 The group to which the artist has given the name of The Rescue, 
 and by which he intended to symbolize the forces of civilization conquering 
 the savage, calls for fewer words of comment than do the Washington. 
 This was the first large group of statuary executed by an American, and 
 so fine a one has not been executed since by any American. The figures 
 are four in number, an Indian, a brawny hunter, and a mother and her 
 babe. The Indian, who is nude to the waist, is grasped from behind by 
 the white man, who stays his uplifted tomahawk. He is struggling, but 
 struggling in vain, and the issues of the conflict are not doubtful. Behind 
 the hunter — or rather at one side — crouches the woman with the 
 little child in her arms. The composition entirely fulfills some of the 
 most essential conditions of a good statuary group; it tells its story 
 distinctly, and it composes well from whatever point of view it may be 
 surveyed. 
 
 Greenough sculptured a large number of portrait busts, ideal busts 
 of Christ and Abel, and, in addition to those already mentioned, several 
 statues marked by high ideal qualities — the most important of these are a 
 Venus Victrix, an Angel Abdiel, and a Medora. 
 
POWERS AND GREENOUGH. 
 
 57 
 
 Greenough and Powers were very nearly of an age; both were born 
 in 1805 — Powers in July and Greenough in September. Their early 
 circumstances, and their opportunities for qualifying themselves for the 
 adequate performance of artistic work, were very different. Greenough was 
 the son of a wealthy merchant of Boston and he received the best education 
 that the times afforded. His associates were cultivated people, and his 
 whole early training was of a kind to develop his artistic instincts and 
 faculties. He entered as a student at Harvard when only sixteen years 
 old, and although he did not graduate, he remained in the college long 
 enough to go out into the world benefitted by the best instruction it was 
 able to bestow. Greenough at a very early age showed a strong artistic 
 bent, and he was encouraged to cultivate his talents by the sympathetic 
 advice of Washington Allston. It was probably through Allston's recom- 
 mendation that he decided to go to Rome before he had completed his 
 college course. When he arrived in Rome, he found Thorwaldsen at the 
 head of the school of sculpture there. Under the direction of the venerable 
 Dane he studied hard — too hard for his health, for he was finally compelled 
 to stop work and return home to recruit. He remained in the United 
 States for several months, and during the time modelled busts of John 
 Quincy Adams, Chief Justice Marshall, and other personages of more 
 or less prominence, which gave him an excellent standing as an artist 
 with the American public. On his return to Europe he first went to Paris, 
 where he made a bust of Lafayette, which the subject of it and his friends 
 pronounced the best portrait of him that had ever been executed. A 
 replica of this bust is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the 
 Fine Arts. This work completed, Greenough returned to Italy, where he 
 resided until 1851, when he came to the United States for the purpose 
 of superintending the erection of his group of The Rescue. It is sad to 
 think that the last days of this excellent artist and most estimable man 
 were clouded by mental disease. He died at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1852. 
 
58 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Powers was a self-made man. He had none of the advantages which 
 Greenough enjoyed, and was compelled from the first to make his own 
 way. His artistic studies were prosecuted under the most disadvantageous 
 circumstances, and the matter for wonder is, not that he did so much 
 work of an exceedingly meritorious character, but that he did any that 
 was capable of giving him a genuine reputation as an artist. He was 
 born in Woodstock, Vermont, but when he was about eleven years of 
 age his parents removed to Cincinnati, and in that place he resided until 
 1835, when, with the assistance of Mr. Longworth, who took a very lively 
 interest in him, he went to Washington with the rather indefinite idea in 
 his head that he would there find facilities for artistic training that 
 Cincinnati lacked. When a mere boy, Powers showed an extraordinary 
 inventive and mechanical genius, and during his residence in Cincinnati 
 he brought this into play to earn an honest penny wherever there was 
 one to be earned. One of his most constant employers was a Frenchman 
 named Dorfeuille, who managed a sort of museum. For him Powers 
 modelled a group of wax-figures, which was greatly admired by the not 
 very critical visitors to the museum, and made a great number of ingenious 
 mechanical contrivances. The most important of these was a spectacular 
 affair representative of the Infernal Regions — or at least what Powers 
 imagined them to be. In this there was an abundance of demons, 
 skeletons, ghosts, and so forth, which moved about with the assistance 
 of wires and springs, and which it is to be hoped exercised a salutary 
 influence on the beholders. Powers had been about two years in the 
 employ of the museum manager, when he, for the first time, saw a marble 
 bust. It was a portrait of Washington by Canova, and as the artist of 
 the Infernal Regions and the wax-work group insisted very strenuously that 
 he could do that sort of thing, and was very anxious for a fair opportunity 
 to try his hand, his good friend Mr. Longworth gave him the means to 
 go to Washington. On his arrival at Washington he speedily found that 
 
POWERS AND GREEN OUGH. 
 
 59 
 
 the facilities for obtaining an art education were not much greater there 
 than they were in Cincinnati. He, however, managed to support himself 
 for a couple of years by doing whatever he could get pay for, and was 
 so successful with portrait busts of John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van 
 Buren, Webster, Calhoun, Colonel Preston, and other public men, that 
 his friends were induced to make an effort to send him to Europe. Mr. 
 Longworth now again came to his assistance, and it was mainly due to 
 that gentleman and to Colonel Preston that Powers was enabled to take 
 up his residence in Italy, and thus put himself in the way of becoming 
 a genuine artist. Powers is described as having been at this period, a 
 tall, thin, and decidedly "slab-sided" individual — awkward and uncouth 
 enough in his appearance, but with a wonderfully bright and intelligent 
 eye, and with an exceedingly energetic and "knowing' - air about him. 
 On his arrival in Italy he found Greenough already established there, and 
 he was most fortunate in securing him for a friend. It was in 1837 that 
 Powers took up his residence in Florence, and he made that city his 
 home during the balance of his life. He had not been a great while in 
 Florence before he began to gain an excellent reputation for his portrait 
 busts. He supported himself by the execution of works of this kind, and 
 employed his leisure in the modelling of his Greek Slave. With the 
 brilliant success of that statue his fortunes were secured. 
 
 Powers never lost his strong mechanical bent, and he was the inventor 
 of a great number of tools and instruments for facilitating the sculptor's 
 work. One of these was a perforated file, which permitted the marble 
 dust to fall through the back of the tool instead of clogging its face. 
 It was his habit, especially during the last years of his life, to model 
 directly in plaster instead of in clay, as is the usual custom with sculptors. 
 His method of working has some advantages, but they are probably more 
 than overbalanced by the disadvantages — not the least of which is that 
 
6o 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 it is difficult, if not impossible, after a piece of work has been laid out to 
 make the slight, but often very important, changes in the pose of a head 
 or figure which represent all the difference between grace and awkward- 
 ness. An artist's work is necessarily, to a very large extent, experimental, 
 and no matter how thoroughly a subject may be digested in the mind, or 
 how ample the preparations may be, only when it is tolerably well advanced 
 is it possible to decide exactly what it shall be in all its details. This is 
 particularly the case with a piece of sculpture, and the sculptor who deprives 
 himself of the facilities for making changes which the soft clay affords, 
 places himself at a very great disadvantage. That Powers' method of 
 modelling in plaster is not the best is proven by the fact that it has not 
 been adopted by sculptors generally. Powers, however, was an obstinate 
 and an opinionated man, and having satisfied himself that his notions and 
 ways of doing things were the best he did not permit himself to remain 
 open to argument. One of his notions was that the government owed it 
 to him to give him an important commission. He was invited to compete 
 for some of the statuary work of the Capitol, but this invitation he resented 
 as an insult. That he did not get an important commission was perhaps 
 fortunate both for himself and for the government. Excellent as many 
 of his performances were, there was nothing in the best of them to indicate 
 that he was capable of doing full justice to such themes as he would have 
 been compelled to treat had he undertaken to contribute to the adornments 
 of the National Capitol. 
 
KYBIA TIE BMHD &IKIL OF FOMFEIIo 
 
/ 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 CRAWFORD AND ROGERS 
 
 T would be impossible to bestow higher praise on any work 
 of art than that which Michael Angelo bestowed upon the 
 ■ second pair of bronze doors which Ghiberti made for the 
 baptistery of the Church of San Giovanni in Florence. He 
 said that they were worthy to be the gates of Paradise, and he proved 
 the sincerity of his admiration by imitating some of their details in his 
 own still mightier works. The figure of Adam, in the painting by Michael 
 Angelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel representing the creation of 
 our first parent, — a figure which is justly regarded as one of his most 
 masterly representations of the human form — is identical in all essentials 
 with a similar figure in one of the panels of Ghiberti's doors. In those 
 days it was necessary for an artist to be a thorough workman as well as 
 an inventor. The problem Ghiberti had before him, when he competed 
 for the execution of these doors, was not so much the production of designs 
 superior to any that had been made before, or than those who engaged 
 with him in the competition w r ere capable of, as it was the making of a 
 perfect piece of bronze casting. In the first pair of doors, w r hich illustrated 
 scenes in New Testament history, he was obliged by the terms of his 
 contract to follow the general characteristics of a pair made by Andrea 
 
 61 
 
62 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Pisano from designs furnished by Giotto. Ghiberti's composition, and the 
 workmanship on it, were so far superior to his model, that the contract 
 for another pair of doors, to be embellished with Old Testament scenes 
 and subjects, was awarded to him without competition, and it was not 
 only permitted, but desired, that he should rely upon his own genius for 
 the invention and execution of the work in all its details. Being left 
 entirely unfettered, the artist surpassed himself as he had previously sur- 
 passed others, and he succeeded in producing a masterpiece, the influence 
 of which upon the revival of the art of sculpture was immediate, important 
 and far-reaching. Herman Grimm says that this pair of doors "is the first 
 important creation of Florentine art," which is as much as to say that it 
 carried the renaissance beyond its mere tentative stages, and made possible 
 the great modern works which rivalled, and, in not a few particulars, 
 surpassed the performances of the greatest of the ancients. A cast, in 
 plaster, from these doors has been for many years in the collection of the 
 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and it has justly been regarded 
 as one of the most valued of the treasures of that institution. 
 
 It was upon Ghiberti's design that Thomas Crawford and Randolph 
 Rogers based their designs for the two sets of bronze doors at the National 
 Capitol at Washington. These doors are not the less admirable for being 
 in a certain sense imitations of an older work; on the contrary the chances 
 are that a greater measure of success has been achieved by the frank 
 acceptance of an acknowledged masterpiece as a model than would have 
 been had the artist decided to attempt the execution of entire novelties. 
 It is a characteristic of all the arts that certain types become fixed, and 
 it is only men of the widest and most original genius who are able to 
 break away from them and to give the world something new, which in 
 its turn becomes a fixed type. Indeed, men of the highest genius — such 
 men as only appear occasionally in the course of centuries — very much 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 63 
 
 oftener produce what are in reality only modifications of fixed types than 
 they do what can properly be regarded as absolutely new creatures. liven 
 so great and original an artist as Michael Angelo was content to adopt 
 and improve upon the conceptions of his predecessors, and we find the 
 prototypes of some of his most characteristic works in the figures on 
 Ghiberti's doors, just as we find the prototypes of some of the most 
 imposing features of Dante's Divine Comedy in numerous works dating 
 from Homer's time to his own, or the prototypes of many of the most 
 impressive features of Shakespeare's plays in Homer, in Boccaccio and 
 the other Italian novelists, and in the dramatists who were his immediate 
 predecessors and contemporaries. 
 
 The bronze doors modelled by Crawford are hung at the eastern 
 entrance of the north, or Senate wing of the Capitol. Those modelled 
 by Rogers are at the eastern entrance of the central building, and open 
 into the rotunda. Both are most advantageously placed, more so in fact 
 than many of the sculptures and paintings which are supposed to decorate 
 the Capitol. It cannot be denied, however, that some of the so-called works 
 of art in this building are well hidden away in dark corners, for they do 
 credit neither to those who executed nor to the government which ordered 
 them. It is putting it mildly to say that the money expended on them was 
 wasted. The American people will probably some time awaken to an 
 appreciation of the fact that they possess in their National Capitol a 
 magnificent architectural pile, which, in many of the essentials of true 
 grandeur is not equalled nor surpassed by any building in the world, 
 and will demand that the genuine works of art that have been executed 
 for its adornment shall be properly placed and properly cared for, and 
 that Congress shall cease giving commissions to artistic charlatans for 
 the disfigurement of its walls and niches. So utterly meretricious are 
 many of the paintings and statues at the Capitol, and so utterly reckless 
 
6 4 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 has Congress been, especially of late years, in giving very important 
 commissions to persons whom it would be a stretch of courtesy to call 
 artists, that it is matter for sincere congratulation that it fell to such 
 competent sculptors as Greenough, Crawford and Rogers to design many 
 of the most important of the artistic adornments of the building. The 
 bronze doors of Crawford and Rogers may not be beyond criticism, and 
 the statues by Crawford which fill the pediment of the north wing may 
 fall far short of being all that a pediment group ought to be, but it will 
 be fortunate if the doors which are yet to be made, and if the group 
 for the south wing are at all up to their standard of excellence. The' 
 statues of the Italian Persico, and the queer bas-reliefs in the rotunda, we 
 do not wonder at, even if we fail to admire them. When they were 
 executed there were no American artists — and especially no American 
 sculptors — capable of undertaking such works, and there was besides little 
 artistic knowledge and little artistic taste, even among the most cultivated 
 men of the day. The worst of these things, however, is respectable, and 
 even worthy of admiration in comparison with the hideous fresco which 
 disfigures the ceiling of the dome, not to mention other of the abomina- 
 tions, — nearly all of which are contemporary — which greet the eyes of the 
 visitor at every turn, as he 'strolls through the building. For these things 
 there is absolutely no excuse; the large sums of money that have been 
 expended upon them have been worse than wasted; and it is discreditable, 
 not only to Congress, but to the American people, that they should exist 
 and that there is a strong probability of many more of the same kind 
 being perpetrated, until the Capitol becomes a veritable house of horrors. 
 
 Crawford was an artist gifted with a prolific invention — indeed, his 
 invention too often ran away with his judgment as a careful workman; 
 that is, it induced him to undertake more than it was possible for him 
 to execute in the best manner — and his artistic education was much more 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 65 
 
 complete than that of any previous American sculptor had been. He, 
 however, attempted too much, and did too much, for the work to be 
 thoroughly well done. Many artists, it is true, have attempted more and 
 executed more, but it has been with the assistance of large numbers of 
 men whose attainments were of a very high order, and who had as just 
 a claim to be regarded as artists as the masters under whose directions 
 they worked, and whose conceptions they aided in carrying out. Crawford 
 had no assistance except that of the bronze founders and some Italian 
 marble cutters, who, however skillful they might have been within the 
 limitations of their powers were merely workmen, and w r ere not in any 
 proper sense of the word, artists. Ghiberti was forty years in making the 
 two pairs of bronze doors for the baptistery at Florence, and in the making 
 of them he had, not only the help, first of his father and then of his 
 brother, but that of a considerable number of skilled modellers and metal 
 workers. Nearly the whole of his artistic lifetime was spent in the execution 
 of this one task, while Crawford's pair of doors, which are as elaborate in 
 their general design as those of Ghiberti, constitute but a single item in 
 a long list of sculptures designed for the United States Government, to 
 say nothing of his many other performances. The mere making of the 
 designs, however, important a part as it was, was not the major part of 
 Ghiberti's task. Fine and truly original as the designs are, the astonishing 
 thing about these doors is the exquisite finish of every detail, to the very 
 minutest. They are jewels on an immense scale, and it is the workmanship 
 quite as much as the designs that give them their value. Crawford's task 
 was practically at an end when his models were completed and cast in 
 plaster ; the doors themselves were cast and finished at the bronze foundry. 
 The modern artist too had his general design ready made for him, at least 
 to all intents, but this was all the more reason why the details, which 
 were his own inventions, should have in some measure approached the 
 rare excellence of the work which he took for his model. Of the baptistery 
 
66 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 doors it is told, not only that Michael Angelo copied from them his figure 
 of Adam and his composition of Noah and his Sons on the ceiling of the 
 Sistine Chapel, but that they suggested a variety of new motives, both to 
 sculptors and painters, as, for instance, the lifting of the shoulder by the 
 weight of the body being pressed upon one arm. Rich and really beautiful 
 as Crawford's work certainly is, we look to it in vain either for suggestive 
 details of this kind or for the jewel-like finish of the doors made by 
 Ghiberti. 
 
 In calling attention to the comparative shortcomings of the bronze 
 doors of the Capitol, there is no disposition to judge harshly the works 
 of the artists — for what has been said concerning the pair of doors designed 
 by Crawford, will apply with equal or greater force to the pair designed 
 by Rogers — but, is it not worth considering whether the reason why these 
 and so many other modern artistic performances of quite genuine merit, 
 in certain respects, fail to impress in an adequate manner, not merely 
 the masses, but cultivated beholders, is that they are lacking at once in 
 thoroughly refined workmanship, and in other and equally essential matters? 
 There is this, however, to be said in behalf of the modern artists — they 
 were limited both in time and money, while Ghiberti, especially for his 
 masterpiece, was given an absolute carte blanche. The Italian, too, was 
 sustained and stimulated by a popular interest in his work and by an 
 assurance of hearty popular applause, while the Americans had only a 
 few cultivated people among their countrymen to take any interest what- 
 ever in what they were doing. 
 
 The pair of doors designed by Crawford represents the civic and 
 military careers of Washington — the scenes in the panels of one wing 
 being important incidents of the period when he fought to give his country 
 liberty, and those in the other being records of his services as a statesman 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 67 
 
 in aiding to establish those liberties on a firm basis of constitutional law. 
 The composition is exceedingly rich, and, as its location, at the entrance 
 to the Senate wing is admirable in every way, the effect upon one 
 ascending the steps for the purpose of entering the building is most 
 impressive. This pair of doors was the last work executed by Crawford. 
 He put a great deal of labor on it, and regarded it as his masterpiece, 
 but unfortunately did not live to see it completed in bronze. The pair 
 of doors designed by Rogers at the main entrance is even more 
 advantageously located. In general design the two compositions are in 
 accord, but Rogers in his has represented scenes in the life of Columbus, 
 and has introduced a number of portraits of the great navigator and his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 The invitation to compete for the execution of the sculptures of the 
 Capitol which Powers professed to regard as an insult, was willingly and 
 unhesitatingly accepted by Crawford, who was inspired by an honorable 
 ambition to have his name handed down to posterity in connection with 
 great works of truly national importance. He found a warm advocate 
 in Senator Sumner, who had been one of his earliest patrons, and the 
 commission which he was successful in obtaining was the most extensive 
 and important ever given by the government to any artist. The selection 
 of Crawford to make the group for the north pediment, the colossal statue 
 for the dome, and the bronze doors for the north entrance was fortunate, 
 for it is exceedingly doubtful whether any other American artist of the 
 day — excellent as some of them might have been — could have executed 
 the work in such a satisfactory manner as he did — for Crawford's work 
 undoubtedly is satisfactory, even if it fails in some particulars to realize 
 the ideal of what such work should be. 
 
 The best of all the statues executed by this artist for the Capitol are 
 
68 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 the huge Liberty which surmounts the dome, and the Indian Chief mourning 
 over the decay of his race, which fills the north angle of the north pedi- 
 ment. This last is an exceedingly original and an exceedingly impressive 
 figure. The Indian is seated and his bent head is resting on his right 
 hand, while the left hand, resting on his knee, is clenched with a most 
 expressive gesture of a despair which sees absolutely no outlook for the 
 future. The admiration which this fine statue excited, especially among 
 the artist's professional brethren, was most cordial, and the English sculptor 
 Gibson, after Crawford's death, was very anxious that a replica in bronze 
 should be made for the purpose of being placed upon his tomb. The 
 other figures in the pediment group, representing the mechanic, the mer- 
 chant, the school-master, a couple of school-boys, a settler felling a tree, 
 and so forth — the whole being intended to typify the advance of civilization 
 — are some of them executed with great spirit. The radical defect of 
 these sculptures is, however, that they do not compose. The artist had a 
 subject — although it must be confessed that it was not a particularly 
 inspiring one — but he failed utterly to appreciate the importance and even 
 necessity of treating it as a whole. The group, considered as a group, 
 has no unity of design; it is nothing more than a collection of individual 
 figures, which the spectator is at liberty, if he chooses, to imagine as having 
 a relation to each other, but which in reality have no real and no true 
 artistic connection. The failure of Crawford to make a genuine group in 
 this instance is the more to be regretted, as his work for the most part 
 is up to a high standard of excellence. 
 
 The colossal Liberty, which so admirably and appropriately finishes 
 the imposing and graceful dome of the Capitol, is, or ought to be, familiar 
 to all good Americans through the medium of the finely executed 
 engraving of it on the five dollar legal tender notes of the government. 
 This figure has been severely criticised in detail, and as a whole, but we 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 69 
 
 have always regarded it as a peculiarly successful performance. It is an 
 attempt at the personification of an abstract idea, and it perhaps does 
 not succeed any better in conveying such idea to the mind than do 
 many other attempts of a similar character that have been made by better 
 and wors.e artists than Crawford. It is only a very few of the greatest 
 men who really do succeed at this sort of thing, and Crawford's Liberty, 
 we think, ought to be judged as a portion of the architecture of which 
 it is the crown, rather than as the embodiment of an abstraction. It 
 certainly does express an idea in a reasonably acceptable manner in 
 accordance with certain conventions, but its real merits are not so much 
 in its fitness to stand as the ideal Liberty, armed and watchful, as they 
 are in things more absolutely technical. There is a genuine dignity and 
 a genuine nobility about the figure, and the boldness with which the 
 artist has departed from strictly classical precedents in the management 
 of his draperies, and especially in the treatment of the head-dress, 
 add to rather than detract from the impressiveness of the work. If as 
 an allegory, it is not more successful than many other sculpturesque 
 allegories, at least as a symbolical statue which fulfils certain accepted 
 conventions it is one of the most successful works of its particular class 
 of modern times. This statue undoubtedly would have a far higher value 
 did it mean more than it does, for the popular imagination does not 
 readily find itself in accord with conventional artistic symbolism — and in 
 that the popular imagination is not so much at fault as many artists and 
 their apologists represent it as being. The first essential, however, of a 
 work of sculpture, designed as this one was, to crown a lofty and imposing 
 pile of architecture, is that it shall obviously be intended to mean something, 
 and something in keeping with its accessories; and the second is that its 
 pose, its masses and its outlines shall refresh and satisfy the eye. One 
 of the finest, if not the very finest, works of the class to which Crawford's 
 Liberty belongs, which has been designed in our time, is Bartholdi's Liberty 
 
7o 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Lighting- the World, which it is proposed to erect on Bedloe's Island in 
 New York harbor. In this the French sculptor has succeeded better than 
 the American one did in expressing an idea, but even admitting the 
 superiority in significance and in classic grace and classic severity of 
 treatment in Bartholdi's figure, are there not a richness and a variety in 
 the outlines of Crawford's statue as it defines itself against the sky, that 
 we would not be willing to lose, even for a more purely classic grace and 
 severity? One of the most striking and most admirable features of Craw- 
 ford's Liberty is the eagle-shaped helmet with its circlet of stars. This 
 helmet was the subject of much controversy at the time the design was 
 under consideration, and it has been the subject of much and very various 
 comment since the completion of the work. In Crawford's original design 
 the figure was crowned with the Phrygian bonnet, which, from being among 
 the Romans the symbol of a freedman, has among the moderns come to 
 be regarded as a symbol of that freedom which has never acknowledged 
 bondage. This liberty cap was objected to by Jefferson Davis, who was 
 Secretary of War at the time, and who was one of the Commissioners 
 having supervision of the works of art being executed for the Capitol, on 
 the ground that it was not an appropriate adornment for a statue which 
 was supposed to represent the guardian genius of a people which had 
 always been free. The artist, for his part contended that, whatever signi- 
 fication the Phrygian bonnet might originally have had, it had come to be 
 regarded as the symbol of free-born liberty, and, that, as his work was 
 intended for the people, it should speak to them in a language which they 
 would understand without an interpreter. Both the artist and his critic 
 were right, from their several standpoints, but, we think that Crawford 
 must have been impressed by the arguments of the Secretary, and must 
 have believed that his figure would be improved by the adoption of some 
 other style of head-dress, or he would not so readily have consented to make 
 the alterations he did, especially as Davis does not seem to have been at 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 7* 
 
 all obstinate in insisting upon having his ideas earned out. We have 
 never seen Crawford's original design, but we have very little difficulty in 
 believing that the effectiveness of the statue has been considerably increased 
 by the substitution of the eagle helmet, with its boldly sculptured coronet 
 of stars, for the liberty cap. Because Jefferson Davis subsequently chose 
 to pursue a political course that brought upon him the displeasure of 
 a considerable portion of his countrymen, it does not at all follow that 
 he was not capable of making a valuable artistic suggestion. We say 
 this because the objections to the peculiar head-dress of Crawford's Liberty 
 seem to be chiefly based on the theory that it is all wrong because Davis 
 suggested it, or at least suggested that the artist should make some 
 alterations in his original design. 
 
 The only other important public work undertaken by this artist — 
 unless we account his very admiiable statue of Beethoven in the Boston 
 music hall, as a public work — was the Washington monument at Richmond. 
 He made the design for this and completed the equestrian statue of 
 Washington — the casting of which was made the occasion of a compli- 
 mentary fete to the artist by the artists and art-lovers of Munich — but did 
 not live to finish all of the accessory statues and the decorations. After 
 Crawford's death, Randolph Rogers, a sculptor of sympathetic genius, who 
 had been on terms of close and fraternal intimacy with him, was invited 
 to finish it. After Rogers accepted this peculiarly delicate commission, it 
 was decided to make some alterations, or rather enlargement, in the design, 
 with a particular view of doing honor to the memories of a greater number 
 of distinguished Virginians, by the introduction of their statues as acces- 
 sories. It is admitted, on all sides, that the alterations were made with 
 judgment, and that they increased the richness of the composition. The 
 monument as it stands, is, therefore, the work of both sculptors, and 
 
72 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Rogers fairly earned the right to have his name inscribed beside that of 
 Crawford upon it. 
 
 The numerous works executed by Crawford for the government 
 illustrated but a single phase of his prolific and versatile genius. He 
 excelled in every branch of sculpture, and, as neither his invention nor 
 his industry ever seemed to flag, the enumeration of his designs would 
 make a very lengthy list. After his death his widow presented to the 
 Commissioners of Central Park, New York, eighty-seven plaster casts from 
 his studio. Included in these, were, of course, a number of designs which 
 had been executed in marble or bronze, but many of them were sketches 
 and studies in various stages of advancement, from the first crude definitions 
 of ideas to models nearly completed and ready for the marble cutters or 
 foundrymen to take in hand. Among the most notable of his completed 
 works are the bronze Beethoven in the Boston Music Hall — of which a 
 passing mention has already been made ; an Orpheus in the Boston 
 Athenaeum; a statue of James Otis in the Chapel of Mount Auburn 
 Cemetery; an Adam and Eve after the expulsion from Paradise, a Shep- 
 herdess, and a bust of Josiah Quincy, also in the Boston Athenaeum ; 
 Children in the Woods, which belongs to the Hon. Hamilton Fish ; a 
 Boy Playing Marbles; a Pandora; "Dancing Jenny," modelled from his 
 little daughter; a Cupid; a Genius of Mirth; a Flora — in the New York 
 Central Park ; a Hebe and Ganymede ; a Mercury and Psyche ; the 
 Daughter of Herodias; an Aurora; and a Peri. A copy in bronze of 
 his Indian in the north pediment of the Capitol is in possession of the 
 New York Historical Society. In addition to these statues he sculptured 
 more than twenty bas-reliefs of scriptural, classical, and other subjects. 
 
 The Orpheus in the Boston Athenaeum was Crawford's first ideal work, 
 and by many excellent judges it is thought that in subtle suggestiveness 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 73 
 
 it is not surpassed by any of his later efforts. It was this statue that 
 won for the artist the warm regards of the Hon. Charles Sumner. That 
 gentleman not only admired it greatly, but he made his admiration of 
 practical value by inducing a number of wealthy Bostonians to subscribe 
 for its purchase. The Orpheus — Orpheus descending into hell in search 
 of his lost love Eurydice — was sculptured in Rome just after the artist 
 was fairly out of his tutelage. It was in Rome that Crawford received 
 all of his artistic education, except what bits of knowledge with regard to 
 the manipulation of material he was able to pick up in a marble-yard 
 where he worked for some time before crossing the Atlantic. In Rome 
 he studied in the Academy, and he had the benefit of Thorwaldsen's advice 
 and instruction, as Greenough and many others had had before him. 
 Thorwaldsen, in fact, took a very lively interest in all young artists of 
 promise, and possibly in a good many that did not promise anything, for 
 he had the reputation of being too good-natured to discourage anybody 
 who came to him for counsel, and consequently of having induced 
 more than one young man with not a spark of genius or even talent, to 
 attempt things that nature never intended that they should attempt. In 
 Crawford's case, there is no doubt that the assistance of the Danish sculptor 
 was of the greatest value, for Thorwaldsen was no common man, and with 
 his ideas regarding the poetical aim which true art ought to have, he was 
 capable of doing much towards starting an ardent and inventive youth 
 like Crawford on the right path. Crawford was a native of New York and 
 was born in March, 1813. He died in London, October 16, 1857, at a 
 time when his genius was in its full maturity. He did not die of over- 
 work, or of an overstraining of his powers, but of a peculiarly painful tumor 
 in one of his eyes, which had for a considerable time before his death 
 incapacitated him from any practice of his profession. 
 
 Randolph Rogers was also born in New York, but -twelve years later 
 
74 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 than Crawford. He devoted himself seriously to sculpture at a later period 
 than did Crawford, and is one of a considerable number of American 
 painters and sculptors who have drifted into art from other pursuits. It 
 is difficult even now for an artist to thoroughly qualify himself for the 
 practice of his profession without going abroad to at least complete his 
 education, notwithstanding that we have a number of art schools and 
 academies in operation ; thirty or forty years ago it was an impossibility. 
 Considering the disadvantages under which they have labored it is really 
 wonderful that American artists, and especially American sculptors, have 
 succeeded in doing such very excellent work as they must be credited 
 with. A sculptor, even more than a painter, needs exactly the kind of 
 training that can only be obtained in a school where the human form is 
 made the basis of study. Dealing with the human form almost exclusively, 
 it is essential that he should study it from a constant succession of living 
 examples. The antiques, it is true, will teach him much, but there is a 
 great deal that they cannot teach him. Even, however, were it possible 
 for a student to learn all that need be learned from the antiques, the 
 fact that a close and exclusive study of them invariably has the effect 
 of stifling real invention and real originality, and of inducing the artist 
 to become a mere copyist of men long dead and gone, is of itself sufficient 
 to compel a sculptor who wishes to preserve his own individuality, to go 
 to the fountain-head from which the great master artists of the classic 
 period drew their inspiration. 
 
 Rogers when he decided to be a sculptor went to Rome, for it was 
 there that the best opportunities were offered, both for the study of nature 
 and of the noblest remains of antique art. He studied hard for several 
 years, and he then came before the public with two statues which at once 
 gained him celebrity, and placed him in the front rank of the sculptors 
 of the day. These statues were a Boy and a Dog and Nydia the Blind 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 75 
 
 Girl of Pompeii. The last named, especially, was greatly admired, and 
 it is even at this day one of the most popular statues that has ever been 
 executed by an American artist. Numerous copies of it, which have been 
 made by the artist at the demand of eager purchasers, are in European and 
 American collections, and, at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, it and a Ruth 
 — which was sculptured at a later period — figured prominently among the 
 works in the American section. Rogers has executed so many, so im- 
 portant, and such meritorious works that it is impossible to regard the 
 Nydia as marking the culmination of his artistic career, in the same way 
 that we are forced to regard the Greek Slave as marking the culmination 
 of that of Powers. The later performances of Rogers, however, while they 
 may show an increase of technical skill, do not excel this spirited and 
 thoughtful statue in any of the essentials of true artistic excellence. The 
 Ruth, for instance, which stood beside it at the Centennial Exhibition, 
 and which represented a larger experience and a wider range of skill, 
 did not attract a tythe of the attention that the Nydia did, and did not 
 awaken a tythe of the admiration. And yet, in the one the artist had 
 quite as fine a subject as in the other, although he failed to obtain the 
 same amount of inspiration from it. The heroine of the lovely Hebrew 
 idyl is represented as resting one knee on the ground as she gathers 
 the gleanings in the field of Boaz. In her lap are her gatherings, while 
 her right hand is filled with such of the ripened grain as she has just 
 collected from the ground. The head is turned as if she had glanced 
 up a moment from her task to gaze at the figure of Boaz in the distance, 
 and there is a peculiar expression imparted by her eager eyes and her 
 half-opened mouth, as if she was hesitating between hope and fear with 
 regard to the result of her scheme for securing the protection of her rich 
 kinsman. All the essentials are there w T hen we come to closely examine 
 the figure, and yet the artist has somehow failed to adequately express 
 all that was evidently in his mind, and it requires a considerable stretch 
 
76 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 of the imagination to believe in his Ruth as Ruth, or as anything else 
 than a pretty young woman posing in an interesting attitude. 
 
 The Nydia, on the other hand, is full of expression, and it tells the 
 story of the search of the blind girl of Pompeii for her lover in the midst 
 of the awful scenes that marked the last hours of the doomed city, as 
 clearly and intelligibly as it would be possible to tell it with the limited 
 resources of the sculptor's art. But, the Nydia does something more than 
 tell a story clearly and intelligibly — for a work of art might readily do 
 that and yet fail altogether in things that every true connoisseur and every 
 true art lover must regard as matters even more essential. Let us, before 
 discussing the statue further, quote Bulwer's description of the scene of 
 devastation amidst which the blind girl is wandering and listening, with 
 the hearing sense exquisitely attuned, for the voice of her beloved to come 
 to her through the thunders of the volcanic tempest, and through the 
 showers of ashes and scoriae that are falling around her: — 
 
 "Another — and another — and another shower of ashes, far more pro- 
 fuse than before, scattered fresh desolation along the streets. Darkness 
 once more wrapped them as a veil; and Glaucus, his bold heart at last 
 quelled and despairing, sank beneath the cover of an arch, and, clasping 
 lone to his heart — a bride on that couch of ruin — resigned himself to die. 
 
 " Meanwhile, Nydia, when separated by the throng from Glaucus and 
 lone, had in vain endeavored to regain them. In vain she raised that 
 plaintive cry so peculiar to the blind; it was lost amidst a thousand shrieks 
 of more selfish terror. Again and again she returned to the spot where 
 they had been divided — to find her companions gone, to seize every 
 fugitive — to inquire of Glaucus — to be dashed aside in the impatience of 
 distraction. Who in that hour spared one thought to his neighbor? Per- 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 77 
 
 haps in scenes of universal horror, nothing is more horrid than the 
 unnatural selfishness they engender. At length it occurred to Nydia, that 
 as it had been resolved to seek the sea-shore for escape, her most probable 
 chance of rejoining her companions would be to persevere in that direction. 
 Guiding her steps, then, by the staff which she always carried, she 
 continued, with incredible dexterity, to avoid the masses of ruin that 
 encumbered the path— to thread the streets — and unerringly (so blessed 
 now was that accustomed darkness, so afflicting in ordinary life !) to take 
 the nearest direction to the sea-side. 
 
 " Poor girl ! her courage was beautiful to behold !— - and fate seemed 
 to favor one so helpless 1 The boiling torrents touched her not, save by 
 the general rain which accompanied them ; the huge fragments of scoriae 
 shivered the pavement before and beside her, but spared that frail form ; 
 and when the lesser ashes fell over her, she shook them away with a 
 slight tremor, and dauntlessly resumed her course. 
 
 "Weak, exposed, yet fearless, supported but by one wish, she was 
 the very emblem of Psyche in her wanderings ; of Hope, walking through 
 the Valley of the Shadow; of the Soul itself— lone but undaunted, amidst 
 the dangers and snares of life ! " 
 
 There is, perhaps, not more in such a scene as this that is essentially 
 dramatic than there is in the Hebrew idylist's description of Ruth gathering 
 the handfuls which the reapers of Boaz let fall for her, but there is more 
 that requires the execution of an artistic tour de force for its representation 
 or suggestion in a work of sculpture. In attempting to represent Nydia 
 seeking for Glaucus amidst the showers of ashes belched forth by Vesu- 
 vius, the artist finds the line between brilliant success and absolute failure 
 more closely drawn than he does when he essays to represent Ruth 
 
78 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 gleaning in the field of Boaz, and the reason for the qualities in Rogers' 
 Nydia which have secured for it its fame, and for its superiority over his 
 Ruth, and indeed, over any of his ideal creations are not difficult of 
 comprehension. 
 
 The skillfully executed etching by Mr. Stephen J. Ferris which is 
 before the reader, renders any elaborate description of Rogers' Nydia 
 unnecessary, but it is worth while to invite attention to some particular 
 points of excellence in it. The crouching attitude, and the tempest blown 
 garments which entangle themselves in the blind girl's staff are thoroughly 
 expressive of a hurried forward movement — or rather of a slight pause in 
 such a movement for the purpose of listening for some hoped for voice 
 to pierce the darkness and the tumult. The girl's face has an expression 
 of intense listening upon it, and the artist has increased the suggestiveness 
 of both face and figure in this respect by the action which he has given 
 to the left hand and arm — the arm crossing the body and the back of 
 the hand making a shield behind the ear to gather in the sound. This 
 movement of the hand and arm is so obvious, that on looking at the 
 statue, it is difficult to think that the artist could have chosen any other 
 to express his idea; and yet, it is in just such niceties as this that the 
 superior excellence of many of the finest works of art consist. It was 
 an analogous movement that Michael Angelo imitated in his Adam on 
 the Sistine Chapel ceiling from one of the figures on the last pair of 
 gates made by Ghiberti for the baptistery at Florence, and it was the 
 profusion with which just such simple, natural and obvious movements 
 were suggested on those gates that made them exert the positive influence 
 they did in carrying the renaissance movement to a point where it was 
 able to stand alone, and to produce works that were worthy to be ranked 
 with those of the older civilization. It apparently ought not to be difficult 
 for art to find an abundant inspiration in the infinite suggestiveness of 
 
CRAWFORD AND ROGERS. 
 
 79 
 
 nature, but it apparently is exceedingly difficult, or else there would not 
 be so few works of art which delight us, mainly because they fix in 
 marble or bronze, or on the painter's canvas, a limited number of the 
 multitude of expressive gestures in which nature, in her prodigal variety, 
 is accustomed to deal. In the suggestion of Nydia's blindness, the 
 sculptor had a problem of the most difficult kind to solve, but, how well 
 has he solved it, not only in the pose of his marble figure, but in the 
 peculiar expression of the eyes and face ! The very adequate manner 
 in which the blindness of the girl is suggested, is indeed one of the most 
 admirable characteristics of this interesting statue. 
 
 The bronze doors for the National Capitol, to which reference has been 
 made, were finished by Rogers in 1858. His contributions to the Wash- 
 ington monument at Richmond, which was not completed by Crawford, 
 were some ornaments called for by the enlargement of the design, and 
 statues of Chief Justice Marshall and his father Colonel Thomas Marshall, 
 of George Mason, the author of the Declaration of Rights and the Con- 
 stitution of Virginia, and of Thomas Nelson, one of the Signers of the 
 Declaration of Independence, and the successor of Jefferson as Governor 
 of Virginia. In addition to these, Rogers has sculptured a number of 
 important monumental statues, the one which is distinguished by the 
 highest ideal qualities being the Angel of the Resurrection, on the grave 
 of Colonel Colt, at Hartford, Connecticut. His Colossal bronze statue 
 of Lincoln — represented as just having affixed his signature to the 
 Emancipation Proclamation — which was erected in 1871 in Fairmount 
 Park, Philadelphia, is a work of very sterling qualities, and is entitled to 
 the credit of being one of the few really successful portraits of a great 
 man whose rather ungainly figure made him the despair of artists. 
 Subsequently Rogers sculptured a memorial statue of Secretary Seward, 
 which is very similar in motive to the Lincoln. The largest, if not the 
 
8o 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 most important works executed by this artist are the colossal America, 
 fifty feet high, erected at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1875; and the yet 
 larger statue personifying the State of Michigan, which was unveiled at 
 Detroit in 1873. Another noteworthy monumental statue by Rogers — 
 but of an earlier date than those mentioned — is the full-length of John 
 Quincy Adams in the Mount Auburn Cemetery. In addition to these 
 public works, Rogers has made many busts and ideal figures, of which, 
 after his Nydia and his Ruth, a statue of Isaac has been the most admired. 
 
ENGRAVED BY E W STOEART, FROM THE STATUE BY "WILLIAM ~W~ STORY. 
 
} 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 STORY. 
 
 ILLIAM WETMORE STORY has a distinct place of his own 
 
 among the American sculptors. He is not self-taught, and 
 
 yet he belongs to no school, and his works are apparently 
 
 uninfluenced by the style of any master. Enjoying a larger measure of 
 
 fame than almost any of his contemporaries, his fame is of such a peculiar 
 
 kind that the honors which it brings with it are most indefinite. While 
 
 all of his principal performances have gained him great repute, the great 
 
 mass of the public, both in America and in England — for he has an even 
 
 greater reputation in England than he has in his own country — know 
 
 little or nothing about them, except by hearsay, and the esteem in 
 
 which he is held is chiefly based upon the eulogistic reports made by a 
 
 limited number of ardent friends and admirers, rather than upon any 
 
 actual and extended knowledge of him or his doings. Story is a fortunate 
 
 man in more respects than one, but he has been particularly fortunate in 
 
 enjoying the friendship of men and women who have the ear of the 
 
 public, and whose words are sure to be listened to with respect and 
 
 credence. They have spoken of him, and in no uncertain terms, and the 
 
 American and English publics have listened and believed, and have 
 
 consented to admire without stopping to inquire whether their admiration 
 
 81 
 
82 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 was in all respects worthily bestowed. Thus it has happened that Story 
 has, almost without a word of dispute from any one competent to speak 
 authoritatively on such a subject, come to be regarded as the greatest of 
 living American sculptors — for he assuredly is so regarded by many of the 
 most cultivated art-lovers on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 Story, however, does not owe the peculiar kind of reputation which 
 he enjoys entirely to his acquaintanceship with eminent literary people 
 who have found it a pleasant thing to write about him, and to sound 
 abroad his praises. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that he is the 
 most all-accomplished artist of the present day — no American sculptor or 
 painter, at least, can rival him in the extent and variety of his accomplish- 
 ments. With the American public he is undoubtedly better known and 
 more highly esteemed as an author than he is as a sculptor — that is, 
 the American public understands and appreciates his worth as an author, 
 and is content to take his statues on trust, in the faith that so learned 
 and so charming a writer could not be a bad sculptor. Like Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti, the one-time leader of the English pre-Raphaelites, whose 
 paintings are so rarely exhibited where they can be examined and criticised, 
 his literary has aided and upheld his artistic reputation. Unlike Rossetti, 
 however, he has never put himself forward as an artistic theorist, and 
 has never attempted to make himself the founder of a school. It is, 
 perhaps, fortunate that Story never has attempted anything of the kind, 
 especially in view of Rossetti's palpable failure, although when we consider 
 the undoubted influence which his theories have exerted in advancing 
 the standard of contemporary English art, the originator of the pre- 
 Raphaelite movement really has nothing to reproach himself with in the 
 fact that that movement did not result in accordance with his wishes. 
 As a sculptor, Story has much in common with the English pre-Raphaelites, 
 who, with Rossetti at their head, and with Ruskin to passionately plead 
 
STORY. 
 
 83 
 
 their cause, and to extravagantly extol their eccentricities, created such an 
 upturning of old-fashioned artistic ideas in England and America nearly 
 forty years ago. He has always aimed at placing that ideal something, 
 which the really cultured men among the pre-Raphaelites claimed was the 
 soul of art, above the mere substance, and in all of his ideal statues there 
 has been at least the attempt to express distinct although subtle ideas, 
 while his portraits, whether full-lengths or busts, have sought to combine 
 the severest literalness with a searching analysis of that inner man, to 
 which the fleshly covering is but a mask. 
 
 It is not unlikely that Story would be among the first to disclaim 
 any artistic kinship with the pre-Raphaelites, but, apart from the eccentri- 
 cities and affectations of medievalism which distinguished the performances 
 of the lesser men of the school, rather than those of its leaders, his 
 principles are essentially theirs. If he has not exerted the same influence 
 for good or ill that they have, the reason, perhaps, is that he has made 
 absolutely no effort in that direction, and, particularly, that he has been 
 persistent in the attempt to win distinct celebrities, both in art and literature. 
 Had he chosen to make his talents as an author subservient to his art, 
 there can be no doubt that he would have exerted a most potent influence, 
 but then the world might have lost some books that the world now would 
 be loth to lose. The only writings by Story on purely artistic subjects 
 that we know of, are the papers entitled, Talks in a Studio, which were 
 published several years ago in Blackwood's Magazine, but which have 
 never been collected in book form. These, it is true, did not deal 
 exclusively with artistic topics, but, representing as they did the friendly 
 chatting of an artist and a cultivated man of the world of sympathetic 
 tastes, "in a studio," while covering the whole ground of literature and 
 art, they naturally dwelt with particular emphasis on such subjects as the 
 supposed surroundings of the interlocutors would be apt to suggest. 
 
8 4 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 These dialogues, although they have never been published in such a shape 
 as to be accessible to every reader, well deserve to be, for they not only 
 give an insight into Story's way of thinking about art and its objects and 
 aims, and reveal many of the secrets of his own methods, but they 
 contain many acute and exceedingly valuable criticisms. The analyses 
 of the styles of Michael Angelo and Raphael, and the comparisons 
 between them, which are given in one of the conversations, are contributions 
 to critical literature of the first importance. The great Florentine is 
 discussed reverently, but Raphael is evidently regarded by Story as having 
 been placed on too high a pedestal by over zealous admirers, and the 
 estimations of the limitations of his genius are well worthy of the perusal 
 and of the candid consideration even of those who may be compelled to 
 differ most widely with the writer in the conclusions he arrives at. 
 
 Story's best known and most deservedly popular book is his Roba di 
 Roma. This is much more than a mere description of modern Rome, for 
 the author has gone deep down into the heart of his subject, and has dug 
 out from the moral as well as the physical crust which hides the real Rome 
 from the eye of the casual visitor an infinite variety of rare and curious 
 facts which he discusses in learned, eloquent and eminently picturesque 
 language. This is such a book as only a foreigner could have written 
 about Rome, and only a foreigner who had resided in the city for a long 
 term of years, and had examined every nook and corner with the keen and 
 critical eye of a trained author and artist. But, Story was an author 
 before he was a sculptor, and before he saw Rome. In addition to his 
 biography of his father, Chief Justice Story, he wrote a legal treatise on 
 the Law of Contracts— for he originally adopted his distinguished father's 
 profession — and a volume of poems. He has always been ambitious of 
 obtaining celebrity as a poet, and it is said that he thinks more of his 
 poetical performances, and more of such fame as they have brought him 
 
STORY. 
 
 «5 
 
 than he does of his sculptures and his reputation as a sculptor. The 
 appreciation of his poetical efforts, however, is confined to a comparatively 
 limited circle of admirers, and with the general public his repute as a 
 writer rests upon his prose works. As has happened to more than one 
 man who has essayed to obtain distinction in different lines of art, his 
 fame as a poet has been overshadowed by that which he has won as a 
 prosateur and as a sculptor. Some of his poetical writings, however, 
 deserve to be much better known than they are. One of his most elaborate 
 and most characteristic poems has for its theme the Remorse of Judas. 
 This singular piece is in a certain sense a defense of Judas, the 
 idea being that the treacherous Apostle was anxious to solve the doubts 
 which, in spite of his efforts to stifle them, would arise in his mind as to 
 the verity of the Messiahship of his Master, by a test which would at 
 once satisfy himself and all the world ; and, that overcome with remorse 
 at the immediate consequences of his treachery, he went out and hanged 
 himself, without waiting to see the ultimate results of his experiment. 
 This poem, like the Talks in a Studio, was published some years ago 
 in Blackwood's Magazine, but, so far as we are aware, it has not been 
 reprinted in any collected edition of the author's works. 
 
 But Story is not only a writer of prose and poetry, in addition to 
 being a sculptor; he draws and paints — as every sculptor ought to do 
 occasionally, for practice sake, even if he produces nothing that he deems 
 worthy of being placed before the public — and he is an accomplished 
 musician. Architecture appears to be the only one of the arts he has 
 not tried his hand at, which is somewhat remarkable, for the classic 
 sculptors, as well as those of the renaissance, were nearly all of them 
 architects, and the relations between sculpture and architecture are more 
 intimate than they are between any of the other arts. Indeed, it is not 
 too much to say that a sculptor ought to be an architect, even if he 
 
86 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 does not care to follow the example of Michael Angelo and others in 
 designing buildings and superintending their construction. The nearly 
 absolute divorce between sculpture and architecture in our day is a posi- 
 tive misfortune to both arts, and sculptors of the learning and intellectual 
 attainments of Story could scarcely do themselves or the public a greater 
 service than by devoting a considerable portion of their time to the study 
 of architecture — at least to the extent of qualifying themselves to speak 
 with authority concerning the designs, construction and ornamentation of 
 buildings which are monumental in their character. Architecture in this 
 day, and especially in this country, needs, and greatly needs, just the kind 
 of keen critical interest to be taken in it which accomplished artists, and 
 especially accomplished sculptors, are alone able to take. 
 
 As has before been stated, few of Story's sculptures have been placed 
 on public exhibition, and, consequently, the opportunities afforded, not only 
 to the public but to connoisseurs, for giving them critical study and for 
 forming estimates of their artistic value, have been provokingly limited. 
 His most celebrated works of a purely public character are the statue of 
 Edward Everett in the Public Garden at Boston, and that of George 
 Peabody in London. For the execution of the latter choice was made 
 of Story as the most distinguished of living American sculptors — at least 
 the most distinguished in the eyes of Englishmen. Story, in fact, has all 
 along enjoyed a higher reputation in England than he has in his own 
 country, both as a litterateur and as an artist. In the Exhibition of 1862 
 his statues of Cleopatra and the Libyan Sibyl were the only contributions 
 by an American artist that elicited cordial expressions of admiration, just 
 as the Greek Slave of Powers was the noteworthy representative of 
 American art in the Exhibition of 1851. Either the Cleopatra or the 
 Sibyl, however, had more in it to excite genuine admiration than had 
 the Greek Slave, and those who best remembered Powers' work were 
 
STORY. 
 
 87 
 
 glad to hail these two statues as tokens of an advance in the art of 
 sculpture among the Americans. 
 
 The bronze statue of Edward Everett is an attempt to represent 
 Everett the orator. It has been rather severely criticised as theatrical, 
 and the criticism is deserved, or rather, it would be deserved as a censure 
 were the figure not so severely accurate in the reproduction of one of 
 Everett's favorite poses and gestures. As an orator Everett was essentially 
 artificial and theatrical, and the artist in representing the man as he 
 appeared in what he and his admirers regarded as his best moments, 
 has done him no more and no less than justice. That this statue is an 
 admirable likeness of Edward Everett in face and figure is not denied 
 by any one, and unless the orator's character has been greatly misappre- 
 hended by a majority of his countrymen, it is just such a monument as 
 he himself would have chosen. The bronze statue of George Peabody in 
 London is as quiet and unobtrusive as that of Edward Everett is just 
 the contrary. This work, in fact, if it is open to any censure is chargeable 
 with tameness. The philanthropist is represented as seated in a large 
 chair — too large a chair, for it very unnecessarily gives an appearance of 
 clumsiness to the whole work — and, as in the case of Everett, the artist 
 has been successful in giving an adequate portrait of the whole man. 
 While this work cannot be regarded as a masterpiece, it is at least quite 
 as great a success as most memorial statues, in its particular style, that 
 have been made in our day. Our artists seem to be able to win success 
 with their ideal figures in sitting postures, but for some reason they rarely 
 manage to make the sitting figures in their monumental works truly 
 imposing. The true secret of the non-success of this particular class of 
 works, however, appears to be that they are not placed under cover. This 
 is the difficulty with Greenough's Washington, and it can scarcely be 
 doubted, that were it, and Rogers' Lincoln, and Story's Peabody removed 
 
88 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 from their present positions in the open air and made accessories to the 
 architecture of imposing buildings, they would gain an interest and an 
 importance which they do not now have. 
 
 Story's most famous statue is his Cleopatra. It is the most famous, 
 not because its extraordinary merits have forced a recognition from the 
 multitude, but, because it had the good fortune to fascinate a man of 
 rare genius, who, in a sense, appropriated it for his own by embodying 
 a eulogistic description of it in one of his best known and most widely 
 read books. The Cleopatra has, so far as we are aware, never been 
 shown to the public except at the Exhibition of 1862, and at the sale 
 of the collection of Mr. John Taylor Johnston of New York in 1876. 
 A British connoisseur purchased the statue at the Exhibition, and from 
 his hands it passed to those of Mr. Johnston. The British public, which 
 saw this statue and that of the Libyan Sibyl at the Exhibition of 1862, 
 expected to find in them extraordinary qualities and aims, if not absolute 
 accomplishments, which would suggest the performances of the best days 
 of the renaissance. The Greek Slave of Powers was not an unknown 
 statue when the Exhibition of 185 1 opened, for it had been seen and 
 admired and talked about by a great number of persons, but it was, 
 nevertheless, something of a surprise to the general public, and the 
 surprise had much to do with the rather extraordinary sensation which 
 it created. The Cleopatra of Story was not a surprise, for the public 
 mind had been prepared for it, and the public curiosity excited with 
 regard to it, and in such a way that a vast majority of those who came into 
 its presence came predisposed, not only to admire, but to admire extrava- 
 gantly. Hawthorne has always had a larger audience in England than 
 he has had in his own land, and his romance of The Marble Fawn, 
 especially, — in England it goes under the title of Transformation — is 
 esteemed as it never has been in America, where it is not regarded by 
 
STORY. 
 
 89 
 
 discriminating readers as its author's masterpiece. It is in the Marble 
 Fawn that Hawthorne gives the description of the Cleopatra which made 
 it famous before it left the studio of the artist, and which has caused it 
 to figure in the popular imagination as Story's most important and most 
 characteristic work. Hawthorne looked at this statue, as he saw it in the 
 clay, growing day by day nearer to perfection under the fingers of the 
 sculptor, with the eyes of a romancist and an enthusiast who knew next 
 to nothing of the technicalities of plastic art, and who was interested only 
 in the ideal which an effort was being made to give palpable form and 
 substance to. He was on very intimate terms with Story during his visit 
 to Rome, and, as the published extracts from his Note-Book show, was a 
 frequent visitor to his studio, and was, from his first sight of it, strangely 
 interested in this particular work. The Cleopatra when Hawthorne first 
 saw it was in a peculiarly interesting stage. It was just sufficiently far 
 advanced for the intentions of the artist to be distinctly made out, and 
 for something like an accurate idea to be formed as to what the full 
 expression of the face and the pose would be. There was, however, just 
 enough mystery about the rough clay, which had only partly been wrought 
 into shape, to set the imagination to work, and to excite speculations as 
 to what the ultimate result would be, and as to whether the artist would 
 succeed in making the statue all that it promised. Before Hawthorne 
 left Rome, the Cleopatra was finished in the clay, or very nearly so, and 
 in view of the fascination which watching the progress of the work had 
 for him, it was the most natural thing in the world that he should desire 
 to include a description of it in his Roman romance. As the fame of 
 this statue is so largely due to the description in The Marble Fawn, and 
 as it has never been photographed nor engraved, we cannot do better than 
 to quote the passage which refers to it. Hawthorne in his preface makes a 
 proper acknowledgement to Story, but in the narrative itself he assigns 
 the Cleopatra to his imaginary sculptor, Kenyon. The visitor to Kenyon's 
 
9>o 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 studio, for whose benefit the nearly completed clay model is unveiled, just 
 before the artist draws away the wet cloths in which it is swathed, expresses 
 a dread lest it should be a nude figure, which rather amusingly reflects 
 Hawthorne's own emotions in encountering the innumerable undraped 
 representatives of the human form in the great galleries of Europe. The 
 sculptor explains that the proprieties have all been observed, and also 
 states what the subject is, in order that no unpleasant mistakes may be 
 made, and then comes the description of the Cleopatra as the eyes of the 
 finest and most imaginative genius that American literature has produced 
 beheld her: — 
 
 "The sitting figure of a woman was seen. She was draped from 
 head to foot in a costume minutely and scrupulously studied from that 
 of ancient Egypt, as revealed by the strange sculpture of that country, its 
 coins, drawings, painted mummy-cases, and whatever other tokens have 
 been dug out of its pyramids, graves and catacombs. Even the stiff 
 Egyptian head-dress was adhered to, but had been softened into a rich 
 feminine adornment, without losing a particle of its truth. Difficulties 
 that might well have seemed insurmountable, had been courageously 
 encountered and made flexible to purposes of grace and dignity; so that 
 Cleopatra sat attired in a garb proper to her historic and queenly state, 
 as a daughter of the Ptolemies, and yet such as the beautiful woman 
 would have put on as best adapted to heighten the magnificence of her 
 charms, and kindle a tropic fire in the cold eyes of Octavius. 
 
 "A marvellous repose — that rare merit in statuary, except it be the 
 lumpish repose native to the block of stone — was diffused through the 
 figure. The spectator felt that Cleopatra had sunk down out of the fever 
 and turmoil of her life, and for one instant — as it were, between two 
 pulse-throbs — had relinquished all activity, and was resting throughout 
 
STORY. 
 
 91 
 
 every vein and muscle. It was the repose of despair, indeed ; for Octavius 
 had seen her, and remained insensible to her enchantments. But still 
 there was a great smouldering furnace deep down in the woman's heart. 
 The repose, no doubt, was as complete as if she were never to stir hand 
 or foot again ; and yet, such was the creature's latent energy and fierceness, 
 she might spring upon you like a tigress, and stop the very breath that 
 you were now drawing midway in your throat. 
 
 "The face was a miraculous success. The sculptor had not shunned 
 to give the full Nubian lips, and other characteristics of the Egyptian 
 physiognomy. His courage and integrity had been abundantly rewarded ; 
 for Cleopatra's beauty shone out richer, warmer, more triumphantly beyond 
 comparison, than if, shrinking timidly from the truth he had chosen the 
 tame Grecian type. The expression was of profound, gloomy, heavily 
 revolving thought; a glance into her past life and present emergencies, 
 while her spirit gathered itself up for some new struggle, or was getting 
 sternly reconciled to impending doom. In one view, there was a certain 
 softness and tenderness — how breathed into the statue, among so many 
 strong and passionate elements, it is impossible to say. Catching another 
 glimpse, you beheld her as implacable as a stone and cruel as fire. 
 
 " In a word, all Cleopatra — fierce, voluptuous, passionate, tender, wicked, 
 terrible, and full of poisonous and rapturous enchantment — was kneaded 
 into what, only a week or two before, had been a lump of wet clay from 
 the Tiber. Soon, apotheosized in an indestructible material, she would 
 be one of the images that men keep forever, finding a heat in them which 
 does not cool down, throughout the centuries." 
 
 The most remarkable thing about this masterly piece of word-painting 
 is that Hawthorne appears not to have been aware that Cleopatra was of 
 
9 2 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Greek lineage. The sculptor, doubtless, was aware of the fact, and decided 
 on easily defensible artistic grounds, to give his statue the Nubian lips 
 and Egyptian physiognomy which seem to have so impressed Hawthorne. 
 As a matter of fact, Cleopatra had an aquiline nose and a rounded and 
 prominent chin — a physiognomy of the Roman rather than of the Greek type. 
 
 There is much in this description by Hawthorne of the Cleopatra, 
 which will apply to the companion statue of the Libyan Sibyl, of which 
 we give an engraving. This weird woman of mystery, the child of the 
 desert, it is true is not a "serpent of old Nile," but there is about her 
 much of that pent-up fiery energy, threatening to burst forth at any 
 moment to scorch and consume, which marks the Cleopatra. The mission 
 of the Sibyl, however, is not to lure men on to destruction — she is the 
 custodian of secrets, the secrets of Africa and the African race. And, how 
 close she keeps them, with her locked lower limbs, her one hand pressing 
 her chin as if to keep in the torrent of words that threaten to burst forth, 
 while the other grasps a scroll covered with strange characters, which 
 would reveal much could we be permitted to decipher it. On her head 
 is the Ammonite horn — for she is a daughter of Jupiter Ammon, and the 
 keeper of his oracles — and on her breast is the ancient symbol of mystery, 
 as she sits there brooding and thinking, and her breast heaving with 
 emotions as she thinks of what is past and what is to come. It is worth 
 while, in looking at this figure, to recall the fact that while the sculptor 
 was in the act of creating it Africa was giving up her ancient secrets; the 
 world-old mystery of the Nile was being revealed, and the heart of the 
 great continent was being penetrated in every direction by explorers who 
 were anxious to tell the world all that it contained. The mystery of the 
 future of the African race ? — that is as great a mystery as ever. 
 
 A considerable number of Story's most important works are of the 
 
S7 ORY. 
 
 93 
 
 same genre as the Cleopatra and the Sibyl. Both power and subtlety 
 are imperatively demanded in statues which shall be even suggestions of 
 such men as Saul and Moses, or such women as Judith, Sappho, Delilah 
 and Medea, or which shall adequately symbolize Jerusalem mourning over 
 her fallen greatness, or which shall rise above the level of mere prettiness 
 in dealing with such a subject as Love questioning the Sphynx. These 
 themes prove, of themselves, that the sculptor has aimed high, and if he 
 has at times failed to realize his own ideals, his successes have been 
 sufficiently frequent to gain for him a position altogether apart from the 
 majority of his contemporaries. 
 
 It was during the progress of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, in 
 Philadelphia, that the American public was first afforded a reasonably 
 good opportunity of forming an estimate of this artist's merits. His Medea 
 — which is very adequately represented by our engraving — was shown in 
 the Exhibition, while his Jerusalem was to be seen in the Pennsylvania 
 Academy of the Fine Arts, it having been presented to that institution 
 a short time before the opening of the Centennial Exhibition, by Mrs. 
 N. Grigg, of Philadelphia. In the Jerusalem the idea which the sculptor 
 had in his mind is, perhaps, clearly enough expressed, but the statue is 
 certainly not a pleasing one. There is a stiffness and a total lack of 
 grace in the lines of the figure for which there is no reason and no 
 excuse. The Medea is far more satisfying, although in looking at this 
 statue, the question involuntarily arises, why, if the sculptor violated history 
 in giving his Cleopatra Nubian features, did he not adhere to tradition 
 in representing the Colchian sorceress as other than a Greek? For a 
 Greek this beautiful woman with the beetling brows and the dagger in 
 her hand assuredly is, and she might better be called Clytemnestra, or 
 Phaedra, or the Tragic Muse, than Medea the barbarian, whom Jason 
 discarded, and who revenged herself upon him with the blood of her 
 
94 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 own children. Beautiful as the face of this woman with the knitted fore- 
 head and tortured brain may be, it is not that of such a Medea as is 
 revealed to us in the acting of those great histrionic artists, Adelaide 
 Ristori or Fanny Janauschek — for, different as are the methods of these 
 actresses, they have neither of them been able to conceive of a Medea 
 who, in appearance and character, did not mark the width of the gulf 
 between barbarian and Greek civilization, between the sorceress and the 
 Greek horror of sorcery. 
 
 While most of Story's works have been cast in a heroic mould, he 
 has sculptured several statues, such as an Infant Bacchus and Panther, 
 and a Little Red Riding Hood, which address themselves without reserve 
 to unheroic sympathies. An equestrian statue of Colonel Shaw, the hero 
 of Fort Wayne, which was executed for the city of Boston, and a full-length 
 of Josiah Quincy are noteworthy examples of his present statues. His 
 busts of the poets Shelley and Keats are not so much attempts at 
 portraiture as they are idealizations in the same sense that his Cleopatra 
 and his Sappho are. The Shelley is a purely ideal work — that is, the 
 sculptor did not make any attempt to follow the meagre and amateurish 
 pencil sketch of the poet's profile, which is the only authentic portrait of 
 him in existence ; the Keats, on the other hand, is a true portrait, although 
 an idealized one. This is chiefly based on the recently recovered death- 
 bed study of the features of Keats, which was made by his friend, the 
 American artist Severn, while in attendance on him during his last hours. 
 These two busts have been warmly praised by those who have been fortunate 
 enough to see them, and pronounced among the most masterly of Story's 
 performances. At this writing, Story is engaged on a national monument to 
 be erected in Independence Square, Philadelphia. It is a colossal statue of 
 a female figure personifying Liberty, which is to be mounted upon a pedestal 
 enriched with figures in high relief representing the States of the Union 
 
S7 OA')'. 
 
 95 
 
 Story was born at Salem, Massachusetts, February 12, 1819. He was 
 a man of mature years and of some celebrity when he decided to abandon 
 the profession of the law, to which he had been educated, for art. To 
 the study and practice of art he brought a cultivated mind and a fervid 
 imagination; and, being a man of wealth, as well as of liberal education 
 and large culture, is more fortunate than many of his artistic brethren in 
 being spared the necessity of executing crude and immature works, or of 
 lowering his artistic standard to suit the whims and caprices of purchasers. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ROBERTS, B A ILLY, HARNISCH AND RUSH 
 
 ERHAPS the realists and the idealists, if they were to compare 
 notes instead of abusing each other, and were to come down 
 to exact definitions of terms, would discover that true realism 
 and true idealism are not so wide apart as they think they are. Many 
 who pride themselves on being realists fail altogether to understand what 
 artistic realism is, while, on the other hand, those who shut their eyes to 
 the truths of nature, in the hope and expectation that some inner light 
 will guide their hands in the painting of a picture or the sculpturing of a 
 statue, are following a false and treacherous guide that will be apt to lead 
 them into bogs and quagmires which will overwhelm them and their 
 hopes. Much of what passes for realism in art in their days is simply 
 not realism at all, and represents nothing but grossly mistaken aims and 
 radical misapprehensions as to the varied but limited possibilities of the 
 pictorial and plastic arts. Much of that which passes for idealism is but 
 the crude presentation of crude and half-formed ideas, and the pretence 
 of attempting to represent something above and beyond nature, is made 
 to serve as an apology for thoroughly unworkmanlike performances. 
 
 A painter or a sculptor cannot represent with the material at his 
 
 9 6 
 
ILiA PREMIERE POSE 
 
ROBERTS, B A ILLY, HARNISCH AND RUSH. 
 
 97 
 
 command all that there is in a particular object that he may choose for 
 his model, and he consequently finds himself compelled, if he would 
 adequately represent such facts as are within the range of his art, to make 
 some compromises. For instance, a painter who wishes to depict on his 
 canvas a scene or object which may strike his fancy, must place himself 
 at such a distance from it that he can at one glance take in the whole 
 subject. At such a distance it will be impossible for him to see every 
 minute detail, and even many of the details which he will see will not be 
 essential to the effect, considered as a whole. That is, he will find the 
 objects dividing themselves into masses of light and shade and color, and 
 if he accurately represents these masses upon his canvas he will have a 
 reasonably satisfactory picture, even if he pays no attention to the smaller 
 details. Obviously the principle of working by masses can be carried 
 much too far, and, as a matter of fact, it often is carried too far; but the 
 " impressionists," as a certain modern school of French painters, who seek 
 to depict only the casual impressions which nature makes through hasty 
 glances of the eye, really come much nearer to a satisfactory description 
 of nature than do the men who endeavor to paint every vein on a leaf, 
 for the veins on a leaf contribute little or nothing towards pictorial effect. 
 A genuine realist is one who accurately and relentlessly copies so much 
 of what he sees in nature as properly comes within the range of his art. 
 An idealist is one who uses nature as a medium for the fixing of the 
 coinings of his brain in a palpable shape, but to do this he must have 
 the facts of nature at his finger's ends, for one ignorant of these facts 
 is not competent to go beyond them in expressing what he is pleased 
 to call his ideas. 
 
 The controversy between the realists and the idealists is quite a 
 modern affair, and it is distinctly a modern notion that the poetry or the 
 ideality of a subject will excuse bad workmanship or a lack of knowledge 
 
9 s 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 and genuine culture on the part of the artist. All the master artists of 
 the great eras of art, so far as they have given utterance to opinions or 
 precepts with regard to the principles and practices of art, have insisted 
 upon the study, and the incessant study, of Nature as the one thing 
 needful, not only for the beginner but also for the educated practitioner. 
 Leonardo de Vinci, an idealist among the idealists, in that curious collection 
 of memoranda which was made up long after his death from his multitude 
 of note-books, and was published under the title of Trattato della Pittura, 
 insists strenuously upon the close and constant study of nature, and says 
 not a word about idealism, about the soul of art being of more importance 
 than the substance, or any one of many notions of that kind which the 
 art student, the artist and the art connoisseur has constantly dinned into 
 his ears in those days. Leonardo gives this advice to painters: — 
 
 "And you, painter, who are desirous of great practice, understand, 
 that if you do not rest on the good foundation of nature, you will labor 
 with little honor and less profit; and if you do it on a good ground, your 
 works will be many and good, to your great honor and advantage. 
 
 "A painter ought to study universal nature, and reason much within 
 himself on all he sees, making use of the most excellent parts that 
 compose the species of every object before him. His mind will by this 
 method be like a mirror, reflecting truly every object placed before it, 
 and become, as it were, a second nature. 
 
 "One painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; 
 because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the 
 grand-child. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete 
 with .an abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, 
 who learnt everything from her. 
 
ROBERTS, BAILLY, HARNISCH AND RUSH. 
 
 99 
 
 "Whoever flatters himself that he can retain in his memory all the 
 effects of nature, is deceived, for our memory is not so capacious ; there- 
 fore, consult nature in everything." 
 
 These precepts are worthy of being printed in large letters and hung 
 on the walls of every art academy, and if art students could be made at 
 the very outset to learn them by heart, and to grasp their full meaning, 
 the world would be spared the infliction of a multitude of bad paintings 
 and bad statuary. The example of men of the enormous learning and 
 indefatigable research and almost unbounded genius of Leonardo de Vinci, 
 Michael Angelo and Raphael in forcing nature to be their servant rather 
 than their mistress, and in using with the freedom of masters the facts 
 of nature in order to more completely express what they had in their 
 minds, has deluded innumerable modern artists into the belief that accurate 
 knowledge is something that one who has ideas — or who fancies that he 
 has them — can safely dispense with. All that these great artists accomplished 
 they accomplished by means of their knowledge, gained at the expense 
 of great labor and study, and it is an absurdity for men of lesser 
 attainments, no matter what their natural abilities may be, to think of 
 rivalling them. 
 
 It is the great glory of French art of the present day that it is based 
 on close, persistent and indefatigable study of nature. It is this, more 
 than any superior natural aptitude, that has given the French painters 
 and sculptors, and art workers generally, the pre-eminence they enjoy. 
 Their theory simply is, that if a man has training, and the abundant 
 knowledge that training brings with it, he will be able to give expression 
 to his ideas, if he has any, and that, if a man has not training he will 
 not be able to express his ideas in any but a crude and imperfect manner, 
 no matter how quick his brain may be in conceiving them. In the 
 
lOO 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Centennial Exhibition, the display of French sculptures was not by any 
 means what it might or should have been, as a number of the strongest 
 men were unrepresented. In no other department, however, were there 
 so many works as in the French, which seemed to be animated by the 
 free antique spirit, while not in any way suggesting imitation of the 
 antique. In the United States Department there was no piece of sculpture 
 which was marked by such high technical qualities as the Premiere Pose 
 of Howard Roberts — a work which was almost as much a product of the 
 schools of Paris as the admirable performances exhibited in the French 
 Department. 
 
 It would not be doing justice to this beautiful statue to intimate that 
 its merits are exclusively of a technical character, that the artist has not 
 done full justice to his subject as a subject, or that it is only worthy of 
 admiration as a piece of skillful workmanship. The subject is a young 
 woman preparing to pose undraped, for the first time, in a painter's studio, 
 and the sculptor has indicated his own appreciation of the fact that the 
 situation has both a comic and a tragic side, by the grotesque comic and 
 tragic marks which he has added as decorations to the uprights of the 
 back of the chair. As for the figure of the shrinking girl, it is full of 
 pathos and full of infinite grace, despite the constrained attitude which she 
 assumes as she crouches in her chair and shrinks from observation. This 
 figure, however, is such an absolute triumph over a great number of 
 technical difficulties that it is particularly well worthy of consideration for 
 its technical qualities alone. Its striking and peculiar merits could only 
 have been achieved by a man who understood the human figure thoroughly, 
 and who had gained his knowledge of it, not from the works of other 
 men, but from a close and laborious study of nature. They assuredly 
 could not have been achieved by one who depended chiefly on some real 
 or fancied inner light rather than upon absolute knowledge. From what- 
 
ROBERTS, B A ILLY, HARNISCII AND RUSH. 
 
 101 
 
 ever point of view this statue is observed, it is graceful, and to secure 
 a harmony of lines along with such a complex attitude, was in itself an 
 achievement of the first artistic importance. But, the lifting of an arm 
 over the head so as to partly shield the face, the bending of the other 
 arm for the purpose of grasping at the loose drapery with which the chair 
 is covered, the peculiar twist of the body, and the pressure of the legs 
 against the lower part of the chair, all give emphasis to the muscular and 
 other markings of the figure in such a way that the artist, in working out 
 his problem, must have found the gulf between absolute success and total 
 failure a very wide one. As will be seen by a reference to the engraving, 
 the artist has marked with much emphasis as well as much delicacy the 
 great variety of muscular movements with which he has to deal. The 
 engraving, indeed, can give but a faint idea of the beauty of some portions 
 of the work, as, for instance, the delicate markings of the flexions of the 
 knees, or of the junction of the right arm with the shoulder. The work- 
 manship, however, is so fine throughout that it would be an almost 
 endless task to attempt a detailed analysis of it, and as the engraving 
 will speak for the statue better than any written description can, we will 
 pass to a mention of other works of the artist. 
 
 Howard Roberts was born in Philadelphia in 1843. He studied in 
 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and was for some little time 
 under the instruction of J. A. Bailly. In 1866 he went to Paris for the 
 purpose of completing his artistic education, and remained there for several 
 years as a student in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and in the ateliers of 
 MM. Gumery and Dumont. Both of these eminent French sculptors 
 took a very lively interest in him, and to their instructions he doubtless 
 owes much. 
 
 On his return to America he modelled several ideal busts, and these 
 
102 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 being successful he attempted a full length figure. This was a statuette, 
 about three feet in height, of Hester Prynne, the heroine of Hawthorne's 
 romance of The Scarlet Letter. This represented Hester, with her babe 
 in her arms and the scarlet letter, which the stern puritanism of her age 
 decreed that she should carry about with her as a punishment for her 
 offence, upon her bosom, standing on the pillory. The extraordinary 
 merits of this work, which interpreted all the pathos of the subject, were 
 acknowledged without reserve by all who saw it, and the reputation of 
 the sculptor was at once established. After the completion of the Hester 
 Prynne, Roberts made a number of portrait and ideal busts, the most 
 important of these being one in which the arms were introduced, repre- 
 senting Owen Meredith's Lucile, and also employed himself on a full 
 length life-size statue of Hypatia. When the clay model of this had 
 been completed and cast in plaster, he decided to return to Europe. It 
 was in 1873 that he once more took up his residence in Paris, and it 
 was while there that he completed the Premiere Pose. Roberts this time 
 remained abroad about a year, and on his return to Philadelphia he 
 established himself in a beautiful and commodious studio, where he devoted 
 himself to bust-making, to the modelling of a statuette — about the size 
 of the Hester Prynne — of Lot's Wife, and to putting his Hypatia in marble. 
 
 The merely technical merits of the Hypatia are as great as those 
 of the Premiere Pose, but the subject is such a striking one, and it is 
 treated in such a powerful and effective manner that the statue demands 
 to be judged on other and higher than technical grounds. This work 
 was, after being completed in marble, put on public exhibition for a short 
 time, and was visited by many thousands of persons. There was but 
 one verdict with regard to it, and that was that it was the most impressive 
 piece of sculpture that had been shown in Philadelphia for many years. 
 This admirable statue increased the fame of Roberts even more than the 
 
ROBERTS, D A ILLY, 
 
 HARNISCH AND RUSH. 
 
 103 
 
 Premiere Pose did, for it appealed to a wider range of tastes, and a 
 different order of sympathies. In it the beautiful Alexandrian Greek — the 
 last of the pagans — is shown as turning at bay on the altar of the church 
 into which she has been driven by the fanatical monks who are thirsting 
 for her blood. The motion of turning is very finely expressed — to mention 
 one striking point of technical excellence — and the hunted woman faces 
 her savage pursuers with mingled indignation, disgust and despair on her 
 face, as with one hand she clasps her tattered draperies to her breast and 
 with the other half supports herself by means of one of the candlesticks 
 of the altar. Fine as this powerful performance is throughout, the face 
 is particularly worthy of admiration. It is a purely Greek face in type, 
 and yet there is no Greek statue we know of that is marked by a strong 
 individuality — by what we moderns call character — to the extent that this 
 one is. 
 
 The statuette of Lot's Wife is a very singular creation, which could 
 only have been imagined by the artist in a grotesque mood. It cannot 
 be called beautiful, but it is most original in conception and execution, 
 and, in spite of its grotesqueness, it is full of power and impressiveness. 
 The woman is represented in a writhing attitude, and she is not only being 
 enveloped in the crystals of salt which are forming around her, but she 
 is actually dissolving into salt herself.- The idea of transformation is very 
 much more perfectly expressed in this statuette than it is in Bernini's 
 Daphne, or in any attempts to represent metamorphosis that we know of. 
 Lot's wife is really turning into a pillar of salt, and, admitting that the 
 idea of such a transformation is a rather queer one for a sculptor to 
 choose, we must also admit that it is expressed with remarkable skill. 
 
 Roberts' busts are charming, those representing childhood and 
 womanhood especially. His ideal busts are the inspirations of a most 
 
io4 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 rare fancy, while his portraits have that inestimable quality in all portraits 
 of showing their subjects at their best, while losing nothing of resemblance. 
 Much of the charm of his busts is due to his refined taste and rich 
 invention in the treatment of the hair and draperies, and about each new 
 one that he models there is something fresh, original and fascinating; 
 even more, however, is due to a feeling for color which is rare with 
 sculptors, and which induces him to manage his work in such a manner 
 as to at least suggest color by giving full value not only to masses but 
 to individual points of shadow. Had he become a painter instead of a 
 sculptor, he certainly would have gained repute as a colorist, for there are 
 very few artists who are more sensitive to the subtle charms of color, and 
 this sensitiveness shows itself in all his performances. 
 
 Joseph A. Bailly, who has been practicing the art of sculpture in 
 Philadelphia for a number of years, is a Frenchman by birth. He was 
 originally a wood-carver, and in view of the revival of public interest in 
 the long-time neglected art of wood-carving, it is a matter for some regret 
 that so talented and able a workman should have abandoned it, even for 
 an art that is supposed to demand a wider range of powers. His work 
 as a carver was of a high order of merit, and when he decided to devote 
 himself to sculpture he brought to the practice of that art a very thorough 
 training of a peculiarly effective kind. Bailly is a very rapid and very 
 indefatigable worker, and he has turned out of his studio an enormous 
 number of busts and statues, in bronze and marble, which deal with all 
 manner of subjects capable of sculpturesque treatment, and many of which 
 are works of much importance. The half life-size statue of Spring which 
 is represented by the engraving on our title page, was one of his con- 
 tributions to the Centennial Exhibition, and is a very favorable example 
 of his graceful and fanciful treatment of ideal themes. This pretty little 
 statue of Spring trailing her flower-bedecked robe on the earth, with its 
 
ROBERTS, B A ILLY, HARNISCH AND RUSH. 
 
 tender and flowing lines, is as opposite in style and subject as can be to 
 such masculine works as the equestrian statue of President Guzman Blanco 
 ol Venezuela, which stood in the rotunda of Memorial Hall during the 
 progress of the Centennial Exhibition, the colossal statue of Witherspoon 
 in Fairmount Park, or the dignified Washington in front of Independence 
 Hall. The equestrian statue of President Blanco was only a portion of 
 an important order which Bailly received from the Venezuelan government. 
 In addition to this he made a colossal statue of the same statesman, and 
 it is worth mentioning as an evidence of his rapidity, that although the 
 time given him for the completion of these two difficult works was very 
 short— so short that few sculptors would have cared to execute the com- 
 mission — both statues were finished and in their places in the city of Caracas 
 a number of weeks before the date called for in the contract. These 
 statues gave great satisfaction to the Venezuelan authorities and citizens, 
 and the sculptor was warmly congratulated for having contributed such 
 imposing ornaments to the public places of their capital city. Bailly's most 
 important ideal works in marble are companion groups entitled The First 
 Prayer, and Paradise Lost, which represent our first parents in their days 
 of innocence and after the fall. These are in the collection of Mr. Henry 
 C. Gibson, of Philadelphia. Among the noteworthy portrait busts modelled 
 by him, are those of General Grant and General Meade ; he has also made 
 models for equestrian statues of these distinguished soldiers. Since the 
 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has resumed its operations in the 
 magnificent new building at Broad and Cherry Streets, Philadelphia, Bailly 
 has filled the position of its Professor of Sculpture. 
 
 Albert E. Harnisch, a young Philadelphian of German parentage, like 
 Howard Roberts, received instructions from Bailly, and like him was one 
 of a small but enthusiastic band of students, which day after day and night 
 after night gathered in the rather cramped and dismal quarters assigned 
 
io6 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 to the modelling class in the old Academy of the Fine Arts on Chestnut 
 Street. Harnisch from the very first showed extraordinary talent. When 
 a mere boy he modelled, and afterwards himself cut in marble a statue 
 of Cupid, which won the heartiest commendation of the most judicious 
 judges. This figure — the original model of which is in possession of the 
 Philadelphia Sketch Club — is especially noteworthy on account of the 
 originality of the pose and the singular grace and sweetness of the face 
 and figure. The modelling is crude, and, that the sculptor lacked knowledge 
 is plain enough to the critical eye, but, after all allowances for defects are 
 made, it must be acknowledged that the work is exceedingly beautiful, 
 and that its execution by so young a man as Harnisch, was a very 
 remarkable performance indeed. Soon after the completion of this Cupid, 
 Harnisch modelled a Wandering Psyche, a Love in Idleness, companion 
 pieces entitled The Little Protector and The Little Hunter, a Narrahmattah 
 from Cooper's Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish, a model for a Lincoln 
 Monument, a number of ideal and portrait busts and several bas-reliefs. 
 These works were all of them distinguished by great fertility of invention 
 and a peculiarly refined and graceful fancy, and the praise bestowed upon 
 them was so cordial that the artist was persuaded by his friends to go 
 to Europe for the purpose of perfecting himself in his art. He has now 
 been a resident of Rome for several years, and is rapidly taking his place 
 in the front rank of the American sculptors stationed there. The most 
 important of the works executed by him in Rome is an elaborate com- 
 position representing a boy robbing an Eagle's nest. Photographs of 
 this, taken from three different points of view, which have been sent to 
 America indicate that the sculptor is in a fair way to realize all the high 
 expectations that have been formed with regard to him. Both the 
 venturesome boy and the angry bird are modelled with great freedom, 
 and are full of life and vigor, and the work as a whole is marked by 
 high qualities of excellence. 
 
ROBERTS, BAILLY, HARNJSCJf AND RUSH. 
 
 A chapter devoted to eminent Philadelphia sculptors in a work like 
 this would obviously not be complete without a mention of William Rush, 
 the first American sculptor, and a true artist. Were it not that Rush was 
 without any immediate following, and that it was not until after his death 
 that sculpture began to be practiced to any considerable extent by artists 
 of American birth, he would be entitled to the distinction of being 
 named as the father of the American school of sculpture. While, how- 
 ever, his works have not failed to awaken the admiration of those who 
 are competent to appreciate their very genuine qualities, they have exerted 
 little or no influence on the growth of the art of sculpture in the United 
 States, and they stand alone as the performances of a man who was far 
 ahead of his age in artistic sentiments and culture, and who deserves to 
 be much more highly thought of than he is by a present public which 
 has bestowed abundant commendation on many men of far less eminent 
 abilities. 
 
 William Rush was a wood-carver who was born in Philadelphia in 
 1757, and who died in 1833. Although he worked in the humblest 
 materials, he was none the less an artist in the truest and best sense 
 of the word. Indeed, considering the almost total lack of artistic culture 
 in his day, and especially the almost total ignorance of even the most 
 intelligent and best educated Americans with regard to sculpture and its 
 aims and objects, it is a matter for wonder that this wholly self-taught 
 man was able to accomplish what he did. It is nearly impossible for an 
 artist in our day to be self-taught in the sense that Rush w r as, for even 
 if a youth who desires to qualify himself for being an artist cannot avail 
 himself of the facilities of the best schools, what with books, engravings 
 and photographs, he can scarcely avoid obtaining considerable and 
 very adequate knowledge, not only with regard to the artistic master- 
 pieces of the world, but with regard to the doings of his contemporaries, 
 
ioS 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 and the respective merits of contemporary schools of art. In Rush's day 
 it was very different; communication with Europe was slow and infrequent, 
 books were very scarce, prints were a great deal scarcer, and photographs, 
 which have done so much to disseminate artistic knowledge and to pro- 
 mote the growth of artistic taste, were not in existence. He was forced 
 to feel his own way, with little or no aid from any source, and with very 
 little sympathetic appreciation from the people by whom he was surrounded. 
 Despite all the disadvantages under which he labored, however, he suc- 
 ceeded in doing a great deal of meritorious work, which, even if it is 
 imperfect in its modellings, and does betray the sculptor's lack of knowledge 
 with regard to some important technical points, is so thoroughly fine in 
 many particulars, that it is entitled to most cordial, if not unqualified 
 admiration. 
 
 Rush's sculptures are marked by many of the characteristics of the 
 French and Italian schools of his period, and with his limited facilities for 
 finding out what was being done by contemporary artists on the other side 
 of the water, he must have had a remarkably quick and receptive mind, 
 and a remarkably retentive memory, to have been able to profit by their 
 examples. He was, however, chiefly indebted to himself and to his study 
 of nature for becoming the truly excellent artist which he certainly was, 
 and his works are stamped by an individuality that acknowledges an 
 allegiance to no schools and no masters. Many of Rush's carvings were 
 figure-heads to vessels, and they have gone the way of the old-time 
 specimens of marine architecture to which they were attached. Several 
 of his most important performances in the way of busts of eminent men, 
 ideal statues and reliefs remain, however, to testify to his genius, and to 
 entitle him to a respectful mention in connection with the progress of 
 the fine arts in America. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 
 possesses two of his busts — one of Washington and one of himself 
 
ROBERTS, BAILLY, HARNISCH AND RUSH. 109 
 
 — and it ought to possess his exceedingly beautiful fountain statue of a 
 Nymph Carrying a Bittern. This last named work belongs to the 
 city of Philadelphia, as does also his statue of Washington which for 
 many years stood in Independence Hall. Tradition has it that the beautiful 
 Miss Vanuxem, the reigning belle of the day, posed as a model for it, 
 and if she was as beautiful as this statue would imply, the heart-flutterings 
 which she caused to the Philadelphia beaux were abundantly justified. 
 This statue is of wood, and for many years it stood in the Centre Square 
 — afterwards called Penn Square. After the completion of the Fairmount 
 Water Works, it was removed to the charming little park which was laid 
 out in connection with them, and was placed in position on the side of 
 the hill just above the forebay. A few years ago it was found that this 
 statue was badly decayed, and a bronze casting of it was therefore made, 
 which was given the place at one time occupied by a statue of a Boy 
 and Dolphin, on the fountain in old Fairmount Park. Strange to say, 
 the original statue, after having been carefully copied in an enduring 
 material, was, notwithstanding the fact of its being almost ready to drop 
 to pieces, returned to its old place on the side of the hill, without any 
 effort for its permanent preservation being made beyond decorating it 
 with a fresh coat of white paint. It certainly ought to have been deposited 
 in the Academy of the Fine Arts, or some other institution, where it 
 would have been properly cared for. This statue is not only a beautiful 
 work, but it is the most graceful and beautiful work of its kind in America. 
 There is no doubt about this, for no fountain statue in this country will 
 at all compare with it in dignity, grace, beauty, and true artistic appro- 
 priateness. In it the citizens of Philadelphia have a genuine masterpiece, 
 which they ought to prize as something beyond price, not only because 
 of its intrinsic merits, but because of its author. The old Park at Fair- 
 mount contains two other of the noteworthy performances of William 
 Rush. These are the reliefs above the doors of the wheel-house. They 
 
I IO 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 are compositions of superior excellence, in every way worthy of the artist, 
 and well worthy of having an effort made for their preservation, such as 
 was made in the case of the lovely fountain statue. 
 
 Rush was an enthusiast, but an intelligent enthusiast, in behalf of 
 his art and in behalf of artistic culture generally. He was exceedingly 
 anxious to have an Art Academy started in Philadelphia, and exerted 
 himself strenuously to get one established. His efforts for a long time 
 amounted to nothing, unless it was in calling attention to the subject, 
 and in preparing the minds of cultivated people to appreciate the neces- 
 sities of the situation, and thus smoothing the way for the enterprising 
 and public-spirited men who finally joined with him in founding the 
 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 
 
m 1 
 
 THE AlfGEL OF THE SEPULCHRE „ 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BROWN, WARD, PALMER, CONNELLY AND MOZIER 
 
 EARLY all of the sculptors whose performances have thus far 
 been noticed were educated abroad, and represented to a 
 greater or less extent in their works the ideas and traditions 
 of the European schools. In this cosmopolitan age, and, in this country, 
 which is a direct inheritor of the civilization of Pairope, it is not possible, 
 nor, perhaps, desirable, for any class of artists to ignore old world influence; 
 but, there is so much that is peculiar and distinctive in American life, 
 habit, customs and manner of thought, so much that calls for artistic 
 interpretation by men who are as near as may be, distinctively American 
 in their culture, that the careers of such sculptors as Henry Kirke Brown, 
 John Quincy Adams Ward and Erastus D. Palmer are to be viewed with 
 particular satisfaction. Of these three Brown is the only one who can be 
 said to have studied abroad, and as he was a man of mature years and 
 an artist of some repute when he made his brief visit to Europe, he is 
 almost as much entitled to be considered as an American taught artist as 
 Ward or Palmer. Ward had Brown for a master, while Palmer is entirely 
 self-taught, and has made a particular effort to preserve his own individu- 
 ality, and to keep himself free from the influence of all schools, ancient 
 
 and modern. That Palmer has not succeeded in doing this to the extent 
 
 in 
 
I I 2 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 he imagines, must be plain to any one familiar with his works, but it is 
 true that he has a very strongly marked individuality of style, and 
 is almost the only American sculptor of eminence whose works are 
 distinguished for high technical, as well as high ideal qualities who has. 
 These three fine artists have taken up the work of old William Rush, the 
 Philadelphia wood-carver, where he dropped it half a century ago, and 
 as they have shown that it is possible for Americans to become sculptors, 
 and good ones, without the aid of European instructors, it is to be hoped 
 that they will have a numerous following, and will succeed in materially 
 aiding to do what William Rush, in connection with Charles Wilson Peale 
 — another man of eminent talent, whose name is worthy of being held in 
 respectful remembrance by all true lovers of art — tried to do in the way 
 of founding a truly and distinctively American school of art. 
 
 Henry Kirke Brown is the oldest of the trio we have named. He 
 was born in Leyden, Massachusetts, in 1814, and originally intended to 
 devote himself to painting. He obtained considerable proficiency with the 
 brush, and even after he took up sculpture, he did not entirely abandon 
 the practice of painting. That his experiences in working frequently with 
 colors have been of the greatest value to him as a sculptor cannot be 
 doubted. The sculptor dealing with the round without the aid of color, 
 and the painter endeavoring to express relief by means of color, have 
 much to learn of each other, and they both would gain by knowing more 
 than they commonly do about each other's methods. Brown commenced 
 the study of art in Boston, but when about twenty-three years of age 
 he removed to Cincinnati. In that city, while doing work both as a 
 painter and as a sculptor, he went through a rigid anatomical course 
 under the direction of his friend Dr. Willard Parker, and it was while, 
 a resident of Cincinnati that he made his first marble bust. In a couple 
 of years he came east again, and in 1842 he went to Italy, where he 
 
BRO WN, WARD, PAL MER, CONNER LY A ND M OZIER. 1 1 3 
 
 remained for four years. While in Italy he executed several ideal statues 
 and portrait busts. On his return to America he located himself in 
 Brooklyn, and he has had his home, or at least his headquarters, either in 
 that city or in New York ever since. None of Brown's performances up to 
 the time he went to Brooklyn were very remarkable, although they were 
 more than respectable. Shortly after going to Brooklyn, however, an 
 opportunity was given him to distinguish himself by a commission for an 
 equestrian statue of Washington, to be paid for by the subscriptions of 
 wealthy and patriotic citizens of New York. This statue, which, on its 
 completion, was erected on a peculiarly imposing site in Union Square, 
 New York, has stood the test of the severest criticism for many, many 
 years. Its location, in the midst of a great city, and where the currents 
 of travel along its most important thoroughfare eddy around it constantly, 
 is the best that could be found in the whole United States for a really 
 admirable piece of monumental sculpture, and the most trying for an 
 indifferent one. 
 
 The equestrian statue of General Winfield Scott, which has recently 
 been completed by Brown for the United States government, for erection 
 on some prominent site in Washington, is in every way up to the high 
 standard of the New York Washington. Indeed we are not sure but that 
 the Scott is the most admirable of the two. In it the artist has not 
 flinched from the severest realism, and no one who has ever seen General 
 Scott on horseback can fail to be impressed by the startlingly life-like 
 appearance of this statue. Another of Brown's monumental statues which 
 is thoroughly satisfying, is his General Nathaniel Greene, in the old Repre- 
 sentatives' Hall in the National Capitol, and still another is the recumbent 
 figure of the late Edward Shippen Burd in St. Stephen's Church, Phila- 
 delphia. The General Greene was made on a commission from the State 
 of Rhode Island, and it is one of the very few works in the old Repre- 
 
ii4 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 sentatives' Hall which rise above mediocrity, or something still lower than 
 this. 
 
 Ward, who was Brown's pupil, and who assisted him with his Wash- 
 ington, is an even stronger man. He is certainly the ablest living American 
 sculptor, and his best works are distinguished by a union of realistic 
 strength and imaginative dignity that will entitle them to the admiration 
 of all future generations, no matter what may be the changes of fashion 
 or the fluctuations of taste. Ward's father was an Ohio farmer, and from 
 his birth in 1830 until he was of an age when it was necessary for him 
 to decide as to his future profession, he lived the ordinary life of a farmer's 
 boy, but developing his latent artistic talents by attempting to copy in 
 day and wax such engravings as took his fancy. His family, not unna- 
 turally, did not greatly encourage his inclinations to become an artist, and 
 after a good deal of persuasion he was induced to study medicine. This, 
 however, was so distasteful to him that he soon gave it up. His destiny 
 was finally decided by Brown consenting to admit him to his studio as a 
 pupil — a fortunate thing for the young sculptor, for it would have been 
 impossible for him to have found a better or more judicious master on 
 this side of the Atlantic. While under Brown's instruction Ward improved 
 rapidly, and before he was out of his apprenticeship he conceived the idea 
 and commenced to make designs for his Indian Hunter. When Brown 
 gave up his Brooklyn studio, Ward took it, and began the execution of 
 two important works — The Indian Hunter and a statue of Simon Kenton, 
 the Ohio pioneer — which brought him into immediate notice, and gave 
 him the position in the front rank of American artists which he has ever 
 since easily held. 
 
 The Indian Hunter, which is one of the principal of the purely artistic 
 adornments of Central Park, New York, is a wonderfully vigorous, life- 
 
© PIE 1,1 A.. 
 
B R O WN, WA RD, PAL MER , CONN EL LY A ND M O ZIER. 1 1 5 
 
 like and impressive work. It is by all odds the best and most interesting- 
 statue that the Park contains — and this not because it is American in its 
 subject, but because of its very genuine artistic qualities. This group — 
 for it is a group, as the dog, with the aid of which the hunter is tracking 
 his game, plays very nearly as important a part in it as the man does 
 — is one of the finest, if not the very finest that has been executed by 
 an American sculptor. It is not so elaborate as Greenough's group of 
 The Rescue at the National Capitol, but it is superior to that work in a 
 number of important particulars, and that superiority of itself marks it as 
 a performance of extraordinary merit. In the figure of the hunter, Ward 
 has made a close and faithful study of the peculiar muscular development 
 of the aboriginal races of this continent, as w r ell as of the Indian physi- 
 ognomy, for, as the reader is probably aware, not only does the Indian 
 skeleton differ materially in certain particulars from that of the man of 
 Caucasian descent, but the muscular development differs also. This is a 
 nice technical point that is of considerable but not of essential importance. 
 The great thing is that the sculptor has undertaken to represent a man 
 engaged in a certain act which calls all of his faculties into intense and 
 characteristic play, and that he has succeeded in doing so. Both the dog 
 — which fairly quivers with excitement, and which is barely stayed by the 
 cautionary hand of his master from rushing on his prey — and the Indian, 
 who advances with stealthy step, his eye intently fixed upon the object 
 against which he is advancing, and his whole being absorbed in the 
 eagerness of his pursuit, are instinct with an intense vitality, which suggests 
 not merely nature, but nature in one of his most interesting, because 
 most unsophisticated, moods. 
 
 Another of Ward's contributions to the Central Park collection of 
 statuary is his Shakespeare, erected at quite a recent period. There is a 
 certain malappropriateness about the idea of making a Park statue of such 
 
AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 a work as this, which it is difficult to become reconciled to. The figure, 
 nevertheless, is one of no common merit, and as an ideal representation 
 of the great dramatist, it is exceedingly satisfying. Ward has represented 
 Shakespeare in a meditative attitude, with one hand holding a book to 
 his breast, and the momentary action, of a man deep in thought almost 
 pausing in a slow saunter as an idea flits through his brain, is admirably 
 suggested. In the head of this statue the sculptor has not given a literal 
 translation of any one of the authentic portraits of Shakespeare that have 
 come down to us, but he has taken suggestions from all of them, and 
 the impression which, not the head merely, but the whole figure gives, is 
 that Shakespeare must have been much this sort of man. 
 
 An even greater work than this is the still more recent bronze statue 
 of heroic size of General Israel Putnam. This was executed for the State 
 of Massachusetts, and is one of the contributions of that State to the 
 National Sculpture Gallery in the old Representatives' Hall at Washington. 
 The Putnam, like the Shakespeare, is an ideal work, based upon such 
 authentic portraits as are in existence. Ward studied this work deeply, 
 and he has made of the bluff old farmer-soldier a truly heroic figure, full 
 of fiery energy and a dauntlessness of spirit that could not know the 
 meaning of such a word as fear. It is such a figure as would have made 
 Putnam's heart leap to look at, and which will always appeal, by its noble 
 simplicity, to the manly sympathies of like-minded men with him. 
 
 Before making either the Shakespeare or the Putnam, Ward executed 
 a considerable number of sculptures of greater or less importance. Just 
 before the war he resided for some time in Washington, where he 
 modelled busts of Joshua Giddings, John P. Hale, Alexander H. Stephens, 
 and other public men. Since the war he has sculptured a memorial 
 statue, representing a private of the Seventh New York Regiment, — a fine 
 
BROWN, WARD, PALMER, CONNELLY AND MOZIER. 117 
 
 work which greatly increased his already great reputation — and one of 
 Commodore Perry. The Seventh Regiment Soldier was erected in Central 
 Park, and the Perry at Newport, Rhode Island. Another superior per- 
 formance, of a different order of interest from any that have thus far been 
 mentioned, is the granite group of The Good Samaritan, in the Public 
 Garden at Boston. This is a memorial of the discovery of the anaesthetic 
 properties of ether, and in some particulars it is entitled to be regarded 
 as the artist's greatest achievement. 
 
 Palmer, who was born April 2, 181 7, in Onondaga County, New York, 
 was brought up to the carpenter's trade, and when he abandoned it for 
 sculpture he had the reputation of being an uncommonly good workman. 
 While engaged at carpentering he amused his leisure by cutting cameo 
 portraits on shells, and he was not long in acquiring a proficiency in 
 that sort of thing, and also not very long in injuring his eyes to such 
 an extent that he was compelled to give it up. He had discovered, 
 however, that he had the making of a sculptor in him, and his carpenter's 
 bench ceased to have any attractions for him. As he was very successful, 
 in some of his first attempts at clay modelling, in developing a peculiarly 
 delicate and fanciful vein of ideas, the public were not long in discovering 
 his merits, and in giving him ample encouragement. Palmer improved 
 rapidly, and he had not been working at his art many years before he 
 was the best known and most popular of American sculptors. There was 
 a quality in his work which pleased the average man and woman amazingly, 
 and the photographs of his ideal statues and busts must have sold by 
 thousands. It is creditable to him that his brilliant success did not spoil 
 him, for, although he has persisted in ignoring all schools and all masters, 
 he has steadily improved, and his latest works are distinguished by very 
 positive qualities of excellence not observable in those of several years 
 ago. His Chancellor Livingston — exhibited in the Centennial Exhibition 
 
ii8 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 — is a recent performance and a very admirable one. This is a dignified 
 and expressive statue, with a good deal of Palmer's peculiar gracefulness 
 in the arrangement of the draperies, but with a more masculine style of 
 treatment as a whole than was to have been expected from most of his 
 previous efforts. This statue was ordered by the State of New York for 
 the National Statue Gallery in the old Hall of Representatives. Most of 
 Palmers works, however, with the exception of his portrait busts, have 
 been interpretations of purely ideal subjects, such as The Infant Ceres, 
 The Sleeping Peri, The Spirit's Flight, Resignation, and Spring. The 
 statues which have added most to his fame are The Indian Girl, The 
 White Captive, and the Angel at the Sepulchre. Of this last we give a 
 finely executed engraving, which very perfectly reproduces the peculiar 
 expression of the face, which is one of the greatest charms of the statue. 
 Is this angel sitting there guarding the sepulchre and awaiting the awaking 
 of its slumbering tenant, or, has the dead arisen, and is he, with even his 
 angelic intelligence puzzled by the mystery of the resurrection, listening 
 intently at the footsteps of the approaching disciples, and considering what 
 answer he shall give to their eager queries ? A truly thoughtful work 
 of art always suggests more than it absolutely reveals, and if, in attempting 
 to read the expression on the face of Palmer's angel, we find that it 
 gives forth ' more than one meaning, we must remember that in this 
 respect its characteristics are identical with those of some of the greatest 
 of the great masterpieces. While noting how thoroughly American the 
 fine head of this angel is, we are also bound to note that both in face 
 and figure he is of a very fleshy and unangelical type. Indeed, Palmer 
 has always shown a singular preference for rather phlegmatic modes, and 
 his two most important studies from the nude — The White Captive and 
 The Indian Girl — are lacking in precisely that litheness which is one of 
 the chief charms of the best antique representatives of the nude human 
 figure. Both of these statues, however, have very admirable qualities. 
 
BROWN, WARD, PALMER, CONNELLY -AND MOZIER. 119 
 
 Many of Palmer's works, particularly his early ones, have not been dis- 
 tinguished by refined modelling — that is, the finer markings of the form 
 have either been neglected altogether or have not been adequately expressed. 
 In these figures the flesh really looks fleshy, and the sculptor has evidently 
 made a serious endeavor to express all that required expression. They 
 are works of great beauty, and they have all the peculiar ideal charm about 
 them that has made this sculptor's performances so enormously successful 
 with the general public — for the general public is not, as many artists 
 fancy, insensible to ideality in statuary and paintings, although it is insensible 
 to a good deal that attempts to pass for as much. Such a figure as 
 that of the Angel at the Sepulchre for instance, the engraving of which 
 is before the reader, is not without its positive technical merits, but it 
 appeals to the beholder not through them so much as through those 
 qualities that are beyond the reach of technique. 
 
 P. F. Connelly, a young sculptor who had been studying and working 
 in Florence for a number of years, and who had gained a good repute 
 through his ideal and portrait busts, came prominently before the American 
 public for the first time at the Centennial Exhibition. He exhibited a 
 much greater number of works than any other American sculptor, and 
 displayed as great a versatility as any. The most important of Connelly's 
 exhibits were the bronze group of Honor Arresting the Triumph of Death, 
 the marble group of St. Martin Dividing His Cloak, the marble statue of 
 Ophelia, and the marble statue of Thetis. The last named was a classic 
 theme, treated with a classic simplicity and grace that won for it very 
 cordial admiration. The Ophelia, and indeed most of Connelly's other 
 performances, represented distinctly modern and romantic ideas with regard 
 to the aims of sculpture. The two groups we have mentioned were far 
 more picturesque than sculpturesque in composition, and even the single 
 figure of Ophelia has little or nothing of what we are accustomed to call 
 
1 20 
 
 AMERICAN 
 
 SCULPTURES. 
 
 statuesqueness about it, but might have walked out of a gorgeously colored 
 picture and have been crystalized into the snowy whiteness of the marble. 
 The peculiarly picturesque attributes of this statue are strongly recognizable 
 in our engraving, which might readily be taken to represent, not a marble 
 Ophelia, but a figure glowing with all the hues of the painter's palette. 
 The adverse criticism that must be made against this statue is that it does 
 not strongly suggest the madness of Ophelia. Apart from this, however, it 
 is distinguished by a singular sweetness and grace in the expression of the 
 face and in the pose of the figure. This statue was admired during the 
 progress of the Centennial Exhibition even more than was the Thetis, 
 perhaps because it was more in accord with modern sympathies and tastes. 
 
 The pathetic group of the Prodigal Son, of which we give an engraving, 
 is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, it 
 having been presented to that institution some years ago by Mr. J. 
 Gillingham Fell. This is the most important production of its author, 
 Joseph Mozier, a native of Vermont, who has for a long time been a 
 resident of Rome. Mozier was born August 22, 181 2. Until he was about 
 thirty years of age art was only an amusement to him. In 1845, however, 
 he retired from business as a Bond Street merchant, in New York, and 
 went to Rome for the purpose of following the natural bent of his 
 inclinations. Among other things he has sculptured statues of Esther, 
 the Wept of the Wish-ton-Wish, a Peri, Jeptha's Daughter, Pocahontas, 
 Rebecca at the Well, Rizpah, and companion figures of Silence and 
 Truth. These last mentioned were made for the Astor Library. Mozier 
 was a successful business man before he became a sculptor, and since 
 he has devoted himself to art his business talents have apparently stood 
 him in good stead, as he has the reputation of being, in a business way, 
 one of the most successful of the American artists residing in Italy. He 
 is particularly fortunate in having his finest performance owned by an 
 
THE . PRODIGAL SON 
 
 FROM THE GROUP BT I MOZIER 
 
BROUW, WARD, PALMER, CONNELLY AND MOZIER. 121 
 
 American institution of the high character of the Pennsylvania Academy 
 of the Fine Arts, and the prominent place which has been assigned to 
 his group of The Prodigal Son in the interesting collection of sculptures 
 belonging to the Academy ought to be most flattering to his pride. There 
 is much pure pathos in this composition, which appeals with directness and 
 force to the hearts of those who pause in their rambles through the galle- 
 ries of the Academy to gaze on it. The benignity and fatherly tenderness 
 of the old man, who remembers nothing except that the lost one has been 
 found, and the utter weariness of the son, and his complete abandonment 
 of himself to his father's mercies, are expressed in a language that all may 
 read, and that requires no explanation or commentary. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GOULD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND AKERS 
 
 HAKESPEARE makes the Duke Theseus say in way of apology 
 for the play of Pyramus and Thisbe as represented by Bully 
 Bottom — that paragon of all artistic pretenders — and his com- 
 rade clowns: "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worse are 
 no worse, if imagination mend them." A kindly criticism that embodies 
 a fine philosophical idea, for it is a recognition of the genuine qualities 
 of all really earnest artistic effort, as well as of the necessity for the 
 spectator being in imaginative sympathy with a work of art before he can 
 properly understand and appreciate it. Standing before Gould's statue of 
 the West Wind, for instance, it is essential for a comprehension of the 
 peculiar points of excellence in the work, not only that the very beautiful 
 idea which has been expressed should be clearly defined in the mind, but 
 that the imagination should come to the aid of the understanding. How 
 could the artist cut out of the heart of a block of marble that has been 
 buried for centuries in the everlasting hills, a personification of 
 
 " — a breath of viewless wind 
 As very spirit be," 
 
 except by having come thronging back to him the memory of many a 
 
GOULD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND A NEKS. 
 
 breezy day upon the prairies, where the tall grasses billowed and bowed 
 as the strong", free air currents came gliding down from the heights of the 
 Rocky Mountains, to whirl in a mystic dance over them? And to be in 
 sympathy with such a personification the spectator must be able to bring 
 up before his mind some image like that which inspired the imagination 
 of the sculptor; then, if art is capable of speaking any language to him, 
 this bright-faced and free-hearted American girl, whom an artistic meta- 
 morphosis has caught and turned to marble in the midst of her joyous 
 dance, ceases to represent a mere phantasy and becomes the embodiment 
 of a fine artistic fact. Such a statue as this ought to impress the imagi- 
 nation in the same manner that the West Wind, sweeping and whirling 
 over the grassy prairies would do. And does it not do this ? we would 
 ask of any one who saw it at the Centennial Exhibition, and who knows 
 what the West Wind of the prairies is. The statue is so truly original 
 in conception, and the artist has treated his subject with such disregard 
 of many artistic conventions, that our engraving, while it may give a general 
 notion of it, cannot do it full justice. It is a work that must be studied 
 from more than one point of view, if its full meaning is to be thoroughly 
 understood and appreciated, for the motion which is indicated is very 
 peculiar, and, if the statue is regarded as a mere representation, and 
 nothing more, of the human figure, is an unnatural one. Considered in 
 its true light as a personification, however, the motion of the figure is 
 entirely natural, and the license of the sculptor has its ample justification 
 in the results which he has achieved. 
 
 The great originality of Gould's West Wind it is worth while to 
 insist on, and to insist on strongly, for attacks have been made on the 
 statue on the ground that it is not original. The work of which it has 
 been asserted to be an imitation, is Canova's well-known Hebe, but no 
 candid critic who is acquainted with both statues can possibly say that 
 
124 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 there are such points of resemblance between them as to lay the American 
 sculptor open to the charge of having borrowed anything from the Italian. 
 The only point in which the two works at all resemble each other is in 
 the backward blown skirts, but Gould has treated his draperies as he has 
 treated his figure, in his own fashion, and as the statues in motion, style 
 and execution are in every way dissimilar, the accusation made against 
 the West Wind is a mere absurdity. Gould, indeed, had no occasion to 
 borrow from anybody, much less from a man of the limited imaginative 
 gifts of Canova, and in all the elements of genuine poetry his West Wind 
 is out of all comparison superior to the Hebe. The sculptor, in a letter 
 to the writer of these chapters, said that the idea of this statue flashed 
 upon him in a moment — as all fine and original ideas, it seems to us, 
 must do to an artist, no matter what labor it may cost him to give them 
 palpable shape in marble or on canvas. That it was a labor of love to 
 mould that idea into shape in the yielding clay, and to give it form in 
 the enduring marble, we can well believe. The artist knew that his idea 
 was a fine one, and that it was well worthy of being worked out in the 
 most perfect shape he could give it. The original of this statue was 
 purchased by Hon. Demas Barnes, of Brooklyn, but numerous replicas 
 of it have been executed. 
 
 Thomas R. Gould, the sculptor of the West Wind, is a native of 
 Boston, and was born about 1825. Up to the commencement of the 
 Civil War he was a merchant, and art and literature were mere pastimes 
 for the beguilement of his leisure hours. The breaking out of the war 
 interfered so seriously with the business of his house, which was largely 
 engaged in the Southern trade, that he determined to drop mercantile 
 pursuits and to carry out a long-cherished desire by devoting himself to 
 art. He therefore went to Florence, and, although a man of middle age, 
 bent himself seriously to the study of the technique of sculpture. 
 
¥E § T ¥IIDo 
 
GOULD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND AKERS. 
 
 One of his earliest performances after becoming a sculptor, was a 
 bust of Junius Brutus Booth. With this great actor Gould was on terms 
 of friendly intimacy, and in his book entitled The Tragedian, he has 
 preserved invaluable reminiscences of Booth's playing in most of his 
 important roles. This little book, in fact, is thoroughly admirable in its 
 way. It relates concerning the actor just the very facts best worth relating, 
 and in reading over Gould's descriptions of the elder Booth's performances, 
 those familiar with the younger Booth's methods, can readily see that he 
 is indebted to his gifted father for many of the finest and most impressive 
 of the " points " which he makes. For instance, any one who has attentively 
 watched Edw r in Booth in the character of Cassius in Shakespeare's tragedy 
 of Julius Caesar, must have noticed how he steps over the body of Caesar, 
 in the assassination scene, scarcely restraining himself from trampling on 
 it as he does so, his countenance all the while gleaming with an expression 
 of gratified hate and revenge. This detail of stage business seems to 
 have been original with the elder Booth, and it also seems to have made 
 a profound impression on the imagination of Gould, for he alludes to it 
 as one of the most striking features of the actor's personation of Cassius. 
 
 Timon is a Shakespearean character that Gould regretfully wishes that 
 the elder Booth had played, and in his statue of Timon standing " upon 
 the beached verge of the salt flood" and letting "sour words go by, 
 and language end," he has apparently attempted to embody the ideal 
 of such a Timon as Booth would have made had he undertaken the part. 
 The artist asserts that the likeness to Booth in this statue is uninten- 
 tional, but it is so positive that he must, even if unconsciously to himself, 
 have somehow obtained an artistic identification in his mind of the great 
 actor with the misanthrope "sick of this false world," whom the world's 
 greatest poet created for the use of illustrious actors like Junius Brutus 
 Booth. 
 
AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 One of Goulds most imaginative performances is a Ghost of Hamlet's 
 Father. This is a recently executed relief in marble, and the partial 
 translucency of the material has been skillfully taken advantage of to pro- 
 duce a " luminous, gem-like, ghost-like, death-like " face, that appears to 
 be resolving itself into form out of the marble as out of a thick mist, and 
 that, with its hollow eyes and the fleecy, cloud-like beard, only half detaching 
 itself from the surrounding nothingness, is most spiritual in its suggestive- 
 ness. The sculptor has succeeded in this work in doing what innumerable 
 artists have altogether failed to do, for " the Majesty of buried Denmark," 
 which stalks with so kingly a stride through Shakespeare's tragedy, is not 
 commonly an impressive figure as represented on the stage or on canvas. 
 
 Another Shakespearean work by Gould is a full-length statue of Cleo- 
 patra — Cleopatra exclaiming as she dies : — 
 
 "Methinks, I hear 
 Antony call ; I see him rouse himself 
 To praise my noble act ; I hear him mock 
 The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men 
 To excuse their after wrath * * * * 
 The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, 
 Which hurts and is desir'd." 
 
 The suggestions of this statue are as opposite as may be from those 
 of Story's celebrated work. Gould has not found it necessary to depart 
 from the Grecian type which Hawthorne thought tame, but which certainly 
 is not tame, and his Cleopatra is unmistakably a woman of Grecian lineage. 
 The artistic value of the work, however, does not depend upon the 
 realization of any particular type in face and figure, so much as upon 
 the expressiveness of the pose, which even in its perfect freedom and 
 abandonment is inspired by a queenly grace and dignity. The fires of 
 
(,0(JLD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND AKERS. 
 
 the "great smouldering furnace deep down in the woman's heart," which 
 Hawthorne detected when gazing at Story's Cleopatra, in Gould's statue 
 have burned themselves out, and have left nothing but a mass of cinders 
 and ashes to tell how fiercely they once did burn. This statue is in the 
 possession of Mr. Isaac Fenno, who built for it a special gallery adjoining 
 his magnificent residence in the Boston Highlands. 
 
 The statue of The Ascending Spirit in the Forest Hill Cemetery is a 
 work of exceeding grace. The figure really appears to be floating upward, 
 and the artist has been remarkably successful in overcoming the difficulties 
 of his material in carrying out his idea. Two colossal heads, one of 
 Christ, and one of Satan are among the most interesting of Gould's ideal 
 works, while his statues of John Hancock at Lexington, and Governor 
 Andrew at Hingham, Massachusetts, are admirable specimens of portraiture. 
 
 The actors are accustomed to say that a character w r ell dressed is half 
 played ; with a painter or sculptor a subject well selected accomplishes 
 something more than half the struggle for public approbation which he 
 enters upon when he undertakes a new work. There is no subject an 
 artist can choose that is so absolutely certain of gaining him an admiring- 
 audience as a mother and her babe. Whether it is a mere coarse peasant 
 nursing her infant under the shelter of a hay-rick, or a Madonna surrounded 
 by a choir of angels and a Divine Wonder in her arms, or Jochebed 
 fleeing with the child Moses from the insane fury of Pharaoh, and with 
 her soul divided between hope and fear as she pauses for a moment ere 
 she tears him from her own bosom to commit him to that of the Nile, 
 the theme, as old as the first-born of " the thornless garden " makes the 
 strongest appeals to the tenderest of human sympathies. Simmons' statue 
 of Jochebed is a work that no interpretation can give a meaning to if it 
 does not interpret itself at a first glance. The care-worn woman with 
 
128 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 her Egyptian coif about her head, with her clinging garments defining 
 her matronly form, and with the innocent babe nestling in her lap, is 
 gazing intently, eagerly and anxiously at the wide river which flows at her 
 feet, and is hesitating to do what she knows must be done. The story 
 tells itself with an all-sufficient completeness, but the merits of the statue 
 do not by any means exhaust themselves with a satisfactory exposition 
 of the subject. The finely executed engraving which we give of this 
 statue shows that it is an exceedingly careful and conscientious piece of 
 work, in which all the details are elaborated with the artists best skill. 
 The face is full of expression, and the draperies, while broadly massed, 
 as draperies in sculpture always should be, are minutely and elaborately 
 studied in a manner that is suggestive of some of the best antique work. 
 This statue was executed by Simmons for Mr. W. S. Appleton of Boston, 
 and it is one of the earliest of his important works. 
 
 Franklin Simmons, like Gould, and indeed a majority of the sculptors 
 that have been mentioned in this work, is a New Englander by birth. 
 When a school-boy, and when going through college he showed a 
 remarkable aptitude for drawing, painting and modelling, and cultivated 
 his talents with such good effect that very shortly after leaving college he 
 decided to start business as a sculptor. His first works were portrait 
 busts, and these were so satisfactory to the subjects and their friends, 
 that the artist was encouraged to follow the example of numerous other 
 young sculptors by going to Washington for the purpose of seeking orders 
 among the public men of the day. He resided in Washington during 
 nearly the whole of the Civil War period, and modelled a considerable 
 number of busts as well as several full-lengths. In 1867 he went to Italy, 
 where he has since resided. 
 
 The Jochebed was one of the first noteworthy results achieved after 
 
GANYMEDE. 
 
 ENGRAVED BY J.H.BAKER, FROM THE GROUP BY E.S.BARTHOLOMEW. 
 
GOULD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND A A' LA'S. 
 
 he established himself in Italy. Later he made a marble statue of Roger 
 Williams to be placed in the National Sculpture Gallery at Washington 
 as one of the contributions of the State of Rhode Island. As this work 
 is going through the press it is announced that Simmons has completed 
 a statue of Governor King of Maine, which is also to be placed in the 
 National Sculpture Gallery. If this work is as good as the Roger Williams 
 it is very good indeed, for the statue of the founder of Rhode Island 
 is a performance of very decided merit. It is an ideal statue, as no 
 portraits of Roger Williams are in existence, but the sculptor evidently 
 studied his subject very thoroughly, and succeeded in forming in his own 
 mind a very strongly defined image of a man such as Williams might 
 have been. The statue has been a good deal criticised, chiefly, it has 
 appeared to us, because it does not correspond with ideals which some 
 other people have formed, for even its severest critics have admitted that, 
 apart from all questions of portraiture, it is a work of superior excellence. 
 It is worth while for the American people to prize highly, and to give 
 evidence that they do, a work of the very genuine artistic qualities of 
 Simmons' Roger Williams, as their National Capitol has been made the 
 depository for an infinite number of fearful and wonderful things in the 
 way of pictures and statuary. The National Sculpture Gallery in the old 
 Hall of Representatives, in particular, is filled with mediocrities and worse, 
 in the midst of which such statues as Ward's Putnam, Brown's Greene, 
 Palmer's Livingston and Simmons' Ro^er Williams assert themselves with 
 an easy superiority, and demonstrate the folly of giving commissions for 
 important national works to beginners and pretenders who debase the 
 title of artist by arrogating it to themselves. 
 
 Another very recent performance by Simmons — the most important, 
 in fact, that he has yet executed — is the monument to Roger Williams at 
 Providence, Rhode Island. This was dedicated on October 16, 1877. The 
 
13° 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 entire work, the pedestal as well as the statues upon it, was designed by 
 Simmons, and was executed at a cost of $25,000. This monument is 
 described as consisting "of a broad granite base, with steps rising one 
 above another, supporting a handsome granite pedestal, and surmounted 
 by a bronze figure of Roger Williams, seven and a half feet high. On 
 the steps stands History, a draped figure in bronze, writing the name of 
 Roger Williams on the pedestal. * * * * The figure of Williams is 
 ideal, no portrait of him being in existence. He is clad in the historic 
 costume of the Puritans, showing the entire throat and neck; the coat 
 collar is tied with a ribbon, the jerkin and other characteristic garments 
 of the time are there, and on the shoulders rests a Genevan cloak which 
 lends much dignity to the whole figure, and displays unusual grace in 
 the flowing folds. The left hand holds a large Bible, pressing it gently 
 against his breast, while the right is raised as in persuasive discourse. 
 The face is extremely benignant, combining the Puritan expression with 
 great spirituality. The forehead is singularly noble. The hair flows down 
 in mellow lines nearly to the shoulders. The statue of History is classical 
 in costume, but not in attitude, and the beautiful figure of the Muse forms 
 a striking contrast to that of the man above, to whom she pays reverence. 
 This combination of one figure above another is altogether novel, and has 
 been pronounced bold in the extreme." Simmons was employed for four 
 years in executing the models for this work, and the bronze castings were 
 made under his immediate superintendence, at the Munich foundry. The 
 idea of raising an imposing monument to the founder of Rhode Island 
 was formulated by the freedmen of the town of Providence more than a 
 hundred years ago, but circumstances of various kinds prevented its 
 accomplishment until recently. The city is now indebted to a descendant 
 of Roger Williams, if not for the monument, at least for the beautiful 
 Park of which it is a conspicuous ornament. This Park, which was 
 bequeathed to the city of Providence on the condition that a suitable 
 
GOULD, SIMMONS, BARTHOLOMEW AND AKERS. 131 
 
 monument to Roger Williams would be erected within its boundaries, by 
 Miss Betsey Williams — the descendant above alluded to — is the same 
 estate that Williams received from the Sachem Miantonomah as a special 
 gift in token of friendship and good-will. 
 
 Edward Sheffield Bartholomew and Benjamin Akers — more commonly 
 known as Paul Akers — were men who died before they had fulfilled all 
 the bright promises of their youth. They lived long enough to do some 
 notable works, however, and to win the cordial praises of the most dis- 
 criminating critics on both sides of the Atlantic. Bartholomew and Akers 
 were nearly of an age. Bartholomew was a native of the town of 
 Colchester, Connecticut, and was born in 1822; Akers was born at Sacca- 
 rappa, in Maine, in 1825. The first mentioned died at Naples in 1858, 
 and the latter at Philadelphia in 1861. Bartholomew was originally a 
 book-binder by trade; afterwards he tried his hand at dentistry. It was 
 a perusal of that most fascinating of autobiographies, the Memoirs of 
 Benvenuto Cellini, that determined him to become an artist. As he was 
 color-blind he determined to devote himself to sculpture rather than to 
 painting. Entering as a student of the National Academy of Design, in 
 New York, he worked diligently there for a time, until being appointed 
 Curator of the W r adsworth Gallery, at Hartford, Connecticut, he was able 
 to pursue his studies under circumstances peculiarly advantageous to him. 
 While he was at the Wadsworth Gallery he made a statue of Flora and 
 some other sculpturesque works of less importance. Encouraged by the 
 hearty praises bestowed upon these, he determined to go to Italy. With 
 the exception of a brief visit he made to America for the purpose of 
 superintending the erection of a monument to Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, 
 he resided in Italy during the balance of his life, and it was in that 
 country that nearly all his important works were produced. After Bar- 
 tholomew's death the city of Hartford became possessed of his models. 
 
AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 Bartholomew was an artist of very eminent abilities, and had he lived 
 he would undoubtedly have done some great things in sculpture. What 
 he did accomplish entitles his name to a very prominent place in the list 
 of the American sculptors, as all of his best works are distinguished by 
 refinement, grace, and truly poetical sentiment. Bartholomew's best work 
 is probably the Eve Repentant in the collection of the late Joseph Harrison, 
 Jr., of Philadelphia, although the Ganymede — of which we give an engraving 
 — has won for itself admiration almost as great as that which has been 
 bestowed upon the Eve. In the Ganymede, the sculptor has not permitted 
 his classic theme to fetter his free hand with purely classic traditions, and 
 the work is very distinctly a modern one, in spite of its subject. He 
 translated the old legend in his own way, and was doubtless wise in so 
 doing, for he gave the world something original, and an original work of 
 genuine merit is always to be prized above an imitation, no matter how clever 
 the latter may be. Among the works executed by Bartholomew, may be 
 mentioned as the most important, a Blind Homer led by His Daughter; 
 a Calypso; a Sappho; a Shepherd Boy of the Campagna; the Genius of 
 Painting; the Genius of Music; Belisarius; Hagar and Ishmael; Ruth an-d 
 Naomi; Youth and Old Age; Genevieve, and the Evening Star. 
 
 Akers commenced work as a sculptor in Boston in 1849, where he 
 found some one to instruct him in clay modelling and plaster casting. 
 Among his earliest works of consequence were a head of Christ and some 
 portrait busts, which attracted attention by their very intrinsic qualities, 
 and which served to obtain for him commissions. Well-executed busts 
 of Longfellow, Samuel Appleton, Professor Cleveland and other prominent 
 gentlemen, added to his reputation and provided him with the means to 
 go to Europe. He resided for a year in Florence, studying hard all the 
 time, and on his return to America he made a statue of Benjamin in 
 Egypt. When this, his first full-length statue was completed, he modelled 
 
GOULD, SIMMONS, DAR1 HOLOMEW AND AKERS. 133 
 
 busts for a time in Washington, and then in 1854 he again went to Italy 
 and took up his residence in Rome. It was in Rome that he made the 
 acquaintance of Hawthorne, who was so impressed with his beautiful statue 
 of the Pearl Diver, that he appropriated it, along with Story's Cleopatra, 
 and another of Akers' works — a really noble bust of Milton — for his 
 imaginary sculptor Kenyon, in the romance of The Marble Fawn. Akers' 
 health was very poor during the last years of his life, and he consequently 
 did not accomplish a very great amount of work. What he did do, 
 however, is in a high degree excellent, and his Una and the Lion ; 
 Isaiah ; Diana and Endymion ; St. Elizabeth of Hungary — to mention a 
 few of his finest performances — have won the commendations of those 
 who do not lavish their praises indiscriminately. Akers came back to 
 the United States in i860, and died in the following year. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HARRIET HOSMER AND OTHER FEMALE SCULPTORS 
 
 ID it ever occur to any one that such a baby-faced heroine as 
 
 Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci, in the Barberini Palace in 
 
 Rome, represents, was the most likely person of all others to 
 
 be the central figure in a tragedy of the peculiar kind that has made the 
 
 name of Cenci infamous ? Miss Hosmer seems to have been impressed 
 
 with the peculiar characteristics of the face — not merely that indefinable 
 
 expression which is such a puzzle to all who have gazed on Guido's 
 
 picture — and she has made an earnest attempt to reproduce it in her 
 
 recumbent statue of Beatrice asleep on the morning of her execution. 
 
 The word innocence does not describe the singular qualities of this face, 
 
 and it is as far removed as possible from the graceful animalism of the 
 
 Faun of Praxitiles; it is a true baby-face that has something in it other 
 
 than the innocence of a babe, and that suggests, somehow, a lack of 
 
 ability to understand or appreciate human responsibilities of the most 
 
 ordinary kind. It is the sphynx-like character of Guido's portrait, that 
 
 fascinates while it presents an unanswerable problem in human nature, 
 
 that has kept alive the memory of Beatrice Cenci, and the altogether 
 
 disgusting story of crime in which she figures so prominently. 
 134 
 
HARRIET HOSMER AND OTHER FEMALE SCULPTORS. 135 
 
 As for Miss Hosmer's statue, it is frank enough in its meanings. 
 The girl has fallen, exhausted in mind and body, into a profound and 
 dreamless sleep, and is absolutely unconscious of the swift passing moments 
 that are bringing her nearer and nearer her doom. There is an uncon- 
 scious and unstudied grace in the very expressive attitude into which her 
 figure has fallen, with a prayer half said upon her lips and her limp hand 
 unclasping itself from the beads of the rosary, which, ere sleep overwhelmed 
 her with a happy oblivion, she had been telling over with the fervor of 
 utter despair. That Guido's picture was the inspiration for the statue is 
 evident, and the sculptress is to be credited with a most sympathetic 
 interpretation of her original. This interesting work, which, with the 
 exception of her Zenobia, is the most celebrated of the sculptures executed 
 by Miss Hosmer, is in the public library at St. Louis. 
 
 Harriet Hosmer, the most famous of American female sculptors, was 
 born at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1830. Her father was a physician, 
 and she was encouraged by him to follow her natural inclination for out- 
 door exercise and athletic sports. The death of her mother when she was 
 quite a child threw her greatly on her own resources, and under the 
 peculiar system pursued with regard to her by her father, who was anxious 
 to counteract a tendency to consumption, she speedily developed into a 
 good deal of a Tom-boy, and was more expert at hunting bird's-nests, 
 riding horses, and indeed all manner of boyish pastimes and mischiefs 
 than she was at needle-work and the usual girlish exercises. When quite 
 a child she was a taxidermist of no little skill, and prepared a number 
 of specimens of her own shooting, and at the early age of eight years she 
 showed such a strong predisposition for artistic pursuits as to induce her 
 friends to believe that it would be worth while to cultivate her talents. Miss 
 Hosmer's first serious artistic essays were as a painter. She began this 
 practice when about sixteen years of age, but conceiving that sculpture 
 
AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 was a higher form of art she undertook to learn modelling, and was so 
 successful in making a statuette from a figure in an engraving which took 
 her fancy, that she was persuaded to believe her genius had at last 
 found its proper field of employment. She next attempted a number of 
 ideal busts and portraits of her intimate friends, and having gotten her 
 hand in a measure trained to the proper wielding of a sculptor's tools, she 
 made an essay in marble by copying in reduced size a colossal bust of 
 Napoleon by Canova. At the time she was making these tentative efforts 
 in the art of sculpture, she was also going through the process of being 
 "finished" at the celebrated Female Seminary -kept by Mrs. Sedgwick at 
 Lenox, Massachusetts. The attendance at this Seminary had a potent 
 influence on her destiny in more ways than one. To her able and amiable 
 preceptress she was indebted for influences which moulded her rather 
 wayward character in such a manner that from a hoydenish girl who 
 would acknowledge no restraints, she speedily developed into a self-poised 
 woman with all her faculties in training, and with her character formed in 
 such a manner that she was prepared to follow her chosen career with 
 steadfastness as well as energy and perseverance. To a friendship which 
 was formed while at Mrs. Sedgwick's school, Miss Hosmer owed the 
 most active and sympathetic encouragements which surrounded her in 
 the novitiate stages of her artistic career. Her intimate among her 
 school-mates was a Miss Crowe, the daughter of a prominent citizen of St. 
 Louis. On leaving school she went home with this young lady, and what 
 at the outset promised to be nothing more than a mere friendly sojourn 
 with the family of a school-mate, proved to be the turning-point of her 
 career. Mr. Crowe, the father of her friend, if at first he was attracted to 
 Miss Hosmer by her originality and her eccentricities, very soon became 
 satisfied that his daughter had brought beneath his roof a genius, and a 
 very rare one, and a liking for the very independent and rather odd young 
 lady speedily developed into a cordial admiration. The admiration of Mr. 
 
JTO C HE IB E Bo 
 
HA RRIET HO SHIER A ND O THER EE MA LE SCULPTORS. 137 
 
 Crowe, however, took an eminently praetical turn, and he made it both a 
 duty and a pleasure to encourage and stimulate Miss Hosmer to cultivate 
 her great talents to the utmost. 
 
 For a time, however, Miss Hosmer's Bohemian disposition got the 
 better of her desire to win for herself a great name as an artist. She had 
 not been long enough released from the restraint of Mrs. Sedgwick's 
 school to find it an easy matter to settle down to hard work, without first 
 gratifying the roving impulses which were strongly moving within her. 
 She, therefore, started off without an escort for the purpose of seeing for 
 herself some of the wonders of w T hat in those days was called the Great 
 West, and penetrated into the wilderness as far as the Falls of St. Antony 
 in Minnesota. With the savages residing in the vicinity of the Falls 
 Miss Hosmer managed to get upon terms of friendly intimacy, and her 
 residence among them was one of the most pleasurable episodes in her 
 career. All this sort of thing was not by any means bad preparation 
 for the drudgery in the modelling room and the dissecting room, which 
 it was essential should be gone through with before she could produce 
 anything in the way of sculptures that would be entitled to praise from 
 other than warm personal friends. 
 
 Having satisfied her adventuresome longings by her trip to the Falls 
 of St. Antony, Miss Hosmer returned to St. Louis, and went to work with 
 a right good will to give justification for the high expectations which her 
 friend Mr. Crowe had formed with regard to her. Under the direction of 
 Dr. McDowell she studied anatomy, and was one of the most regular 
 attendants in his dissecting room. She also practiced constantly at 
 modelling in clay, and when she had obtained some proficiency in the 
 production of forms she essayed putting her modellings into marble. A 
 bust in marble of Dr. McDowell was one of the first of the performances 
 
i3« 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 which she deemed of sufficient merit to go out of her own possession. 
 This was presented to Mr. Crowe. Other portrait busts were followed by 
 a Hesper, a work of truly ideal beauty which excited the admiration of 
 other than partial critics. 
 
 By this time Miss Hosmer had exhausted such facilities for thorough 
 artistic instructions as America afforded, and by the advice of her best 
 friends she decided to go to Rome. With a daguerreotype of her Hesper, 
 as a specimen of her abilities, in her possession, she sailed for Europe, in 
 company with her father, in 1852. On arriving at Rome she obtained 
 an introduction to the English sculptor Gibson, and that excellent artist, 
 after looking at the daguerreotype of the Hesper, consented at once to 
 admit her to his studio as a pupil. Miss Hosmer studied and worked 
 under Gibson's direction until his death. 
 
 The statue of Zenobia, which is, perhaps, taking it all in all, Miss 
 Hosmer's highest artistic achievement, represents the captive Queen of 
 Palmyra, walking with stately and royal tread in the triumphal procession 
 of her Roman conqueror. The figure is full of dignity and queenly grace, 
 with a fine expression of sorrow and disdain on the face, and it represents 
 the ripe results of a rare native genius, cultivated and brought to per- 
 fection under the training of a master who was himself an artist of very 
 superior abilities and very superior attainments, but who fettered himself 
 with theories about the objects and aims of sculpture which condemned 
 him to be an imitator rather than a creator. 
 
 The Zenobia was sculptured some time after the Beatrice Cenci, and 
 it confirmed the very favorable impressions which that work made. It 
 was the Beatrice Cenci which first made Miss Hosmer's name known to 
 the English public, and which introduced her to all of her countrymen 
 
HARRIET HOSMER AND OTHER REM ALE SCULPTORS. 139 
 
 except the few friends who had appreciated her talents and encouraged 
 their exercise. The Beatrice Cenci was first exhibited in the Royal Aca- 
 demy in London, and it was afterwards shown in New York and other 
 American cities, previous to being placed in the Public Library at St. 
 Louis. On both sides of the Atlantic it excited admiration, and it is now 
 regarded as one of the chief art treasures of the city where Miss Hosmer 
 first studied art, and where she made her first serious essays as a sculptor. 
 The public Library of St. Louis is also the depository of another import- 
 ant work by her. This is the CEnone mourning over her desertion by 
 Paris — the first full-length statue modelled by the artist after she com- 
 menced work in Rome under the direction of Gibson. The QEnone was 
 purchased from Miss Hosmer by her friend and helper, Mr. Crowe, and by 
 that gentleman was presented to the institution which now owns it. At 
 a later period Miss Hosmer made, on a commission from the State of 
 Missouri, a full-length statue of Hon. Thomas H. Benton. Among the 
 other important works by this artist may be mentioned a charming figure 
 of Puck; busts of Daphne and Medusa, which were executed for Samuel 
 Appleton, of Boston ; a bust of Mrs. Cass ; a statue of a Sleeping Faun ; 
 and a monumental statue, in memory of a beautiful French girl. 
 
 Emma Stebbins, a native of New York, like Miss Hosmer, has long 
 had her residence in Rome, whither she went some years ago, when, 
 throwing aside her palette, she decided to abandon painting for sculpture. 
 Miss Stebbins originally, we believe, devoted herself to the practice of 
 art merely for the sake of the amusement which it afforded her. With 
 her friends for models, she painted portraits and figure studies, and 
 improved her style by occasionally making a careful copy of a good picture. 
 Her success as an amateur was such that she finally determined to become 
 a professional artist, and, although up to the time of making this deci- 
 sion she had worked chiefly as a painter, sculpture offered such particular 
 
140 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 attractions that she took it up in preference to painting. Her first 
 important work after going to Rome was a statuette of Joseph. This 
 elicited warm commendation from good judges, and it was speedily 
 followed by other and more elaborate performances, the chief of which is 
 the fountain statue executed for Central Park, New York, and now one 
 of the artistic adornments of that noble pleasure ground. This statue is 
 called the Angel of the Waters, and represents the heavenly visitor 
 who periodically visited the Pool of Bethesda and conferred upon its 
 waters their healing powers. The idea is a beautiful one, and it has 
 been very beautifully worked out. Other statues in Central Park perhaps 
 surpass this one in particulars of greater or less importance, but there is 
 something in it that appeals forcibly to the imagination of the average 
 man and woman, and it is one of the most admired and popular works 
 that the Park contains. Of Miss Stebbins' other sculpturesque perform- 
 ances there are especially worthy of mention a statue of Horace Mann 
 and one of Columbus. The last named has been very greatly praised. 
 
 One of the most important works executed by Margaret Foley, a 
 native of Vermont, is a fountain. which, during the progress of the Cen- 
 tennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, was placed in the centre of the Hor- 
 ticultural Hall. This fountain, although on account of not being in the 
 Art Department of the Exhibition, it escaped the notice of most of the 
 art critics and of a good many of the visitors to the Exhibition, was very 
 much better placed lor the revelation of its best qualities than almost any 
 of the statuary in the Exhibition. It was in admirable harmony with its 
 graceful surroundings, and it was for that very reason a marked feature 
 of the show in a greater degree than were many other superior works 
 which, in spite of their superiority, were almost lost in the multitudes of 
 pictures and statuary that filled the Memorial Hall and overflowed into 
 its annex. The basin of this fountain is exceedingly elegant in design, 
 
HARRIET HOSMER AND OTHER FEMALE SCULPTORS 
 
 141 
 
 it being formed of broad leaves which thrust out from a central stream 
 and, by overlapping each other, form a receptacle for the water. Upon 
 the ground beneath the basin are two boys and a girl engaged in child- 
 ish sports. These figures are modelled with much refinement, and they 
 are important elements in a charming composition. Other contributions 
 by Miss Foley to the Centennial Exhibition were a colossal bust of the 
 Prophet Jeremiah and one life-size of Cleopatra. Some of this artist's 
 portrait sculptures have achieved much celebrity, as, for instance, her bust 
 of Hon. Charles Sumner, and her bas-reliefs of the poets Longfellow and 
 Bryant, the artist-poet T. Buchanan Reid and his wife, and William and 
 Mary Howitt. 
 
 An even more remarkable sculpture from the hand of a female artist 
 than Miss Foley's fountain which was in the Centennial Exhibition was 
 the Cleopatra of Edmonia Lewis. This was not a beautiful work, but it 
 was a very original and very striking one, and it deserves particular com- 
 ment, as its ideal was so radically different from those adopted by Story 
 and Gould in their statues of the Egyptian Queen. Story gave his 
 Cleopatra Nubian features, and achieved an artistic if not a historical 
 success by so doing. The Cleopatra of Gould suggests a Greek lineage. 
 Miss Lewis, on the other hand, has followed the coins, medals, and other 
 authentic records in giving her Cleopatra an aquiline nose and a prominent 
 chin of the Roman type, for the Egyptian Queen appears to have had 
 such features rather than such as would more positively suggest her 
 Grecian descent. This Cleopatra, therefore, more nearly resembled the 
 real heroine of history than either of the others, which, however, it should 
 be remembered, laid no claims to being other than purely ideal works. 
 Miss Lewis' Cleopatra, like the figures sculptured by Story and Gould, is 
 seated in a chair ; the poison of the asp has done its work, and the Queen 
 is dead. The effects of death are represented with such skill as to be 
 
142 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 absolutely repellant — and it is a question whether a statue of the ghastly 
 characteristics of this one does not overstep the bounds of legitimate 
 art. Apart from all questions of taste, however, the striking qualities of 
 the work are undeniable, and it could only have been produced by a 
 sculptor of very genuine endowments. 
 
 Edmonia Lewis, the artist of this statue, is partly of Indian and 
 partly of African descent. She was born in the town of Greenbank, 
 near Albany, in New York State, and her first appeal for public recog- 
 nition as a sculptor was made at the Fair held in Boston, during the 
 progress of the civil war, in aid of the Soldiers' Relief Fund. At that 
 Fair she exhibited a bust of the gallant Colonel Shaw, who was killed 
 on Morris Island while leading his negro regiment to the assault of Fort 
 Wagner. The subject of this work made it an object of interest, w T hile 
 its intrinsic merits won for it cordial commendation, which inquiry into the 
 lineage and circumstances of the artist very naturally did not diminish. 
 The exhibition of this portrait of Colonel Shaw gave Miss Lewis some- 
 thing more than a fair start in the active practice of her profession. 
 The next piece which she produced was more elaborate. The subject was 
 The Freedwoman, who was represented as overcome by a conflict of emo- 
 tions on receiving the tidings of her liberation, and the pathos of the 
 situation was interpreted in a sympathetic spirit. Since the execution of 
 this statue, Miss Lewis, up to the time of the opening of the Centennial 
 Exhibition, did not keep herself very prominently before the public, and 
 to many of the visitors to that Exhibition, who only knew of her by vague 
 report, the real power of her Cleopatra was a revelation. 
 
 Vinnie Reams has been engaged in the practice of sculpture in 
 Washington for several years, and has had the good or ill fortune to 
 figure in the newspapers with considerably more prominence than almost 
 
HARRIET HOSMRR AND OTHER REM ALE SCULPTORS. 143 
 
 any other female American artist of the day. Her full-length statue of 
 Lincoln in the old Hall of Representatives in the Capitol, in particular, has 
 been repeatedly referred to, and not in complimentary terms. This work, 
 however, has scarcely received fair treatment at the hands of those who 
 have undertaken to describe it and to discuss its merits. That Congress 
 was not justified in giving a commission for an important statue like this 
 to a very young and very imperfectly trained artist, does not admit of 
 dispute, and that the statue is not at all up to the standard of excellence 
 which ought to be insisted upon for such a collection of the effigies of 
 national heroes as is in process of formation in the Capitol, also does not 
 admit of dispute. There is this, however, to be said about Miss Ream's 
 Lincoln : — although it is a crude and unsatisfactory performance, it has 
 undeniable merits, and no unprejudiced person can look at it without de- 
 ciding that it was executed by an artist of real talent. Miss Ream has 
 been much more successful in representing in a not ungainly manner the 
 peculiar ungainliness of Lincoln's figure than have most of the male 
 sculptors who have attempted to make full-length portraits of him, and 
 were a sculptor who is a thorough master of the technicalities of his art, 
 to go over her statue and remove the traces of crude workmanship which 
 disfigure it, that which now gives offence in it could easily be made to 
 disappear. As it stands, this is really a better work than some of the 
 statues in the same room that have been executed by artists of greater 
 repute and greater experience than Miss Ream. In addition to this statue 
 Miss Ream has made a number of portrait and ideal busts, and several 
 full-length statues. Selections of what she probably regarded as her best 
 performances were shown at the Centennial Exhibition. These were a 
 bust of a Child, a bust of Senator Morrell, and ideal sculptures entitled 
 The Spirit of the Carnival, The West, and Miriam. 
 
 Blanche Nevin, of Philadelphia, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy 
 
144 
 
 AMERICAN SCULPTURES. 
 
 of the Fine Arts, and also under J. A. Bailly. The pretty little statue of 
 Cinderella, of which we give a carefully executed engraving on this page 
 is an excellent specimen of her style. This girlish figure,, lost in dreams 
 of what might happen, if the crooked ways of Fortune would only 
 straighten themselves out, is gracefully conceived and gracefully executed. 
 It is a representative of a class of sculpturesque works that the best 
 lovers of the beautiful art of sculpture may well wish to see become much 
 more common than they are at present, for they appeal to a larger audience 
 than do the heroic and classic themes which so many artists insist on 
 treating, to their own hurt and to the bewilderment of plain people. Miss 
 Nevin has made a number of busts, and her full-length statue of Eve is 
 a careful study of the nude, the merits of which, at the exhibition of 
 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, when it was first shown to 
 the public, asserted themselves successfully in comparison with many of 
 the works of more experienced artists by which it was surrounded. 
 
' 
 
GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE 
 
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