MADONNA
By Herbert Adams
Tympanum for St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York
PORTRAIT BUST
By Herbert Adams
Evidently actuated by such intentions, Adams has frequently resorted to colour in portrait reliefs and busts, with so choice a feeling that they have a quality of very rare distinction. In one case, while the form is marble of a pinkish, creamy hue, the bodice of the dress and full-puffed sleeves are carved in wood of a pale-cedar colour and an embroidered band across the bosom is sprinkled with gems of lapis lazuli and green. This last feature is handled with exquisite finesse, while the character of the rest of the design is large and simple. Two of his busts are illustrated here, and in one case there is colour treatment and in the other the marble has been left in its purity. The former suffers by reproduction, since the photographic process has altered the relation between the coloured portions and the rest, giving a sharpness of contrast to the eyes and mouth; and it is at a further disadvantage, for the sake of comparison, because the other is an exceptionally fine example of Adams’s work. A portrait of the artist’s wife reveals an intimacy of sympathetic comprehension and a loving reverence of expression that make it a quite unusual work. It is pervaded also with an exquisite mystery of feeling, as of something beyond the artist’s and the husband’s knowledge hidden behind the veil of the woman’s separate existence, but a mystery the quality of which his knowledge comprehends. For there is mystery also in the face of the other bust, but more enigmatic; only a partial reading of the character and to the rest no clue. While the one portrait reveals a character matured and comprehensible, notwithstanding that its outlines merge into conjecture, the other leaves one guessing, as do many of the old Florentine women’s portraits.
The “Bust of the Artist’s Wife” in its melodious rendering of light and shade illustrates very pointedly the predominance of the colour or painter feeling over the sculptural, of expression over structure. It is more or less felt in all Adams’s busts, and is very noticeable in low reliefs, such as the “Hoyt Memorial” and the “Pratt Memorial” tablets, where he followed his own promptings. But when he works in coöperation with an architect, the latter’s influence disturbs the oneness of his motive and draws him to considerations of the architectonic use of form, which results in some impairment of the expression.