IV
Meanwhile a young modern sculptor at my elbow very civilly inquires, “But why the devil didn’t those old boys do their home stuff?” The obvious answer would be, that if the home is where the heart is, then in a very real sense they did do their home stuff. They were not at home among the Vermont mountains, or by the Great Lakes. They felt that their birthright in art called them away from their first birthplace to their second. Very soon, too, the all-absorbing topic of slavery will be presented by our sculptors, in a different way and under a more timely aspect. Long before Thomas Ball places his Emancipation groups in Washington and in Boston, Ward has produced his Freedman, and John Rogers the Slave Auction that in 1860 heralds his long series of popular groups. Choosing subjects both classic and realistic, Miss Hosmer, Miss Ream and other women sculptors have a considerable vogue. From that earlier period remain beautiful classic works by Rinehart, founder of the Rinehart scholarship which much later send abroad Hermon MacNeil, one of the most distinguished of our modern sculptors, and now President of our National Sculpture Society. Rinehart’s Clytie, coming but a few years after the Greek Slave, shows a marked advance over her more famous sister. And Erastus Palmer’s winning White Captive, although not new in theme, has a great freshness, a delicate realism of treatment. To quote from my article on the exhibition of contemporary sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum, “No less interesting to the student of sculpture is the kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of Palmer and Manship, two artists of two different generations. Only the width of a room parts the White Captive from the Girl with Gazelles, from which we note that in aim these men are not so different as we once had dreamed.... As to manner, much might be said besides these two obvious truths; first, that the newest manner is often the oldest, or at least the longest forgotten at the time of its resuscitation, it being a thing which for some obscure human reason or other ‘men want dug up again’; and next, that the best manner is that which scarcely shows as a manner at all, but is taken for granted as accompaniment of something more important, the matter and the spirit.” It would appear that the young men of to-day are doing much the same thing as “those old boys” my sculptor friend speaks of: they are seeking modern inspiration from ancient models, but they are doing it with more knowledge, more grace, more humor, more assurance, more style. Style? Perhaps the right word is stylization.
CLYTIE
BY WILLIAM H. RINEHART
WHITE CAPTIVE
BY ERASTUS D. PALMER