American Masters of Sculpture / Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Sculptors and of Some Phases of Sculpture in America

by Charles H. Caffin

THE BEECHER STATUE

By John Quincy Adams Ward

not effaced his debonair demeanour and whose clothes set gracefully to his person. Yet the person is unmistakably enforced. The man is not lost in the millinery, as one may have noticed in some costume statues; and it is in this respect that Ward has shown his true appreciation of the significance of clothes. They not only envelop the figure as naturally as a skin, and with no hindrance to the imagining of the body inside them, but they adapt themselves completely to the character of the man as shown in the pose of the body and expression of the head. They have been reduced, in fact, to an abstraction corresponding to the sculptor’s conception of the man.

In the “Washington” statue, which stands upon the steps of the Sub-Treasury Building in Wall Street, the sculptor had the advantage of a picturesque costume, and he has treated it with the same masterful ease. Yet on this occasion our attention is not divided between the significance of the clothes and that of the figure. The latter represents Washington in the ceremony of taking the oath of office in 1789, an event which happened near the spot now occupied by the statue. The pose is entirely free from heroics: that of a noble, true-hearted gentleman, conscious of the dignity and responsibility of the occasion. One could have wished that the legs were planted more squarely on the ground, as it would have increased the statuesque assertiveness of the figure; but it is quite possible that the sculptor intentionally avoided this, in the desire to suggest that it was at the call of duty and not of personal ambition that Washington accepted office. So he has taken the weight off the right foot and advanced it slightly, thus giving a pliant, curving motion to the body, and with it a touch of hesitancy to the pose. Backed by the classic façade of the Sub-Treasury Building the statue is very happily placed, and amid the turmoil of the neighbourhood strikes a note which is refreshingly true and noble.

No less turmoil surrounds the Greeley monument in Newspaper Row and, outwardly at any rate, of a less savoury character. Moreover, its pedestal abuts upon a narrow sidewalk, and the figure, seated in an armchair, has the unhelpful background of a large plate-glass window. It is itself, too, of shambling build, uncouthly costumed, the large, round face, oddly fringed with a rim of whiskers. The legs are wide apart; one arm rests on the back of the chair, the other lies upon the thigh, its hand holding a sheet of paper; the round shoulders droop forward, and the head is inclined so as to bring into view the flat, dome-like skull. Yes, the whole composition is the very reverse of what we usually understand by statuesque, and thousands pass and repass it daily without any recognition, so occupied are they in threading their way through the swarm of loud-lunged sellers of chronic “specials.” Yet if you will step back into the roadway, at the risk of being demolished by trolley-cars or wagons full of mile-long rolls of paper, you cannot fail to be impressed by the very strangeness of the figure. How full of character it is! Sitting back almost in a heap, pondering some point, the figure yet suggests that it is about to rise and put its resolve into action, so remarkable is the mixture of downrightedness and alacrity. It is indeed a representation of character truly original and of a convincing force, that bears the stamp of genius. Let us place it in our respect alongside of Saint-Gaudens’s “Peter Cooper,” as equally a triumph of art over uncompromising material, and, indeed, along similar lines of unflinching acceptance of the actual facts of the problem, and of broad, ample sympathy with nobility, though it does not lie upon the surface.

For the convenience of analysing Ward’s methods I have ventured to regard these three statues as examples of the significance, respectively, of clothes, form and character. Not quite accurately, I admit, because the three motives unite in all in various proportions; but perhaps I am right in feeling a preponderance of the one in each. However that may be, we shall find a completely balanced union of all three in the Beecher monument. The sculptor had particularly in mind the episode of Henry Ward Beecher’s visit to England in 1863, on a special mission from President Lincoln, for the purpose of bringing to English public notice the true position of the North. He was met by noisy opposition, but bore it down by indomitable endurance and intellectual force. In the strongly marked, mobile features; in the intellectuality of the head, carried so resolutely above the broad chest; in the striking simplicity of the quiet, stalwart pose, no less than in the absence of all rhetorical gesture in the arms, which are suspended at the sides; even to such a detail as the right hand, not clenched aggressively or held in indecision, but with the fingers drawn up to the thumb, a gesture that mingles alertness with poise, the figure expresses character, rocklike will and mental preëminence. The Inverness cape serves to give increased weight and breadth to the form; one arm being restrained within its folds, the other free for a fling of action if the occasion require it. The figure bears down upon its pedestal, column-like, monumental in the highest degree. It is a portrait-statue of most extraordinary impressiveness.

The equestrian statue of General Thomas at Washington, District of Columbia, is a spirited and arresting composition. The rider presents a portrait study of considerable power, but the sculptor in his zeal for the actual has seized upon the fact that Thomas was not a practised horseman. He does not move in his seat with the motion of the horse, his bridle-hand lacks control, and the action of the horse’s head proclaims it. One may enjoy a detail so minute as that of the hand in the Beecher statue, because it is contributory to the total effect, and equally regret this insistence upon a personal peculiarity of the General, since the total effect is thereby diminished. Such a detail is local and insignificant, only to be appreciated by a few of his comrades; but the statue will endure and be judged for what it presents; a general and his horse—do they move as one? is the personal supremacy of the rider maintained?

The pedestal of the “Beecher” is embellished with figures. On one side a woman and on the other a little girl is depositing a wreath, and a boy is steadying the latter figure. They are well modelled in natural and graceful movement, but they impart a touch of sentimentality, so alien to Ward’s habit and, indeed, to the spirit of the statue, that I wonder whether they were not a concession to the wish of the subscribers. Figures again adorn the pedestal of the Garfield monument in Washington, and among them is to be found a most successful treatment of the nude. “The Student” is an admirable example of Ward’s knowledge of form and of his discretion in rendering it. His ability as a decorative sculptor was shown in the group of “Sea-horses and Victory” which crowned the temporary Naval Arch in 1899, though executed many years before. Equally pronounced were the joyous elevation of the forms against the sky and the harmonious unity of the whole as a mass. It proved that Ward’s management of composition was as thorough in a complicated group as in a single figure. He is now engaged upon the pediment for the recently erected Stock Exchange Building in New York. As I have seen only the model—and that has been subjected to various modifications—it would be premature to discuss it. But it bids fair to be a most memorable work, fitly crowning by its magnitude and importance a long and honourable career.