A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

Arc de Triomphe, Paris

Charming as the “Neapolitan Fisher Boy” is, Rude’s genius is more completely illustrated by his great bas-relief in the Arc de Triomphe at Paris. Thiers was Louis Philippe’s minister at the time, and he gave Rude the commission for all the “grande sculpture” upon the Arch. The intrigues of rivals, however, resulted in half of the work being handed over to Etex, and finally, Rude only contributed a single group. This was the “Chant du Départ,” generally known as “[The Marseillaise].” The magnificent force and vigour with which Rude has carried out the purpose of the memorial is beyond praise. His task was to perpetuate the fame of the Imperial armies which cowed Europe and won such fights as Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland. Surely the difference between the emotion expressed in Rude’s “Chant du Départ,” and any works by the more highly endowed Canova and Thorvaldsen is beyond question. Surely it is equally certain that the difference can only be traced to one thing. The Frenchman was expressing what he felt, whereas, the other two men were only expressing what Wincklemann and Lessing had proved to be correct. Rude was able to infuse his marble with the passion it contains because he had lived through a stirring age. The “Chant du Départ” only nominally dates from the ’thirties of the last century. Really, it was carved in the year 1793, when Rude as a boy of nine, marched up and down the squares of Dijon, with his child-companions in the Royal Bourbon Regiment of the National Guard, and felt his loyal little heart burning within him as he sang the Marseillaise before the bust of Marat or Robespierre. It makes us feel that it is the direct outcome of real feeling—experienced at first hand.

THE RISE OF ENGLISH SCULPTURE

The sculpture of Rude leads naturally enough to that of Great Britain—the only other country in Europe with national emotions capable of being translated into a vital art at that time.

Unfortunately, no lover of sculpture, writing in English can turn from the art of France to that of his own country without a pang. For hundreds of years, the sculptor met with no encouragement in Great Britain. The land which had nourished the genius of a Shakespeare, a Milton and a Wren, of a Gainsborough and a Reynolds, could only advance a list of shadowy names against the tangible achievements of its great rival on the other side of the Channel. In the early days of the Renaissance, there was some promise that sculpture might obtain a foothold in England as it was doing in France. Henry VIII. and Wolsey took a keen interest in the infant art, and persuaded several Italian artists to take up their abode in England. Such a tomb as that of Henry VII. in the Abbey, the contract for which was made in 1512, affords an interesting comparison with the tombs of the French kings of the sixteenth century. It was the work of the Italian Torrigiano, best known nowadays as the breaker of Michael Angelo’s nose. Unfortunately, Torrigiano was the greatest, and not the least, of the band of foreign artists who came to England in those days. Consequently, our native sculptors never had the advantage of seeing men like Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto working among them. Torrigiano and Antonio Toto were poor substitutes for Cellini and Primaticcio.

No one can say what would have happened had a more vigorous artistic impulse been received from the country of Michael Angelo and Donatello. But this is certain. Neither sculpture nor painting in England became the living things they were in France. While Francis I. and the three Louis were purchasing statues by Goujon and Pajou, the English kings and nobles preferred to repeat lyrical snatches by such men as Lovelace and Rochester. Almost the only British sculptures from the end of the Tudors to the middle of the reign of George III. were the memorial monuments which still decorate our older churches. For the rest, there was such a work as the Nightingale monument by the foreigner Roubilliac, the still-life carvings of Grinling Gibbons, and the fine tombs by Nicholas Stone in Westminster Abbey.

The profound difference between the English character and the French accounts, in great measure, for Britain’s slowness to develop a national school of sculpture. The temperament which really feels that pure form can adequately express the emotional experience of mankind is rare at any time. It is far less likely to develop among men who prefer positive, concrete mental images than among those who seek the definite, abstract conceptions which the French mind creates. Moreover, during the century after Shakespeare, Britain was fully occupied in settling her religious and political difficulties, and upon such tasks as the absorption of Ireland and Scotland. During the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth England should be pictured by the aid of Arnold’s magnificent image:

“The weary Titan, with deaf Ears, and labour-dimm’d eyes, Regarding neither to right Nor left ... Staggering on to her goal.”

The Scottish Revolution of 1745 marked the conclusion of the period of political and social stress. By the middle of the eighteenth century Great Britain had “found itself.” The foundations of a system of party government had been laid. The rule of Walpole, “the first Prime Minister of England,” had indicated the direction in which the future of English politics lay. For the first time the country was able to devote a portion of its spare energy to an art which was admittedly not quite attuned to the national temperament.

The establishment of the British Museum was an early indication of the new mood. The Royal Academy, founded in 1768, with Reynolds as its first president, indicated the public recognition that a national school of sculpture was possible. Finally, society—with a capital S—condescended to interest itself in classical art. The influence of this upon English sculpture can be happily illustrated from the history of the “Society of Dilettanti.”