II
A strong representation of real life was exactly what Thomas Jefferson wanted for the State Capitol of Virginia when he induced the great French sculptor Houdon to “leave the statues of Kings unfinished,” and to cross the Atlantic to take casts, measurements, and artistic cognizance of the person of George Washington, in order to create that marble portrait statue still holding its own in the good top light of the Rotunda at Richmond. To cross the Atlantic, what an adventure for a home-keeping Frenchman in the eighteenth century! Yet in the year 1785, there must have been uneasiness at home as well as abroad for Monsieur Houdon, so soon to become le citoyen Houdon. In the midst of our early Republican simplicities, there had been talk of an equestrian statue also. Justified in the hope of obtaining the commission equestrian as well as the commission pedestrian, Houdon accordingly spends a fortnight at Mount Vernon, taking casts, and “forming the General’s bust in plaister.” Later, however, the project of the equestrian statue is dropped, to Houdon’s natural regret.
STATUE OF WASHINGTON
BY JEAN ANTOINE HOUDON
“We shall regulate the article of expense as œconomically as we can with justice to the wishes of the world,” writes Jefferson to Governor Harrison, concerning the standing statue. “We are agreed in one circumstance, that the size shall be precisely that of life.” Jefferson gives patriotic reasons for that decision as to size; he adds with excellent artistic judgment, “We are sensible that the eye alone considered will not be quite as well satisfied.” A generation later, writing from Monticello in regard to the statue of Washington that the legislature of North Carolina desires to order, he declares that this work should be somewhat larger than life. A strict realism no longer delights him. With true Jeffersonian divination of popular currents, he leans now toward the pseudo-classic ideal already dominant in European studios. As to the costume chosen, he finds that “every person of taste in Europe would be for the Roman.... Our boots and regimentals have a very puny effect.” In short, “Old Canova of Rome” is the artist North Carolina should employ. It is pleasant to note that just as Houdon, having “solemnly and feelingly protested against the inadequacy of the price, evidently undertook the work from motives of reputation alone,” so too Canova is “animated with ardent zeal to prove himself worthy of so great a subject.” Thus happily are begun those steadfastly continued artistic relations between the United States and the two European countries in which art prospers as the light and livelihood of the people.
Washington himself, when the Houdon portrait statue is projected, plays an admirably discreet part in the art criticism of the moment. He writes to Jefferson, on August 1, 1786:
“In answer to your obliging enquiries respecting the dress, attitude, etc., which I would wish to have given to the statue in question, I have only to observe that, not having sufficient knowledge in the art of sculpture to oppose my judgment to the taste of Connoisseurs, I do not desire to dictate in the matter.”
How unlike the home life of William Hohenzollern! And how often the thoughtful sculptor of to-day has wished that Washington’s simple dignity in admitting an insufficiency of “knowledge in the art of sculpture” might be pondered and taken to heart by those of us who are not qualified “to dictate in the matter”! In this our free country of the self-elected critic, the temple of art is at all hours invaded by those who cheerily announce that “they do not know much,” but who nevertheless follow the example of William II rather than of our first President.
All the Jefferson correspondence respecting these two statues of Washington is of vital interest to the student of our art history. Our young Republic, in its early strivings toward art, was fortunate in having an adviser as well-advised as the master of Monticello. It was Thomas Jefferson who guided inquiring state legislatures, now toward Houdon, the powerful French realist, and again toward Canova, the distinguished Italian idealist. Through Jefferson’s hands, our American sculpture first received those rich streams of influence, realism and idealism, both so necessary in any living national art. For realism and idealism, however often misnamed or over-praised or discredited, each after the other, will continue to shape the artist’s interpretation of his vision of life. Today, when in our literature books as fundamentally unlike as Maria Chapdelaine and Babbitt run their race side by side as popular favorites, we cannot doubt the hold of either classicism or naturalism on our lives and times. Gilbert Murray, in his notes on the Hippolytus, writes that its matchless closing scene “proves the ultimate falseness of the distinction between classical and romantic. The highest poetry has the beauty of both.”