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

by Charles H. Caffin

But, without going to any such lengths in demeaning his imagination, the artist may still allow it to become hypnotised by his model. I was very much struck by the remark of a painter, whose nudes are exquisitely pure and poetical in type, that it was his habit as soon as he had secured the facts of the figure to discontinue the model, since he found that otherwise he was apt to become possessed by it. And is it not a fact that in very many statues and pictures one detects the evidence of this possession? Is it absent in Macmonnies’s later work?

The earlier is alive with spontaneous, creative energy, which shows itself most characteristically in works like the “Cupid on Ball,” “Boy with Heron,” and the “Diana.” The last has been criticised for being “nervous and strained” in manner. Not quite justly, perhaps, since the long, lean limbs are precisely those of one accustomed to swift movement; the movement in this case is free and elastic, and the whole gesture of the body expressive of keen and practiced energy; no antique type, it is true, but its modern antithesis, the girl whose graceful lines have been strung and whose grace of action liberated by physical activities. The figure has the buoyancy and poise of mass and charm of living lines which distinguish the work of Macmonnies as much as the actual beauty of modelling. These traits reappear in a most fascinating way in the artless grace of the “Cupid,” bounding along with head and shoulders thrown back, as he discharges an arrow behind him. The action of the body is quick with naturalness, and yet the disposition of every part, even to such a detail as the fingers, reveals the shrewd arrangement of a choicely refined taste—an instinctive taste, operating almost unconsciously, with a frank, boyish impulsiveness, high spirited and not without a spice of mischievous humour. For note the redoubtable struggle between the “Boy with Heron”; the youngster planted firmly and putting forth his strength so stubbornly, the bird thrashing the air with its wings and writhing its body angrily. How will it end? Is it only a tumble of sport, or will the young creature of the earth not let go until the creature of the air is subdued, perhaps maimed, killed? Or, again, in the “Pan of Rohallion” the boy stands upon a ball supported by miniature dolphins, which spout their streams of water and look up as if listening, while he blows the two reeds that issue at a broad angle from his impish mouth, leaning back to inflate his chest until his body describes an arc. It is the attitude of a saucy child that has taken the measure of its little self from the affectionate indulgence that surrounds it; again, not an antique type, nor rustically impish like a Puck, but with the engaging elegance and self-conscious roguery of a certain kind of modern urchin.

Yes, modernity is the key to which all Macmonnies’s work is pitched; an echo not of the modern mind, but of the modern temperament. So we may be disposed to prefer the earlier ones, while his temperament was still fresh and frank and exuberant with the insouciance of youth. Later on the exuberance is at once more conscious and less spontaneous. In the “Diana” there was an abounding healthfulness of liberated energy; in the “Bacchante” a suggestion of energy, reënforced with champagne. Truly, this is not an inapt suggestion for a bacchante to make; but we are a long way from the anthropomorphic tendency of the antique mind which personified the power of wine in its social and beneficent aspects, and saw in Bacchus the god of civilisation and in his devotees the frenzy of divine inspiration. Moreover, there is no suggestion of this in the statue. The figure is of modern type, rendered with undisguised naturalness. After being declined by the trustees of the Boston Public Library, it is now in the Metropolitan Museum, where among the variety of impressions it loses its startling emphasis and takes its place naturally as one of the cleverest pieces of modern sculpture. For of its exceeding cleverness there can be no doubt. The action is such as no model could maintain in its vivacity for more than a moment; the artist has seized it in all its flow and suppleness of movement and held it in his imagination to the finish. It is a statue which we can almost accept as an example of the predominance of technique over the facts of the living model, except for a certain look-at-me-ishness which seems to result from the artist’s consciousness that his problem was a daring exhibition of skill. There is just a little too much protestation of skill in the whole conception, just as there is too much protestation of hilarity in the girl’s face. Her gaiety is hysterical, the composition lacking in artistic sanity.

Both the Nathan Hale and the Stranahan statues were completed when the artist was only twenty-eight years of age. The former, since no portrait of Hale exists, is an effort of imagination, the latter of observation and by far the finer work. For, while Macmonnies is gifted with a very delightful imaginativeness, he has not so far shown himself possessed of the deeper qualities of imagination. The Hale scarcely rises above a graceful and touching sentimentality; there is a point-device nicety in the carriage of the figure; it stands well upon its feet, but with an air of debonair primness and too conscious rectitude. The point of view is a little immature. In the Stranahan, however, the frankness of youth has helped the artist. He had seen many a sculptor go down before the difficulty of a figure in modern civilian garb, but he had also seen his master, Saint-Gaudens, triumph over it in his “Lincoln.” So, as a boy to prove he is not afraid, grasps the nettle tightly and is not stung, Macmonnies grasped his problem and succeeded. He contrives no ingenious arrangement nor extenuates any detail of the costume, but actually makes it interesting by the charming handling of the masses and textures. With equal directness he has represented the character of the figure: stable, composed, yet animated, while to the observation of the head he has brought a sympathetic and reverent study, which results in a singular nobility and sweetness of expression. The statue, in fact, has a very considerable measure of monumental dignity, is full of vitality and touched all over with fineness of human and artistic feeling.

Full of vitality also, and of artistic feeling is the “Sir Harry Vane” in the Boston Library. The costume, a beaver with rolled brim and plume, doublet and cloak, and breeches tucked into riding-boots, offered opportunities of picturesqueness of which Macmonnies has taken full advantage. The gesture, too, as the figure stands firmly with one leg advanced, drawing on a glove, is manly and of winning courtliness. Indeed, the elegance may be felt to be in excess; the conception of the personality being scarcely more than that of a fine gentleman engaged in the unimportant occupation of putting on his gloves. The costume also plays a conspicuous share in the statue of “Shakespeare” at Washington. The doublet, trunks and surcoat are stiff with embroidery, most cunningly modelled, and the set of the silk hose upon the strong, shapely legs is admirable. The head, too, is admirably constructed, the bony portions having been copied from the bust in Stratford-on-Avon Church and the features from the Droeshout portrait, commended by Jonson for its fidelity. Thus the external facts have been very conscientiously compiled, and edited with much mastery of craftsmanship; but the soul of the facts, the inspired poet inside them, is scarcely suggested. The statue illustrates again that Macmonnies does not display imagination; that he only approximates to it with a certain charm of imaginativeness, finding fittest expression in subjects of a decorative character, of which the very beautiful central doors of the Library of Congress remain the most successful example.

For the larger compositions, while full of exuberant invention and charm of detail, lack unity and dignity of ensemble. The best of them was probably the short-lived fountain for the Court of Honour at Chicago. Its central feature, the “Ship of the Republic,” presented a handsome silhouette, whereas the quadriga on the Brooklyn Arch, when viewed from the back, does not. Considering also the necessary haste involved in the preparation of the fountain, it was a fairly maintained composition, reasonably balanced and homogeneous. In spirit, however, it represented the verve and gaiety which the Parisian seeks in exposition sculpture, and scarcely conformed to the graver, more monumental character of the architectural scheme at Chicago; while the naturalistic rendering of a Parisian model to symbolise the Republic, presented a curious and not uninstructive contrast to French’s “Republic” at the other end of the basin.

For in this figure Macmonnies revealed perhaps for the first time, certainly in most marked manner, his tendency to lose himself in the natural facts of the model. Some extenuation might be found in the haste with which the work was bound to be completed; and a similar insufficiency of time—as commissions piled upon him in unexampled profusion—may account for his subsequent addiction to bare naturalism. Yet it scarcely excuses it, and still less that the naturalism should take a grosser form, until in the colossal groups at Indianapolis it reached a degree of coarseness in the female figures which is very far indeed from the exquisite feeling of the artist’s early work.

In the freshness of his youth he reflected the national grace of gaiety. God forbid that the grossness of type and orgy of action displayed in these latter groups should be indicative of anything American!