LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[THE SHERMAN MONUMENT. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens][Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
[GRIEF. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens][8]
A Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D. C.
[THE LINCOLN STATUE. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens][9]
[RELIEF PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. By Augustus Saint-Gaudens][16]
[PAN. By George Grey Barnard][28]
[THE HEWER. By George Grey Barnard][29]
[TWO FRIENDS. By George Grey Barnard][34]
A Memorial Monument.
[THE GREELEY STATUE. By John Quincy Adams Ward][46]
[THE BEECHER STATUE. By John Quincy Adams Ward][47]
[DEATH AND THE SCULPTOR. By Daniel Chester French][60]
The Milmore Monument in Forest Hills Cemetery near Boston.
[DETAIL OF THE CLARK MONUMENT. By Daniel Chester French][61]
Forest Hills Cemetery.
[ALMA MATER. By Daniel Chester French][68]
Columbia University.
[DIANA. By Frederick Macmonnies][76]
[BACCHANTE. By Frederick Macmonnies][77]
[MICHELANGELO. By Paul Weyland Bartlett][92]
Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
[MADONNA. By Herbert Adams][104]
Tympanum for St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York.
[PORTRAIT-BUST. By Herbert Adams][105]
[BUST OF THE ARTIST’S WIFE. By Herbert Adams][110]
[THE DRILLER. By Charles Henry Niehaus][122]
From the Drake Monument, Titusville, Pennsylvania.
[THE HAHNEMANN STATUE. By Charles Henry Niehaus][123]
From the Hahnemann Memorial, Washington, D. C.
[BUST OF DANIEL COTTIER. By Olin Levi Warner][136]
[CUPID AND PSYCHE. By Olin Levi Warner][137]
[DIANA. By Olin Levi Warner][144]
[COWBOY MOUNTING. By Solon Hannibal Borglum][152]
[LOST IN A BLIZZARD. (Marble.) By Solon Hannibal Borglum][153]
[TAMED. By Solon Hannibal Borglum][160]
[PORTRAIT OF C. P. HUNTINGTON. By Victor David Brenner][168]
[RECUMBENT FIGURE. By J. Massey Rhind][192]
From the Tomb of Father Brown in the Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin, New York.
[PUMA. By A. Phimister Proctor][193]
From Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
[CHARIOT RACE. By F. G. R. Roth][202]
[BUST OF A CHILD. By Birtley Canfield][214]
[THE STONE AGE. By John J. Boyle][215]

I
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

IF we value the gift of imagination in an artist over that of technique it is not because we undervalue the latter. Without technique a work of art is not to be thought of; it is as essentially the visible expression of the inward grace as the human form is the casket of the human spirit. But the quality in man or woman of purest delight and most enduring significance is less the body and its acts than the thought that animates them. And is it not so with a work of art?

It is as an artist of superior imagination that we regard Saint-Gaudens; as one who can give to the facts of our knowledge a fresh form and significance, attracting us toward the idea contained within the actual, the idealisation of character or of sentiment. And such imagination in an artist must have a twofold working. It fills him with a fine idea and it discovers to his hand a fine manner of embodying it; it penetrates his technique.

To appreciate fully a sculptor’s worthiness in this respect one should realise the peculiar relation in which he is placed with regard to facts. While the painter has a wide range of resources for creating an illusion the sculptor is limited to a comparatively strict and naïve realism. Even if he introduces an ideal figure, such as that of an angel, he is compelled to give it the clear-cut contours, substance and actuality of a distinctly visible and tangible form. His only means of idealising are the abstract beauty of line and form, the character of expression in face and gesture and the general feeling of nobility and sweetness that he can impart to his work through the degree to which the thought that is in him inspires his hand. He may, indeed, attempt a more obvious trick of idealising, as when Greenough represented Washington in the rôle of Olympian Zeus by the device of baring the body and placing a mimic thunderbolt in the hand. But to modern taste, at any rate, such a procedure seems ridiculous. The truth is, that the highest form of imagination—indeed, the only tolerable one to the modern mind—is that which illumines the facts of our common knowledge and expression; in a word, which bases itself on facts.