IV
DANIEL CHESTER FRENCH

AMONG the earlier works of Daniel C. French is a bust of Emerson, a truly admirable rendering of the mingled nobility and sweetness of the well-known face, of the human kindliness which warmed the pure and abstract elevation of his mind. It reminds us that in his youth French enjoyed acquaintance with the philosopher of Concord and came under the influence of other famous spirits who formed the little group of high thinkers and plain livers, with whom it was also an axiom, of more than incidental importance, that Americans should shake their minds free of the European point of view and develop a culture for themselves out of the genius of their own conditions.

French, himself of New England stock, born at Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1850, came under these influences at the impressionable age of eighteen, when he began to model under the instruction of a member of the Alcott family, the head of which, Amos Bronson, had been one of the leading writers in The Dial. Moreover, his own nature, one may suspect, furnished congenial soil for the germination of the seeds which it received during this time, since the fruit of his maturity savours unmistakably of these conditions. And this, notwithstanding that he spent many subsequent years in Florence, where his master was Thomas Ball, a blithe, sweet nature, gentle, refined, and full of bonhomie. Here again was a continuance of, at least, the gracious influences which had surrounded French’s growth from the beginning, and it was in the light of these that he sucked in nourishment from the environment of Florence. To judge by the tenor of his afterwork, the treasures of the city did not affect him very directly; here and there we may find a hint of assimilated style, notably in the angels for the Clark monument in the Forest Hills Cemetery; but for the most part, apparently, the impressions of these days served to give artistic indorsement to the gracious elevation of the earlier literary ones. Even the work upon which he engaged himself at that time, a statue of “Endymion,” was a following of the Canova tradition, still lingering in Italy, rather than of the beckonings of the older art, and chiefly characteristic of himself by reason of the calm, passionless purity of the emotion involved.

The degree and quality of emotion which enters into an artist’s work must constitute one of the most important elements in his art and will even affect that other essential element, the character of his technique. How his work will affect ourselves will largely depend upon the extent to which we respond, either by nature or by a habit of cultivation, to the particular kind of emotion which he portrays. On the other hand, a great number of people seem unable to appreciate the emotional quality in a work of art and look only for the intellectual, while more than a few artists display little or nothing of the latter quality and exaggerate the sensuous. Especially are they apt to limit the range of the emotions to one kind, that of love, and to regard it exclusively in its sexual manifestation. In this way the word passion, with its deep significance of an emotion so strong as to bring suffering, has been belittled. Some art is the product of this nobler kind of passion, a good deal is only a tiresome reiteration of the lower kind, and, again, there is art which emanates from a tranquillity of spirit undisturbed by either kind of passion. It is in this last category that French’s art seems to belong.

My own appreciation of it recalls the memory of a certain mountain pool. I had made an early start on a summer’s day, rising in the cheerless glimmer before the dawn and spending some two hours as one of many sleepy passengers in a stuffy train. Alighting at a drowsy little town, where small farmers congregate to pursue their petty barterings, I began the ascent by a bridle path, steep, stony and dusty, winding frequently as it steadily mounted. By noon I had reached an elevation midway between the last belt of trees and the snow-line and could look down upon the cloud-mists that clung like patches of wool to the forest, and farther down to the green bowl of the valley, with its flashes of river and thin spirals of gray smoke. Above me was a more venturesome climb, to have accomplished which would have entailed stouter endurance and more painful effort, crowned, it may be, with a keener, fiercer exaltation. But, as it was I felt exalted. The spacious prospect, the crystalline purity of the air, a labour that had fully taxed my natural strength, combined to produce a condition of most perfect spiritual exhilaration, stealing over me so unconsciously as at last to be realised with surprise. The memory of it represents to me the clearest comprehension of passionless emotion and of the mental atmosphere in which a work of art that has not been conceived in the throes of passion may spring forth and be matured.

Full to the brim of this sensuous elation, I wandered from the path and found myself beside a pool that caught within its deep hollow something of the sky’s blue and the glint of a passing cloud; otherwise mirroring only the surrounding banks and my own figure, bending over to peer through the cold, clear water to the bottom. Quite near it was to the dusty, beaten track, yet secluded, cradled within its own niche of the great mountain, placidly exhaling its water to the sky, whence it was in turn to receive its sustenance. Again I am helped to understand the beautiful reasonableness of art; although it may not be of the kind which mirrors the wide experiences of life, holds within it the mystery of impenetrable depth, or stirs the soul to loftiest heights of sensuous and intellectual comprehension. For, if the artist sets his art at the highest spot that his powers permit, keeps it secluded from the passing traffic of the world, unsullied, fresh, that it may give clear reflection to the figures of the imagination which, in the calm elation of this upper air, he brings to its margin, then he has done something for which the world is infinitely better.

It is an art of this kind which French, if I mistake not, represents—elevated, but passionless; always true to its noblest and sweetest promptings; mingling intellectual grace with the graciousness of pure emotion.

His first statue was the “Minute Man,” erected on the old battle-field at Concord in 1875. The young farmer is standing with one hand upon the plow and in the other grasping a musket, his head alert, as if he were waiting for a summons, the body held ready to advance. Though a work of immaturity and giving little promise of its author’s subsequent accomplishment, it yet has something of the sweet uplifting of sentiment that will reappear later with more assurance of conviction and with maturer technical expression. The next important work was the seated figure of John Harvard, unveiled at Cambridge in 1884. During that interval of nine years French had made extraordinary progress. Whether we consider the conception of the personality or the character of the technique, this statue is the work of a man who has attained to a realization of his true bent and to a freedom and force of craftsmanship. The dignity of quietude, a self-contained aloofness, the tender graciousness of a refined spirit, a gentle, unforced sincerity—these are the qualities