GEORGE GREY BARNARD

Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course

Success is deserved by hard work, although it does not always follow. But in the case of George Grey Barnard hard work combined with genius made him one of the great sculptors of America, and one of whom this country may well be proud.

George Grey Barnard was born at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on May 24, 1863. His father was a clergyman at Muscatine, Iowa, where the sculptor passed his boyhood. He delighted in stuffing the skins of birds and animals, and became quite an expert taxidermist. He also liked to model animals; and a bust of his little sister convinced his family that he should turn his talents to some trade in which he could make a good living.

So he became apprentice to an engraver. Later he moved to Chicago. Here it was that the first desire to become a sculptor entered his mind. For a long time he debated the question. If he remained at his trade, he could rest assured of a good income all his life; while if he decided to study sculpture, he would practically have to starve for a few years.

At last he entered the Art Institute of Chicago. He had been there about a year and a half, when a bust of a little girl brought him three hundred and fifty dollars. He decided to go to Paris on this small sum. He set off in 1883, and began study in the Atelier Cavelier of the Beaux Arts.

Barnard worked hard, and denied himself all the luxuries, and even many of the necessities of life. His first year in Paris cost him just eighty-nine dollars, so it can be imagined what self-denial the young man must have practised for the sake of his art. Barnard took life seriously; but he never complained.

His first noteworthy production was “The Boy,” which he finished in marble in 1885. The following year he made a heroic-sized statue of Cain, which he afterward destroyed. “Brotherly Love,” a tombstone executed at the order of a Norwegian, he modeled in 1887. This was the best thing he had done up to that time.

Other works followed in rapid succession,—“The Two Natures,” in the Metropolitan Museum of New York City; “The Norwegian Stove,” an allegorical fireplace; “The God Pan,” in Central Park, New York City; “The Hewer,” at Cairo, Illinois; “The Rose Maiden,” and the simple and graceful “Maidenhood.”

All of these were successful, and in 1902 Barnard received the reward for all his hardships and struggles. He was selected to execute all the sculptured decorations for the new capitol for the state of Pennsylvania at Harrisburg. And the work he did there promises even greater from this sculptor in the future.

PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 1. No. 36 SERIAL No. 36
COPYRIGHT 1913, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.

PRIMITIVE MAN. by Paul Wayland Bartlett