But this demands of the sculptor a very high degree of creative imagination, in all probability a proportionately higher one than the painter’s; for if the latter is confronted, for example, with a subject of ill-made coat and trousers, he can by merging the costume in atmosphere and by toning it with the background so gloss over its inartistic appearance as to produce a handsome ensemble. But, compared with the sculptor’s problems, this is an evasion of the difficulty. To repeat, the sculptor is limited in his presentment to the actual facts. But, though it may seem to be a paradox, it is almost a truism in art, that the limitations of a medium are its most characteristic sources of power—at least, when knowingly and courageously admitted. And, I believe, it can scarcely be doubted that the quality in Saint-Gaudens’s imagination which has most conduced to his greatness as an artist is this: it is kindled by contemplation of the facts, and it finds in the facts its keenest and truest impulse.
Moreover, it has been his good fortune to be confronted with large and impressive facts. The panorama of American civilization, and especially one episode of tremendous import—the Civil War—has spread itself behind his work; and the latter, as in the case of one of his own reliefs, has grown out of and in harmony with the background. Other sculptors, also, have had the same high incentive, but many have failed to respond to it. Saint-Gaudens has had the force of imagination which could not only grasp the magnitude of his opportunity but interpret its impressiveness.
The conditions in America have demanded that his work should be largely of a memorial character—monuments to those that are honoured in public or mourned in private, and in both directions his achievements have placed him in the foremost ranks of modern sculptors. This was demonstrated at the Paris Exposition of 1900, where he was represented among other works by the statue of General Sherman and the “Shaw Memorial.” A comparison of these, respectively with Dubois’s “Joan of Arc” and with Bartholomé’s “Monument to the Dead,” helped one to divine the special qualities of Saint-Gaudens’s style.
He himself had a Paris training. Son of a French father and an Irish mother, brought to this country when a child, he displayed early an aptitude for art, and in course of time went through the usual regimen of a student in Paris. Thus he came under the influence of the best academic traditions and of the modern naturalistic movement, and imbibed both to the degree that his own temperament and the conditions of his inspiration demanded.
So in the direction of tradition—that is to say, of more or less consecutive descent from an original classic type—we may compare his “General Sherman” with Dubois’s “Joan of Arc”; both equestrian statues, monumental in design, full of decorative dignity yet so different in character. The latter, noble in every particular, has a choice propriety of feeling that separates it by an ocean of motive from the freer spirit of the other. It is at once mannered, more consciously correct and studiously discreet and has an air of hauteur and aloofness, as becomes its aristocratic descent in the direct line from Verrocchio’s “Colleoni.” The “Sherman,” however, is of only collateral descent, modified by a larger environment and a fresher inspiration. The typal form has yielded to the individual, abstract dignity to the force of character, the fundamental suggestion to that of vivid, immediate actuality.
In its naturalistic tendency and expression of profound emotion the “Monument to the Dead,” by Bartholomé, is at one with Saint-Gaudens’s work; but I found myself comparing it with the latter’s figure of “Grief” in the Rock Creek Cemetery, near Washington. Then its degree of naturalism is found to be less. It shows some influence of the classic tradition in the use of nude figures and in their elaborate disposition along the background of masonry; while the single figure by Saint-Gaudens is draped and presented with an unaffectedness of arrangement and with an intimacy of appeal that is at the same time more naturalistic and more poignant.
So may we not deduce from these comparisons one quality inherent in Saint-Gaudens: that of daring to be free from conventional restraint, or rather the daring to adapt, with a freedom only limited by his sense of artistic fitness, the academic traditions which his early life experienced? For the means by which he has wrought out his freedom are in no sense revolutionary. He does not, for example, go as far as Rodin in the latter’s disregard of symmetry in composition. His own have always a monumental character, studied for their effect in the mass, as seen from various points of view. Moreover, they are always extremely reserved: as far as possible removed from the floridness indulged in by many students of the academic traditions. A similar reserve controls his naturalistic tendencies. Evidently it is not naturalism of itself which attracts him; indeed, all his leaning is primarily toward the sculpturesque side of sculpture, as a self-contained mass, proportionately impressive, equable in outline, decorative and structural in ensemble. These principles of technique are at the service
GRIEF