BY F. W. MACMONNIES
Again, the tragedy that will always be latent for the Southerner in the Saint-Gaudens Sherman, with its dominating figure of the warrior seasoned to his great task, yet a task to be tempered by the advancing spirit of Nike-Eirene, is not in the least like the kind of tragedy that enfolds Fraser’s End of the Trail. Here the pupil does not follow the master in subject, or in treatment, or in those mere motions of the sculptor’s tool, too often transmitted unchanged from teacher to learner. Mr. Fraser’s moving parable of a losing people is told in his own way, and in the grand style of sculpture, just as the parables of the Evangelists are told in each Evangelist’s way, and in the grand style of language, as English-speaking readers are privileged to know it. Long before assisting Saint-Gaudens in the Sherman equestrian, Mr. Fraser, from his boyhood in Montana, knew the horse of the untamed West. His group is sculpture from his own experience. And Solon Borglum’s way with his far-Western themes is not at all like Mr. Fraser’s way. Solon Borglum, least academic of all those sculptors who still feel reverence for anatomical truths, envelops his men and beasts in a kind of fateful weather that stirs the human heart to sympathy with them in their struggles, whether happy or unhappy; he veils his subjects in the hope of making them more clear to you. Different again is Mr. Dallin’s version of that great historic theme, the mounted Indian. This sculptor’s genius, seen at its best in the commanding Appeal to the Great Spirit, placed in front of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, interprets the ritual of a passing race. The position of this austere group at the approach to an austere building appropriately suggests to the spectator the pathos of contrast between two cultures, the lower and the higher, the vanishing and the enduring. Does not that Indian mutely remind us of great treasure which is ours, but in which he may not share?
VII
Whether our equestrian statues, as the groups last spoken of, reveal a side of American life destined to pass from our view, or whether, on the other hand, they are of the historic portrait order, as are our most of the Old World equestrians, it is clear that the personal vision prevails. The note of romance is present; perhaps we scarcely realize how much the so-called dumb beast contributes to that. Mr. Proctor’s mastery of animal form, whether in equine or other shape, is certain, plain, delightful. Leaving our horses for a moment, where shall we find a “Tyger” as terrible and as “burning bright” as the Proctor Golden Tiger for Princeton, a creature none the less awe-inspiring though seen in sphinx-like repose? Decidedly, the man has the gift for animals; I shall never forget how under Mr. Proctor’s playful influence, one of the dullest and mangiest kittens I ever saw suddenly leaped up into a miracle of feline grace.
EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF GENERAL SHERMAN
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
A genius for animals is found rather often among us, as befits a people whose fathers so lately subdued the forest-born; it is a gift as richly special and as deeply innate as the gift, let us say, for religious sculpture, or for any other lofty form. Through this gift, Miss Hyatt and Miss Gardin, Mr. Harvey, Mr. Roth, Mr. Potter, Mr. Laessle, Mr. Sanford, Mr. Rumsey and many others have shown us beautiful or terrible or humorous things. The presence of the horse, the cheval, easily gives the authentic accent of chivalry to the equestrian portrait statue, as contrasted with its pedestrian relative; while in a work imagined in the manner of the Saint-Gaudens Sherman, the beast, the man, and the embodied spirit unite in an epical ensemble that appeals to the thoughtful mind. One thinks of that similar trinity of Earth, Man, and Heaven, said to animate in humbler guise every flower arrangement poetically shaped by Japanese fingers. An artistic impulse so widely felt, though not yet commonly revealed, holds out its promise for future creations in art. At present, the fact that Reinhold Begas in Germany and Augustus Saint-Gaudens in America have lately used this motive in equestrian art is perhaps unduly prohibitive for other sculptors. True, neither artist knew what the other was doing; Saint-Gaudens was somewhat taken aback on learning of the Begas design.