American Men of Mind

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

Powers soon developed from this work a talent for catching likenesses, and, searching for a wider field, proceeded finally to Washington, where he modelled busts in wax of Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, John Marshall, and other celebrities of the period. From wax, he naturally wished to graduate into marble, and in 1837, left America for Italy, never to return. Greenough, then laboring away at his Washington, assisted him in various ways; and Hawthorne met him in Italy and was much impressed by him, as his "Italian Note-Book" shows.

In 1843, he completed the figure which was destined to make him famous, the "Greek Slave." The statue was supposed to represent a maiden captured by the Turks, "stripped and manacled and offered for sale in the market place," and so had a sentimental appeal which went straight to the heart of a sentimental people, and overcame any antagonism which her nudity might have produced. It inspired Elizabeth Barrett Browning to a not very noteworthy sonnet, clergymen gave it certificates of character, so to speak, and "it made a sensation wherever shown, and was fondly believed to be the greatest work of sculpture known to history." Let us say at once that it is an engaging and creditable piece of work, and worthy, in the main, of the enthusiasm which it excited.

The "Greek Slave" was only the beginning. Powers turned out one statue after another with considerable rapidity, but his reputation rests mainly to-day on his portrait busts of men. It is characteristic of artists that the things they do best and easiest they value least, and this was so with Powers. His portrait busts were, in a sense, mere pot-boilers; he lavished himself upon his ideal figures. But these are now ranked as unimaginative and commonplace.

Third among our early sculptors of importance was Thomas Crawford, born eight years later than Greenough and Powers, and preceding the latter to the grave by many years, yet leaving behind him a mass of work which, if it shows no great imagination, displays considerable poetic refinement. Driven to Italy because it was only there that marble work could be well and economically done, he lived there for some years, earning a bare subsistence by the production of second-rate portrait busts and copies of antique statuary. Then he attracted the attention of Charles Sumner, and with his help, was enabled, in 1839, to produce his first important work, the "Orpheus," now in the Boston Museum. Many others followed, but they were of that ideal and sentimental type, very foreign to modern taste.

Crawford was an indefatigable workman, and few American museums are without one or more examples of his product. In the public square at Richmond, Virginia, stands one of his most important monuments, crowned by an astonishing equestrian figure of Washington, which he himself executed. Two of the subordinate statues are also his—those of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson—and represent the best work he ever did.

Another of his productions is the great figure of Freedom which crowns the dome of the Capitol at Washington, not unworthily. By a fortunate chance, which the sculptor could hardly have foreseen, the bulky and roughly modelled figure gains airiness and majesty from its lofty position, where its sickly-sweet countenance and clumsy adornment are refined by distance. It has become, in a way, a national ideal, a part of the Republic.

The success of these three men and the immense reputation which they attained naturally attracted others to a profession whose rewards were so exalted. The first to achieve anything like an enduring reputation was Henry Kirke Brown, born in Massachusetts in 1814. He early displayed some talent for portrait painting, and went to Boston to study under Chester Harding. Chance led him to model the head of a friend, and the result was so interesting that he then and there renounced painting for sculpture.

Naturally, his eyes turned to Italy, but he had no money to take him there, so perforce remained at home, getting such instruction as he could. In 1837, at the age of twenty-three, he produced his first marble bust, and within the next four years, had carved at least forty more, besides four or five figures. From all this work, he managed to save the money needed for the trip to Italy, but after four years in the Italian studios, he sailed for home again. On July 4, 1856, the second equestrian statue to be set up in the United States was unveiled in Union Square, New York City, and gave Brown a reputation which still endures.

It is a statue of Washington, and, in some amazing fashion, Brown succeeded in producing a work of art, which, in some respects, has never been surpassed in America, and which has served as a pattern and guide to other sculptors from that day to this. It is a sincere, honest and dignified embodiment of the First American. Brown did some notable work after that, but none of it possesses the high inspiration which produced the noble and commanding figure which dominates Union Square.

We have said that it was the second equestrian statue produced in America. The first may still be seen by all who, on entering or leaving the White House, glance across the street at the public square beyond. One glance is certain to be followed by others, for that statue is not only the first, it is the most amazing ever set up in a public place in this country. It has divided with Greenough's "Washington," at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the horrors of being a national joke. Its author was Clarke Mills, and its inception is probably unparalleled in the history of sculpture.