I
An unpublished satiric drawing of the ’eighties shows a family of American tourists in the Louvre. They contemplate the Melian Venus. With one exception, they are dumb with awe. The exception is Aunt Maria, the masterful old lady in the foreground. Aunt Maria has seen men and cities, but she doesn’t know as there’s much that can beat South Bend. So
“Aunt Maria gazes with distrust
Upon the goddess in her bloom perennial.
‘Talk about art,—you should have seen the bust,
The butter bust we had at our Centennial.’”
The Sleeping Iolanthe in butter! In 1876, her name melted in the American mouth. Though barred from the Fine Arts section, she was believed by many to express the spirit of American art. Shamed by her popularity, certain sensitive American artists did not quite recover a jubilant tone until, long years afterward, a full-sized Melian Venus in chocolate contributed to the gayety of the greatest of French expositions. After that, the butter bust incident weighed less heavily on thoughtful minds.
Just before our Centennial exposition, the scholarly John Fiske, admitting that “the classical picture and the undraped statue” have “a high place in our esteem,” ruefully adds that “it will probably be some time before genuine art ceases to be an exotic among us, and becomes a plant of unhindered native growth.” The Centennial showed us the truth of just that. The Centennial was a glory, and a profound disturbance. To our sculpture, this disturbance was its great gain. For the first time, the American sculptor saw his work side by side with that of Europeans. He was dismayed. He had had his doubts, his forebodings. He now perceived for a certainty that in spite of half a century spent in the pursuit of all the best that Italian pseudo-classicism could offer, our apprentice days in sculpture, far from being well over, were scarcely begun. Perhaps a fresh start was needed. At a time when Munich, as well as Paris, was calling to the young painter, Paris, rather than Rome or Florence, beckoned to the sculptor. New forces were abroad in art, and American sculpture of the next generation profited eagerly from the vigorous new French school.