III
Given our garden fountain, with or without its ornament, what more natural than a coign of vantage from which to enjoy it? The exedra, as introduced to us long ago by McKim, White and other architects, has been eagerly adopted by garden lovers. A beloved spot at Aspet, the Saint-Gaudens estate, holds in the far distance a blue sky, a blue mountain and a lordly crest of purple pines; in the middle distance is a magic stretch of simple grass, while near at hand, and flanked by a rosy tracery of oleander blossoms, a golden god Pan pipes to the seven golden fishes spouting water into a green-veined white marble basin, rectangular in form. Facing this, and shaded by pines, hemlocks and silver birches, is a great white exedra, planned not on the usual curve but on the three sides of an oblong, and showing in relief, on the end of each wing, an ivy-crowned faun, by Louis Saint-Gaudens. Two giant terra-cotta vases, made in this country from Italian originals, stand at the entrance to the pergola that garlands the “old studio”; in an upper garden, a bronze Narcissus leads the eye toward the house, with its white balustrade accented by gracious heads of the Seasons.
Some years ago, I saw in the garden of a sculptor an exedra with outlines pleasing to the eye, and comfortable to the anatomy. The material was concrete, that first aid to the garden-mad and their domestic sculpture. Inquiry brought out the fact that the contour had been established by the sculptor’s actual sitting down, in propria persona, in a roughly shaped mass of fresh concrete. To use the human frame as a heroic modeling-tool, or templet, struck me at that time as a delightfully unique idea in sculpture; today, with so many artists keen for the queer, it would doubtless seem a mere commonplace; one might even be glad that the human templet was not used upside down, in the pursuit of novelty. But to speak justly, our garden sculpture has not succumbed to the idea that queerness is higher than beauty, and a shock to the spectator a richer artistic achievement than his delight. Garden art in our country is no longer in its infancy, and not yet in its decadence. Accepting the broad principles of Italian garden design, (such as the treatment of the garden as a place to live in, the harmonizing of the house with the garden, and the adaptation of both to climate and landscape) it does not today admit the baroque puerilities of the hydraulic practical joke, or the grotto of mechanical toys and monsters. Fortunately, much of our landscape gardening is in the hands of true artists, who employ the best resources of other days, and the genius of modern sculptors.
Among the oldest inhabitants of gardens are the Hermæ, or boundary gods, once used, it is said, to define limits of land, but now freed from that dull task, to be set up (singly, or in pairs, or in rows) wherever found desirable, as to accent a terrace, or to flank a flight of steps. The variety of type is infinite; male and female, these terminal deities are the chorus in the grand opera of garden sculpture, the only rule laid upon them being that they must play the foursquare post below the waist, and look pleasant above. Marble is their best dress, but they may with good effect wear terra-cotta in the paler tones; a material well adapted also for the legion of great decorative pots, round or square, that “help so” in gardens either intimate or imposing. Many garden owners collect “antiques,” delightful enough even though some of them, like women and music, are perhaps better left undated. Renaissance sarcophagi are put to the cheerful uses of pink geraniums; capitals and fonts and well-heads bubble over with all sorts of blooming things. In the sun-dial, little regarded by the Latin temperament, but dear as the lawn itself to the Britannic imagination, the American sculptor has a subject that cannot be accused of alien origin. Associated chiefly with English landscape art, it nevertheless may “mark only happy hours” in more formal surroundings. Harriet Frishmuth and Brenda Putnam are our most lately laureled dialists; both have been successful in adapting the well-modeled human figure to this form of garden sculpture.
Alas, that in every human effort shown out-of-doors, the climate has always the last word! Good old Horace, grumbling impressively about the hard winters of Tibur, would find his sandaled toes shrewdly nipped in a Cornish garden on the Ides of December, with Mercury’s winged heel quite capable of hitting well below the zero mark. In Italy, the tooth of time is not a bad sort of modeling-tool; it has carved a veil of illusion for triviality, and has given a new grace to things already beautiful. But in our northern latitudes, the tooth of time does not model; it ravages and corrodes, often with incredible swiftness, and due winter precautions must enshroud our garden sculpture. The question of material is ever with us. Bronze endures, but turns dark; marble is fair, but frail. In the dooryard of many an American artist, home-grown miracles have been wrought from cement. I recall charming tennis benches, with ornamented ends; a wall-fountain with reliefs of satyrs; some great vases enriched with the owner’s coat-of-arms, and cast in a three-piece mold; and numerous basins, posts, balustrades and steps. But trowel-sculpture has its limitations, and the question of durability has not yet been fully answered by the years. Perhaps, at some future day, science will co-operate with art, and produce for the garden sculptor a material as easily modeled as terra-cotta, as exquisite as marble, as impressive as granite, and as durable as bronze. Until then, we must manage as best we can with the materials the ancients had, though under climatic conditions more favorable than ours; and we may at least note with thankfulness that in garden art as in all things annihilation has its uses.
CHAPTER IX
OF SMALL BRONZES AND GREAT CRAFTS
I
Akin to the faculty for creating garden sculpture is the gift for designing those “small bronzes” in which American connoisseurs are now taking a happy interest. The general public also is being made familiar with the best of these pieces; a result reached through the initiative of the National Sculpture Society and the enthusiasm of our American Federation of Arts in sending out traveling exhibitions of small bronzes to various cities. The small bronze may be either a potentially perfect reduction from some full-sized masterpiece, as in the well-known Saint-Gaudens reliefs reduced from larger originals; or it may on the other hand be designed from the start in the ultimate size. Both types are excellent. American sculpture today counts scores of artists with a sure and delightful touch for the latter type. Some of our women sculptors have created little masterpieces in this intimate and friendly form.
Bessie Potter Vonnoh is an acknowledged leader here; one might say that she is the originator of an American genre, in which small size does not for a moment imply either a trifling imagination or a petty rendering. I well remember Mr. Howells’s enthusiasm for Bessie Potter’s figurines when they were first shown at a New York exhibition. Their authentic American note captivated him. “These,” he declared, “are real creations in sculpture.” The same may be said of Miss Eberle’s vivid groups and figures from street and fireside and doorstep; they have the charm and integrity of folk-lore tales told in a plastic medium. Animal form, as in the days of Barye and Frémiet, easily disports itself in this field. Miss Hyatt, Mr. Roth, Mr. Laessle and others press all the imaginable joys of La Fontaine’s fables within the contours of their bronze goats and bears, tigers, turkeys, and elephants. Like the fables themselves, these bronzes are classics, as in the stricter sense, the delightful groups of Manship and Jennewein are classics.
Generally speaking, we do not like a look of toil and endeavor in our small bronzes; we want something spontaneous, whether graceful or humorous. Well and good. Yet here again is a real danger; anyone who has had the sobering privilege, year by year, of reviewing the rank and file of little plastic works presented for exhibition knows very well that many of these pieces utterly lack the solid qualities of construction, workmanship and an understanding of nature’s detail.