To-day, both the New World and the Old are altered. Good art schools are now found in most of our large cities; as far as mere technical training is concerned, opportunities for art-study are at present brighter here than in Europe. But nothing can ever replace the inspiration given by the sight of European masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture on European soil. Therefore we no longer say with Ward, “Go abroad to study, but not to stay.” We say instead, “Remain at home for your study, but go abroad during vacation periods for travel and for inspiration.” A generation ago, the eager young student body of returning painters and sculptors would not have believed that this change of base in an artist’s education could occur within their lifetime.
Until rather lately, the youthful sculptor returning to America to practise his profession would hope first of all to make a portrait bust or two, eking out his income by teaching classes in modeling, or by assisting some more experienced sculptor in developing important commissions. Then if he were lucky, a fountain figure for some one’s garden or a portrait statue for his native town would loom up on his horizon, and he would be fairly started on his way to glory.
II
The portrait statue; imperishable bronze trousers; the frock-coat immortalized. Art thou there, truepenny?
Most of those persons who are now confirmed haters of sculpture probably became so through having in tender childhood looked too long on the bronze portrait statue when it was dark, when it gave its color all wrong to the countenance of some beloved hero. Even among sculptors there are many who admit a secret distaste for the portrait statue, except when it proceeds from the art of the rare absolute master. Hearing the grumblings of sculptors as to the difficulties of this form, one is tempted to ask with Mr. Caudle, “If painful, why so often do it?” The answer is, “The portrait statue is what committees want, and will pay for. The portrait statue is my children’s bread; the ideal figure will not keep them in shoes.”
So then, the situation must be examined on all sides. And is there not a certain high courage in that sculptor who takes his age as it is, and, like Saint-Gaudens and Ward, manfully makes the truthful best out of Peter Cooper’s whiskers, and Horace Greeley’s long-legged boots? “But,” retorts the sculptor, “the whiskers we can endure and celebrate; the boots are not too much to bear. These things are not decorative, but they have character, they tell their times. It is the frock-coat and the trousers that paralyze our imagination.”
Perhaps it will never be known how much the modern male costume, convenient indeed, but uncomely,—tyrannously uniform in its formlessness, and rejecting any individuality as an indecency,—has contributed to the rather wide indifference of the public toward the usual dark effigy of estimable manhood set up in the marketplace. Well, no conflict, no drama! If there were no inherent difficulties in the problem of the portrait statue, there would be no exultation for the sculptor in his successful solution. True, our days lack beauty; man’s apparel is not a sculptural delight. But unless the artist can do something to mend matters, there is little use in mournfully reminding the world that there was no Wragg by the Ilissus. It is interesting to mark how our American sculptors have come out from their clash with the commonplace, and whether they emerge as victors or vanquished.
III
Looking at the general assembly of portrait statues here, we see at once that these works are freer and happier when their subjects, to alter Washington’s historic words, permit “some little deviation in disfavor of modern costume.” Mr. Quinn, in his statue of Edwin Booth, and Mr. Weinman, in his spirited Macomb, have profited sculpturally by such permissions. Most of the bronze statues in the Rotunda of the Library of Congress have an added chance at immortality because personages like Solon in his himation and the Droeshout Shakespeare in his doublet and hose, Michelangelo with his angry leather apron and Columbus with his sea-coat and world-map, and Joseph Henry in his gown are freed from the tyranny of modern tailoring. They evade the question; they have every opportunity to look as good as they are. But the statue of a plain blunt modern man rarely looks as good as it is; clothes bewray it; and so we shall find all our modern artists using one subterfuge or another to relieve the bleak dulness of modern manly dress seen at full length in the round.
