IX
OLIN LEVI WARNER
IN these days when we are trying to raise “artists,” as we do chickens, by a process akin to incubation, we regard it as an anomaly if one emerges to eminence from surroundings which, according to our system, do not seem congenial. And people have expressed surprise that Warner, the child of a New England Methodist minister, brought up in a community which had no artistic inclinations, should have made up his mind to become a sculptor before he had ever seen a statue. But the history of art is full of such surprises; and the thoughts of youth are ever like the wind, “which bloweth where it listeth; thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” The greater and more beautiful surprise is that the boy had foundation of character on which to nourish the flowers of his imagination, and that when in after years they were matured, it was found that he had kept them so choicely select, that their fragrance was not unlike that of the flowers which in old time bloomed on the hills of Hellas. Something of the old Greek spirit had been revived in this son of Connecticut: intellectual stability, moral balance and spiritual serenity. Presently we shall consider how these qualities became translated into terms of art in his work—into a feeling for form, monumental rather than picturesque, a rhythmical and harmonious reserve, a peculiar sensitiveness to the significance of the essential facts in the design—but at the moment let us note how they affected his early conduct.
By the time that he left school at the age of nineteen, the desire of being a sculptor had so grown upon him as to press for a decision. Accordingly he arranged for himself a test. He would attempt a bust of his father, and thus determine once and for all the “to be or not to be” of his ambition. So, in ignorance of the easier way by which sculptors proceed, he bought some plaster of Paris, converted it into a block, and set to work with a knife. His only notion of art was to produce a good likeness, and in this he succeeded. The bust was exhibited and commended at the State Fair, and Warner felt that his cherished wish was justified. But the deliberation which had characterised the choice of a profession was followed by an equal seriousness in determining the means of attaining it. He could not have known that sculpture in America at that time was in a poor way; he had, in fact, no acquaintance even with the mediocre kinds of statue; but the old-fashioned, New England conscience within him viewed the matter very earnestly. Already he felt a reverence for the work to which he was to devote his life, and that the best of preparations must be made. He would seek it in Paris. But he had no funds nor could his father spare them, so he quietly laid aside his longings and proceeded to earn the necessary money. Mastering the trade of telegraph operator, he pursued it for six years, not, as may be supposed, without some ultimate benefit to the facility and delicacy of his manipulation. At length, with his savings of $1,500 he started for Paris. This was in 1869, when he was twenty-five years of age.
Arriving in the great city without introduction, friends or knowledge of the language, he made his way to the Louvre. Here were students busy copying; fellows such as he meant to be, and he was drawn toward them, wandering from easel to easel, until upon the woodwork of one he espied a name, “Arthur Wilson.” He ventured to address the owner and tell him of his quest, and was directed to a studio occupied by two young sculptors, an American and an Englishman. With them he studied for nine months, until, through the influence of United States Minister Washburne, he was admitted to the École des Beaux Arts. Here he worked in the studio of François Jouffroy, where he had the benefit of associating with such artists as Falguière, an older pupil of the master, and with Falguière’s pupil, Mercié, a man of his own age. Both of these artists had broken away from the master’s severely academic style and were tempering their own with the life and movement of the new naturalistic tendencies. Warner also in modelling from nature incurred the old master’s strictures, because his sturdy individualism refused to lend itself to conventional methods; but, on the other hand, his studies from the antique were commended. In time, however, his funds were exhausted, and, having to find employment, he entered as an ordinary workman the studio of Carpeaux, the strongest decorative sculptor in France since Rude, whose pupil he had been. Warner’s ability was recognised by the master, and he received the great compliment of an invitation to remain and study in the studio. But he declined, being eager by this time to return home.
The years of studentship had been diversified by the thrilling events of the Siege of Paris and the Commune. Warner in his own country had experienced the war-fever, and, eager to join the Army of the Republic as a drummer-boy, had been dissuaded by his father, who during the stormy days of the Civil War carried him off to a quiet spot among the Vermont hills, that he might continue his studies. So, when the empire fell and a republic was established, he regarded the action of the Germans in continuing the war as an attack upon liberty, and enlisted with many of his comrades in the Foreign Legion. But his duties were confined to mounting guard upon the fortifications.
When, in 1872, Warner returned to New York it was to suffer the hard experience of disillusionment. In Paris he had found art occupying a prominent position in the public and private life of the community, artists honoured and encouraged by the State and his own ability acknowledged by some of the masters of his craft. He returned to his native country to find a prevailing ignorance concerning art; to find the trained artist competing for jobs with the commercial stonecutter and metal-worker, the competitions decided more by political favoritism and wire-pulling than by artistic merit; to find, indeed, that he was transplanting the delicate growth of his ideals from a congenial soil to what was, artistically speaking, very much of an arid and howling wilderness. These words are scarcely too strong to express the conditions of the field of art in this country more than a quarter of a century ago, before the Centennial Exhibition had sounded the tocsin of an improved taste; before the students of art had begun to return in numbers from the foreign schools, and schools of art in this country had been put upon a better basis; before the importation of all sorts of works of art from Europe and the East, and the travel of our own people abroad had become so extensive; before the spread of interest and knowledge which all these causes operated to produce. Even now the slime of politics is very apt to foul the fair working of competitions, and it is often difficult for a sculptor, unless he is at the very top of his profession, to secure a public commission without some degree of wire-pulling. But in 1872, when the factories kept on hand a stock of military statues, complete in every particular except the number of the regiment—which was riveted on to suit the requirements of the intending purchasing committee—the outlook for an unknown artist with high ideals, clean of purpose, who reverenced his profession as his life, was dark indeed. Warner held hunger and despair at arm’s length for four years, and
