The spirit of American sculpture

by Adeline Adams

III

Whether we look at a little book-end bear in bronze, or at a heroic equestrian statue in bronze and stone, or at a colossal monument in granite or marble, the importance of fine craftsmanship is evident. The artist is the last person in the world who can afford to underrate the craftsman.

Not long ago in reading an essay on literary criticism, I was confronted with this impressive query: What has the navel done for modern life? Of course modern literature in its desire to be impressive asks many curious questions of the reader, but this one about the navel seemed unduly wide of the mark. I was disturbed until I suddenly perceived that the printer had used an a for an o; the luckless author had meant to ask about the novel, not the navel. But the artist in words suffers less often at the hands of his helping craftsman than does the artist in paint or clay. The sculptor in particular runs grave risks. Even the forces of nature conspire against him; the fair-faced marble hypocritically hides her blemishes until weeks of carving lay them bare. Even chemistry betrays him; the bronze that should be perfect everywhere has perhaps a spongy place or a “tin spot” or a treacherous seam just where it does the greatest possible damage to his statue.

One of the advantages of the ancient apprentice system was that the beginner in art could learn all the tricks, and not only the tricks but the very serious difficulties of the various trades that help to bring the artist’s work to completion. Our American sculpture, which after all began timidly enough as a kind of craftsmanship, has at certain periods of its immaturity forgotten the importance and dignity of the crafts on which it depends for a fair presentation. Bronze casting has indeed advanced greatly through the fact that modern sculpture has become largely an expression in clay, to be made permanent in bronze; sculptors have demanded good casting, and they have obtained it. In general, the sculptors of the world are no longer masters who release from stone, either hard or soft, the image circumscribed within. To reach their results, they do not as a rule start from the assumption of Michelangelo, as Symonds translates it:

The best of artists hath no thought to show

Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell

Doth not include:

They look on their work as a building-up in clay, rather than as a cutting-down in stone. Well, why not? If the word plastic keeps its old meaning of something shaped, and glyptic its meaning of something carved, surely the sculptor may without reproach choose his approach; always provided that this approach is the one best suited to the matter in hand.

But even here, changes are already visible. On both sides of the Atlantic a few sculptors are harking back to the fine old Gothic tradition which animated Michelangelo, that spirit who was at once a late fruit of the Gothic and a great flowering of the Renaissance. Perhaps we owe to Rodin this modern return from plastic to glyptic? At any rate, the movement is but lightly sketched, except as seen in some of the enormous monuments of Middle Europe, and in particular in the powerful works of the Serbian Mestrovic, as well as in those of recent insurgent followers of Rodin. An odd fact is, that some of these last, in seeking the titanic, have attained the Teutonic, especially when their theory of deformation has betrayed them. And, of course, any new style, vital or not, will breed new errors.

Criticism has had of late a tendency to scold sculptors for not seeing things as Michelangelo did, or as the artist of “Le Beau Sourire de Reims” did. It is perhaps surprising that the eloquent mediæval craftsmanship suitable for Caen stone or limestone, and beautiful in its place, has not attracted a larger interest and a wider experiment among us. However, Miss Hoffman has just completed an important and unusual War Memorial in Caen stone. Mr. MacMonnies’s great Washington monument at Princeton is of limestone, most thoughtfully carved, and not at all in the impetuous new manner; it may prove to be a forerunner of other ambitious enterprises in this material. But ours is an unkind climate. The sculptured forms of Italy and France have not had to endure the extreme changes of heat and cold well-known here. We have interesting varieties of marble and granite, and have made but a beginning in the exploration of their possibilities as adapted to our weather. A very beautiful tradition in marble-cutting has been built up in our country by the Piccirilli family, six brothers among whom are distinguished sculptors and distinguished craftsmen. Their output, which includes both their own original works and their faithful renderings in stone of the works of other sculptors, is known throughout the country, and has inspired good craftsmanship.

Thus in the major crafts of bronze casting and of marble-cutting, American sculpture is fairly fortunate today. In the one, we have come a long way from that first attempt in 1847; in the other, we have craftsmen who for large work to be seen at a distance can sufficiently well translate into stone the sculptor’s finished models. We have also for our salvation a few sculptors, who, like Chester Beach, are peculiarly gifted in wresting from the marble, and with their own hands, their own visions. But Mr. Beach is different again from most of his contemporaries, in that he is successful in his command over all the final materials in which a sculptor’s work may be presented, whether terra-cotta, stone, or bronze. With a modern and highly interesting vision of beauty, and with an absolute understanding of the principles of sculpture, this artist respects both the art and the craft of sculpture. Sometimes it would seem that the finer the artist, the finer his appreciation of craftsmanship.

Of course if one were to judge by the pictures in the Sunday supplements, all sculptors carve their marbles themselves; they seem to do little else. That is not true, alas. Certainly a busy sculptor may well save himself for other matters besides roughing-out a block of marble. But a serious sculptor will generally wish to give the finishing strokes, few or many, a matter of weeks or of months, to any marble work that leaves his hands. In modern stone-cutting, the pneumatic tool is indeed a miracle-worker; and for that very reason, it bears constant watching from the sculptor whose work it translates. Mr. John Kirchmayer, an artist in the field of wood-carving, has described in a recent article the mischief wrought for this art by too great a dependence on the machine, a dependence that atrophies the native genius of the craftsman. His counsel is the same that all arts and crafts must follow: Use the machine but do not abuse it. When the cheapening of production means the debasing of the product, it is time for art and the machine to part company.

CHAPTER X
THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE SOCIETY

Other gifts besides those commonly acknowledged as the artist’s peculiar possession are needful if the advancement of art and the status of the artist are to be fitly assured. These other gifts belonged to the painter Morse when in defending the interests of art-study he played his important part in founding our National Academy of Design in 1825. They belonged to the artists who, in espousing the cause of the young Saint-Gaudens half a century later, broke away from the Academy to form the Society of American Artists. They belonged also to those later spirits who, perceiving the weakness of that disunion, managed somehow to gather the Society back into the bosom of the Academy, to the chastening of both factions. And they belong in good measure to Mr. F. W. Ruckstull, an American sculptor of widely recognized ability, who in 1893, with the help of Mr. Charles de Kay and others, was foremost in assembling the body since known as the National Sculpture Society. Mr. Ruckstull and the other charter members had no personal tocsin of revolt to sound; they simply saw, as intelligent artists and citizens, that their art and their country needed such an organization, “to spread the knowledge of good sculpture.”

To begin with, sculpture is not easy to exhibit. Far more than any living painter has ever acknowledged, it suffers acutely from unfriendly lighting. The old proverb that good sculpture looks well anywhere ought to be amended to add, it looks its best only in its chosen light and space. Sculpture’s appetite for space, at times modest, is at times illimitable. The Academy, always hard-pressed for space in its annual exhibitions, cannot afford to give up large well-lit areas for sculptures of heroic size. The Architectural League is hospitable toward sculpture, but, the aims of this body being many and diverse, it certainly cannot favor the sculptors above all other comers. Once in a while, if not oftener, our sculpture should be shown under the happiest conditions. Again, sculpture, even more than painting, has active contacts with the worlds of government, whether municipal, state or federal; it should be able to present itself with the authority naturally vested in an honored group of experts. And sculptors, quite as much as painters and architects, must stand together lest personal interest wrong the general good, and lest individuals fall into misunderstandings either among themselves, or with the public, to whose intelligent opinion they, like other citizens, must commonly submit.

The Society, founded in 1893, and incorporated in 1896, has had from the first an extraordinarily vivifying influence in matters of sculpture. It has labored for the public good, in harmony with various private committees, with Municipal Art Commissions, and with the Federal Commission of Fine Arts. Its first president, John Quincy Adams Ward, believed enthusiastically in its work and destiny. His first annual report emphasizes the fact that its “reputation will be established by its deeds, not by empty promises.” In the Society’s second year, Ward was called upon, in association with Warner and Saint-Gaudens, to give counsel as to the sculptural decorations for the Library of Congress, the architecture of this building being at that time in the hands of Edward P. Casey. Mr. Casey showed a fine zeal in getting the best possible sculpture for the Library; besides the usual structural ornament, his scheme called for fountains, three pairs of bronze doors, and for a circle of twelve imposing bronze statues by almost as many sculptors. The results were in general very happy, and at once established a high standard. And this is important, because the fine public building enhanced by sculpture is of service in the progress of art, as we see from the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the Cleveland Court House.

Among the “deeds” foreshadowed by Mr. Ward were certain memorable exhibitions of sculpture, enterprises of genuine value to the community. These exhibitions were wisely and enthusiastically arranged in collaboration with landscape architects and florists; beautiful works fitly shown proved a surprise and a joy to both public and connoisseurs. The public was reminded that sculpture is a living art, with roots and branches; that it is not dedicated entirely to pediments, portrait statues, and other monumental grandeurs; and that sculptured forms may charm the eye of the home-maker and the garden-lover, in intimate possession.

In 1899 Charles R. Lamb, a charter member, born with a vision of the City Beautiful and working always toward the realization of that great dream, conceived the thought of the Dewey Arch as a dignified free-will offering from our sculptors,—an offering that would take a central and beautiful part in New York’s public tribute to the hero of Manila. That idea somehow captured the fancy of Mr. Lamb’s fellow-artists. Immediately and unreservedly, they gave themselves to the sculptural decorations of this arch and its approaches; Mr. Ward, full of years and honors, set the pace by his vigorous design for the crowning group of Naval Victory. It was rightly said that the names of those sculptors who dedicated themselves to this Arch constituted a roll of honor. The result of their labors was impressive beyond expectation. The Dewey Arch, though a temporary structure, lives in our remembrance; it is vivid in our annals as an example of whole-hearted artistic co-operation; it gave a precedent for our later historic transformation of Fifth Avenue into the Avenue of the Allies, an enterprise to which our sculptors once more devoted their gifts. These rousing masculine gestures of civic pride have a value. At the very least, they keep the world from falling into the belief that Fifth Avenue is no more than a bright shop where beautifully painted flower-face girls choose endless bubbles of adornment, only to speed away self-regarding yet unsatisfied on their tiptoe silvery shoes.

It is true that of late there has been grumbling as to the choice of any arch as a monumental form fitted to express the tribute of our citizens to patriotism. This disapproval is sometimes warranted, sometimes merely superficial. The arch, as we shall doubtless see within the next generation, has its own place in our time; collaboration between sculptor and architect has never been better understood than at present. To reject an arch because it obstructs traffic, because it is out of scale, because it does not fit its surroundings, because it is needlessly magnificent, because it does not express the emotion it pretends to express,—all this is very wise, and important when true. But is it not stupid to reject the arch just because the Romans liked it? However, discussion as to the value of the arch in our coming War memorials is beside the mark in looking back on the Dewey Arch as a fine example of artistic co-operation.

A valuable activity has been the sending out of small sculptures on tour throughout the country. Commenting on the universal public need of something with increased beauty to replace the story-telling Rogers groups of other days, a president of the Society wrote in 1913: “The time was ripe when some four years ago the National Sculpture Society carefully selected and sent out as a traveling exhibition nearly two hundred small bronzes which made a circuit of the museums in some eight or ten of the important cities. The responsive interest was as immediate as it was unexpected, and thousands of people gave expression to their pleasure in seeing what had hardly been known to exist. In Chicago alone, over thirty thousand persons visited this first exhibition.... This year, under similar auspices, and the management of the Pittsburgh Art Society, another collection of entirely different bronzes is passing from one museum to another, and meeting the same warm reception from the public.”

Established in New York, the Society has proved by work of this kind that it is truly National in its aims. Earnest inquiries and knotty problems are sent to it from all quarters of the United States. At one time it will be asked to “prepare the program for the competition for the $100,000 American Baseball Monument.” Again, it will be found considering the question, “What will it cost to produce 30,000 medals within three weeks?” Only a great moral earnestness joined to a knowledge of art and some acumen in judging human nature can properly answer some of the queries submitted.

The Society’s professional membership includes nearly all persons in the United States who practise the art of sculpture with dignity and merit; it is safe to say that any renowned sculptor remaining aloof from the organization is an individualist, doubtless with a congenital distaste for organized effort. The Society’s lay membership is an unusually large and distinguished group, made up in the main of disinterested lovers of art. In addition to the proverbial reward of virtue, the lay members receive from time to time some tangible souvenir, such as a small bronze designed by a sculptor member, or a monograph. These tokens occur often enough to attest good will, but not so often as to lose the charm of the unexpected.

The list of professional members reveals a surprisingly large number of names of women. It will be remembered that Mr. Ward, that figure of virility personified, cordially invited women sculptors to become members of the Society, and to join in the deliberations of the council-table. Chesterton, in his story of Victorian literature, has emphasized the importance of women writers in the development of the English novel. In our country, the importance of women engaged in sculpture as a gainful occupation has steadily increased during the past half-century. “Enter the race,” said Mr. Ward, “asking no odds!” Commissions for statues were once given to women, it must be confessed, out of what Dr. Johnson might call “Pure ignorance, Madam.” How otherwise can we explain the spectacle of our chivalrous Congressmen entrusting to a girl of fifteen the making of a statue of Lincoln? It is indeed said that “all the great sculptors of the period submitted models, but that the committee, after careful study, decided that the model of the little Ream girl surpassed all others.” The child surely had genius; she had the further advantage of quiet half-hours of study of Lincoln from life.

But to-day,—well, it isn’t supposed to be done! Thanks to the National Sculpture Society, such competitions are at present generally conducted with even-handed justice. Nowadays, women who receive really important sculptural commissions are expected to deserve them out of the fullness of experience. In 1911, I was unwise enough to write, apropos of the monumental equestrian statue, that this field was for man’s working, and that it would not in the near future offer any very large place aux dames. But it chanced that the fifth centenary of Jeanne d’Arc fell due soon after, and Miss Hyatt, paying no attention to my grotesque observation, began work on her equestrian statue of the Maid. Rarely has any such statue been studied with as fine a vision of the relative claims of art and archæology. In 1915, Miss Hyatt’s work was unveiled on Riverside Drive. It is one of the best-loved monuments in the city of New York; and from the day of its unveiling, I have forsworn prophecy. Otherwise, I might be tempted to add that at present, given the tradition of apprenticeship still keeping its last stronghold in some of the studios, and given the ease with which assistance may be obtained for the ruder manual labor, there is no reason why women may not be trained to solve with success the usual sculptural problems. “Because they are conscientious, and because they have imagination,” were the reasons given by a sculptor who employed women assistants.

The National Sculpture Society’s ideals, to be valuable and enduring, must concern themselves with the ethical as well as the artistic side of various questions brought before the body. On the ethical side, it has, not without inherent difficulties, established its Code governing Competitions, the Code itself being governed by the Society’s avowed principle of fostering art with integrity. Year by year, the good work of this Code is shown by the larger clarity of purpose and of statement, and the larger conscientiousness in endeavor now expected alike from committees, competitors, and juries of award.

Some of the thoughtful idealists of the Society have long wished that it could undertake as part of its work an enterprise that might prove of untold value in the arts. “If instead of wrangling so long and so devotedly over our Code,” said one of these idealists, “we could have given the time to establishing a workshop for scientific experiments with our various materials, what immense practical good might have been accomplished! But it would take money, more money than our Society has ever had at its disposal.”

The field for such experiment is boundless. Science properly applied could help the sculptor at every step.

Think what it would mean to the sculptor if he had a plastic material which by the magic of chemistry could be at once converted into an imperishable material, exactly as it leaves his hands; or if the metallurgist would find him an alloy of metals which would take on, or even hold, a beautiful patine when exposed to our atmosphere; or if the chemist could explain some of the strange antics and prevent the misbehavior of that go-between, common plaster, which plays such a vital part in a sculptor’s work from the clay model to the final marble or bronze. Plaster is indispensable, in spite of its shortcomings; could not this lifeless, chalky stuff be transformed into a substance both durable and interesting? And marble, that sovereign among materials, is there no way by which its fine white crystals could be made to take on other tones than those nature has given? The questions are legion. With the amazing advance of practical chemistry within the last few years, many of them might be definitely settled by scientific experiment. It is to be hoped that in the near future the National Sculpture Society will acquire its needed research workshop, and put out publications of the results obtained, so that science may assist art as generously as in an allegory of mural decoration.

We have spoken of idealists. No member of the Society has proved himself a more practical idealist than Mr. Lorado Taft, long an enthusiastic teacher of the modeling classes at the Chicago Art Institute, and to-day a force for art not only in the Middle West, but throughout the country. Mr. Taft is the sculptor of the Black Hawk monument, the grandiose fountain of Time, and other works well-known indeed, but not because he himself in his thousands of lectures and in his two important books on sculpture has ever taken the opportunity to advertise his own talent. The fact is ironic, even grotesque; by voice and pen Mr. Taft has for years disclosed the merits of all sculpture save his own. Lesser artists than himself have been genially interpreted in his vivid and conscientious expositions. His public service for sculpture, a service now widely welcomed, was begun in the Middle West, a part of our country which because of its early settlement by Americans, Germans, and Scandinavians of enlightened stock, was early interested in artistic endeavor, and which today has some of our strongest art schools and museums. Nowhere else could his work have been begun so usefully. As sculptor, traveler, lecturer, writer, Mr. Taft gives himself with unfailing zest to that first avowed object of the Society, “to spread the knowledge of good sculpture.”

During the World War, and throughout the subsequent period of striving to wrest world betterment out of world bewilderment, the Society has remained active in its chosen work. The Spring of 1918 saw the opening by the Metropolitan Museum of a permanent exhibition of contemporary American sculpture; and to quote from a Bulletin of that time, Mr. French, the honorary president of the Society, “to whose gallant initiative and untiring endeavor the success of the undertaking is largely due, is as truly an American patriot as if he were a very young man with a very new rifle, now gazing eagerly toward the coast of France.” Robert Aitken and Sherry Fry, sculptors already distinguished in their profession before serving abroad with our Army, have doubtless through their military experience gained something of value to them as artists and as citizens. By the death of Harry Thrasher, killed near Rheims, the Society has lost one of its promising members; one who, having richly profited by his advanced studies at the American Academy in Rome, seemed at the outbreak of the War to stand on the threshold of high achievement in art. Those who knew him well have said that in his work as a sculptor, varied though this was, his genius was seen at its best in spacious and heroic conceptions, and that had he been spared, the heroic would have been as fully expressed in his art as it has been expressed in his life and its final sacrifice. The recent untimely death of Solon Borglum, an artist in whom a winning personality was joined to integrity of purpose and originality of outlook, was doubtless hastened by hardships met during his devoted service in France. Such men well illustrate the hope of the National Sculpture Society as to the quality of its membership; as sculptors and as citizens, they gave themselves to their art and to their country.

In the stimulating opportunity for exhibition offered to American sculptors through the courtesy of the group of learned Societies housed in stately fashion in upper Broadway, the National Sculpture Society desires once more to show, in a creditable manner and to a discerning public, the beauty and serviceableness of the art its members practise. Broadway at 156th Street is unlike any other Broadway in the world. The air is finer and clearer there than elsewhere, yet not too fine and good for human nature’s daily breathing. Very hospitable are the terraces and galleries of the Hispanic Society, the Numismatic Society, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Geographical Society, the Heye Foundation. The National Sculpture Society counts on a dignified setting such as it has never before enjoyed, together with a sympathetic collaboration such as it has always appreciated, to achieve a worthy revelation of sculptured form.

CHAPTER XI
INFLUENCES, GOING AND COMING

“Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas.”