I
Akin to the faculty for creating garden sculpture is the gift for designing those “small bronzes” in which American connoisseurs are now taking a happy interest. The general public also is being made familiar with the best of these pieces; a result reached through the initiative of the National Sculpture Society and the enthusiasm of our American Federation of Arts in sending out traveling exhibitions of small bronzes to various cities. The small bronze may be either a potentially perfect reduction from some full-sized masterpiece, as in the well-known Saint-Gaudens reliefs reduced from larger originals; or it may on the other hand be designed from the start in the ultimate size. Both types are excellent. American sculpture today counts scores of artists with a sure and delightful touch for the latter type. Some of our women sculptors have created little masterpieces in this intimate and friendly form.
Bessie Potter Vonnoh is an acknowledged leader here; one might say that she is the originator of an American genre, in which small size does not for a moment imply either a trifling imagination or a petty rendering. I well remember Mr. Howells’s enthusiasm for Bessie Potter’s figurines when they were first shown at a New York exhibition. Their authentic American note captivated him. “These,” he declared, “are real creations in sculpture.” The same may be said of Miss Eberle’s vivid groups and figures from street and fireside and doorstep; they have the charm and integrity of folk-lore tales told in a plastic medium. Animal form, as in the days of Barye and Frémiet, easily disports itself in this field. Miss Hyatt, Mr. Roth, Mr. Laessle and others press all the imaginable joys of La Fontaine’s fables within the contours of their bronze goats and bears, tigers, turkeys, and elephants. Like the fables themselves, these bronzes are classics, as in the stricter sense, the delightful groups of Manship and Jennewein are classics.
Generally speaking, we do not like a look of toil and endeavor in our small bronzes; we want something spontaneous, whether graceful or humorous. Well and good. Yet here again is a real danger; anyone who has had the sobering privilege, year by year, of reviewing the rank and file of little plastic works presented for exhibition knows very well that many of these pieces utterly lack the solid qualities of construction, workmanship and an understanding of nature’s detail.