Brought up in the Belgian Black Country, the sombre gloom of the life there became part of his very being. After a period of continuous struggle against poverty and sickness, he turned to sculpture at the age of fifty, under the influence of the achievements of Rodin. As a result, we see in Meunier’s “[Mower]” the thought and emotion of a man who feels the beautiful misery of labour in the depths of his soul. The intense human pathos enshrined in the bronze is something which the English sculptor neither feels nor seeks to express.
MEUNIER (BELGIAN SCHOOL)
THE MOWER
In saying this we are in no sense disparaging Mr. Thornycroft’s work. True, he makes no attempt to suggest the vague poetry with which Meunier invests his Flemish or Walloon labourers. But, at any rate, the classic severity with which he has treated an essentially modern theme strikes us as thoroughly honest. There is no trace of a pose. Thornycroft has set down what he saw and what he felt. The hint of the Greek manner in the representation of the English labourer only reminds us that the sculptor who would express the beauty of the male form to-day is faced with the very task which the Athenian essayed 2000 years ago.
Leighton’s “[Athlete and Python],” Brock’s “[Eve]” and Thornycroft’s “[Mower]” must, then, be compared with the works of such Frenchmen as Chapu, Idrac and Dubois. From the three Englishmen we turn naturally enough to the sculptors who represent the movement in English art corresponding to the anti-academic revolt in France. The characteristic common to Leighton, Brock, and Thornycroft is a certain emotional restraint. They seem to content themselves with the truthful representation of natural beauty. From none of the three do we gain the impression of a forceful individuality striving after self-expression. Nevertheless, there is a movement in English art comparable with the anti-academic revolt in France.
THE GROWTH OF INDIVIDUALISM
Alfred Gilbert is the Carpeaux and the Rodin of English sculpture. The analogy must not be pressed too closely. But, as the first sculptor to widen the bounds of his art by arousing his fellows to a sense of fresh technical possibilities, the influence of Alfred Gilbert may rightly be compared with that of Carpeaux. Through the constancy and power with which he has asseverated his belief in sculpture as a means of emotional expression, Gilbert ranks as the English Rodin.
Unlike Rodin, Gilbert has never severed his connection with the academic school. Indeed, the Professorship of Sculpture at the Royal Academy was actually revived in his favour in 1901. But Gilbert’s artistic creed is essentially Rodinesque. Again and again he has preached from the text:
“Be your own star.”