In this art, even more than in painting, excessive smoothness is too often mistaken for high finish.
The sculptors of the female figure especially, are too prone to efface (even in the clay) details which ought to be carefully preserved; and after the figure has been cast in plaster, the work of polishing goes on with file and sand-paper, until the few touches of nature which had been left are effaced.
The great mischief, however, is usually done when the plaster is copied into marble. The paid statuary who does this work strives to give still greater roundness to the already smooth and rounded limbs, and he generally succeeds too well. When the marble is ready for the finishing-touches of the sculptor, he sometimes endeavors to regain a little of the natural element, but generally he consoles himself with the reflection that high art is incompatible with detail, and so his Venus or nymph leaves his studio for the exhibition or the patron’s gallery, there to be admired as a model of beautiful carving and of exquisite taste; of the former, on account of its soft, boneless appearance; and of the latter, because, though a nude figure, there is no reminiscence of nature about it.
There is less of this kind of insipid sculpture now than formerly.
Terra cotta, which, as every one knows, is the direct impression of the artist’s modelling, has to a great extent supplanted marble, and the smooth pseudo-classical nymphs of forty years ago are rather out of favor.
French sculptors of the nude have, in their horror of smoothness, gone into the opposite extreme; and, thinking to give more realism to their work, have adopted a coarse granular style of modelling for their surface texture. I question, however, whether this new fashion at all meets the objection every artist must entertain toward the old style of work.
Even supposing we grant that, in nature, the skin is of a granular hummocky texture, such as we see in the plaster statues by Carpeaux and his school, I cannot allow that any thing is gained by this piece of realism.
Carpeaux himself was a man of genius, and in his work, nature (though not of a very beautiful kind) is apparent everywhere; but his imitators, like most imitators, copy his eccentricities rather than his good qualities.
The real objection to the work of the Canova school of sculpture is not that the surface is unlike the human skin, but that unintelligent carving and excessive polishing tend to obliterate all character and individuality of form.
This objection can only be met by sculptors aiming at a more discriminating perception of form, as well as what (from want of a better word) I may call a more conservative style of execution.