The love of art in the child of genius “grows by what it feeds on,” and claims an undivided devotion to its pursuits. Perhaps no kind of knowledge is so fascinating when its fruits are tasted. Miss Stebbins found no charm in the social pleasures at her command which could draw her attention from painting. She finally resolved on an exclusive consecration of her talents to art, making it the sole business of her life. She determined to go to Rome.
Several of her crayon portraits, executed in Rome, received the highest encomiums from acknowledged judges in that city. A copy she made of the “St. John” of Du Bœuf, and one from a painting in the gallery of the Louvre, representing a “Girl Dictating a Love-letter,” were noted among her oil-paintings. Her “Boy and Bird’s Nest” was done in the style of Murillo. Her pastel-painting of “Two Dogs” has been highly praised.
Almost every branch of the imitative art has been at different periods cultivated by Miss Stebbins, and her success proves the scope and versatility of her talent. Besides painting in oil and water colors, she has practiced drawing on wood and carving wood, modeling in clay, and working in marble. It is probably in the difficult art of sculpture that she will leave to America the works by which she will be most widely known.
She profited, like Miss Hosmer, by the counsels and supervision of Gibson, and the careful instruction of Akers. A work from her chisel, in the spring of 1859, commanded the highest suffrages. Mr. Heckscher, a large proprietor of coal-mines in the United States, had requested Miss Stebbins to execute for him two typical statues—one of Industry, the other of Commerce. The figure of Industry is completed, and has been represented by the artist, with graceful taste, as a miner. A critic says:
“The figure is that of an athletic, admirably-proportioned youth, who bears upon his right shoulder the pick, and in the front of his picturesque slouched hat the miner’s lamp. The weight of the body is thrown easily and naturally upon the right leg, and the left hand rests with the carelessness of manly strength upon a block of marble, drilled and hewn in the manner of a mass of coal. The symmetrical vigor of the figure, admirable as it is, is not more admirable than the lofty, ingenuous beauty of the classic head and face, poised in an attitude equally unforced and striking, upon the graceful, well-rounded throat. The drapery of the full shirt, open at the neck and close-gathered about the waist, is managed with particular skill; and while the whole figure reminds one strikingly of one of those magnificent Gothic kings whose images stand in the vestibule of the Museo Borbonico, at Naples, the spirit and air of it are purely modern and American. It is, in truth, one of the most felicitous combinations of every-day national truth with the enduring and cosmopolite truth of art ever seen, and it is a work which does equal credit to the sex and the country of the artist.”
Miss Stebbins has taken up her residence permanently in Rome, amid those surroundings and associations sought by artists of all nations as most favorable to their progress. She has been for some time engaged in modeling in clay several groups which, though as yet unfinished, have been criticised favorably by connoisseurs and friends.
HARRIET HOSMER.
In the Via Fontanella at Rome—a street close upon the beautiful Piazza del Popolo, and running at a right angle from the Babuino to the Corso, a few steps out of the Babuino on the left—is a large, rough, worm-eaten door, which has evidently seen good service, and from the appearance of which no casual and uninitiated passer-by would suspect the treasures of art it conceals and protects. A small piece of whip-cord, with a knot as handle, issues from a perforated hole, by means of which—a small bell being set in motion—access is gained to the studio of England’s greatest living master of sculpture, John Gibson.
The threshold crossed, the visitor finds himself at once in the midst of this artist’s numerous works. In a large barn-like shed, with a floor of earth, on pedestals of various materials, shapes, and sizes, stand the beautiful Cupid and Butterfly, the wounded Amazon, Paris and Proserpine gathering flowers, the charming groups of Psyche borne by the Zephyrs, of Hylas and the Water Nymphs, and the noble basso-relievo of Phaeton and the Hours leading forth the horses of the Sun, with, perhaps, a bust or figure in progress by the workman whose duty it is to keep the studio and attend to the numerous visitors. Facing the door of entry just described is its counterpart, opening into a fairy-like square plot of garden, filled with orange and lemon trees and roses, and, in the spring, fragrant with violets blue and white, Cape jasmine, and lilies of the valley; while, in a shady recess, and fern-grown nook trickles a perpetual fountain of crystal-clear water. The sun floods this tiny garden with his golden light, flecking the trellised walks with broken shadows, and wooing his way, royal and irresistible lover as he is, to the humbler floral divinities of the place, sheltered beneath their own green leaves, or in the superb shade of the acanthus. Lovely is the effect of this rich glow of sunlight as one stands in the shade of the studio, perfumed with the sweet blossoms of the South; lovely the aspect both of nature and of art, into the presence of which we are so suddenly and unexpectedly ushered from the ugly, dirty street without. Having gazed our fill here, we step into the garden, and, turning to the right, if we be favored visitors, friends, or the friends of friends, we are next ushered into the sanctum of the master himself, whom we shall probably find engaged in modeling, and from whom we shall certainly receive a kind and genial welcome, granting always that we have some claim for our intrusion upon his privacy.
This room, long and narrow, is boarded, and has some pretensions to comfort; but throughout the whole range of studios the absence of care and attention will strike the eye, more especially as it is the present fashion in Rome to render the studios both of painter and sculptor as comfortable and habitable as possible. From Mr. Gibson’s own room we are taken into another rough shed, where the process of transformation from plaster to marble is carried on, and where frequent visitors can not fail to discover the vast difference which exists in skill and natural aptitude among the numerous workmen employed.