Among the leaders of current art in America, the place of honor in portraiture belongs to John S. Sargent, who easily ranks with Boldini and Benjamin Constant in Paris. He is closely followed by Edmund C. Tarbell, John H. Alexander, with his love for long flowing graceful lines of drapery, Robert Vonnoh, and William M. Chase. John McClure Hamilton has made some striking studies of some of the most prominent people of our time, among them Gladstone and Pope Leo XIII. Elihu Vedder, John LaFarge, Will H. Low, Carroll Beckwith, Abbott Thayer, and E. H. Blashfield are figure painters whose subjects are frequently of a decorative or semi-religious character. The latter is noted for his literary as well as artistic ability. George H. Boughton, though called an American, really belongs to England, where he paints interior genre subjects usually of olden times. John Swan, the animal painter, is also English. The names of Moran and Sartain are distinguished in the history of American art, each family having contributed several generations of talented painters. The elders were contemporary with Daniel Huntington, long president of the National Academy of Design, and Eastman Johnson, whose “Old Kentucky Home” was famous. William T. Dannat, Herbert Denman, Frederick Bridgman, and F. L. Weeks are all strong figure painters, the last two being especially given to Oriental subjects. Winslow Homer includes figures with his marine studies, often presenting groups of peasants on a stormy shore, while Alexander Harrison and W. T. Richards usually confine themselves to marines pure and simple. The ragged, dirty little street Arabs of J. G. Brown have been exceedingly popular, and so have the landscapes of H. Bolton Jones. The list of modern landscape painters really deserving of mention is far too long to give in anything like complete mention. A few leaders, such as Charles H. Davis, Homer Martin, the late William T. Picknell, and George Inness must suffice to close our talk on the painters of this century.
II. SCULPTURE.
Human progress seems to advance in waves, sending forerunners to announce the gathering tide; and the ebb and flow of force is felt in all manner of endeavor, but in nothing so instantly or accurately as in the fine arts, the most sensitive and subtle forms of human expression. The plastic arts are as keen to record these changes as the pictorial, and the coming power of the nineteenth century found a few prophets in the dying years of the century passing away. Antonio Canova (1757–1822), born near Venice, left many graceful and delicately finished works. His “Three Graces” and group of “Cupid and Psyche” are well known, also his colossal bust of Napoleon and seated statue of Washington for the State of Carolina. France produced a master in Jean Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), more vigorous than his contemporaries, as seen in his powerful work, the seated statue of Voltaire. His statue of Washington, in the state capitol of Virginia, while preserving a faithful likeness, has a singular air of French elegance. Despite his strength, Houdon was not more accurate in study than the great Dane Thorwaldsen, born at Copenhagen, 1770. His famous “Lion of Luzerne” is known to all tourists, and his bas-reliefs are familiar the world over. His chief religious works, the colossal figures of Christ and the twelve apostles, are in the church at Copenhagen, where he died in 1844. The greatest name of this period in England was John Flaxman (1755–1826), who was as successful a teacher as he was a worker in his art. He was the originator of the cameo designs on the Wedgwood ware, being particularly happy in delicate reliefs. Christian Daniel Rauch (1777–1857) achieved the place of honor among German sculptors of this time by his heroic imperial monuments, of which the most important is the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great.
Although, for many generations, Rome was the Mecca of artistic pilgrims, and most of the great names have at one time or another been enrolled upon the list of students sojourning within her gates, the race characteristics of each strong mind were liable to find expression in spite of classic training; and when the mature artist brought forth his own creations independent of the touch of school or master, they were likely to present his own national tendencies of thought. Of late years, with increased facilities for studying other art centres, of intercommunication of ideas by travel and increasing duplication of works of art by various reproductive processes, the “art atmosphere” seems to have extended so as to absorb, and in a great measure obliterate, distinct lines of racial difference in manners of expression, the fundamental principles of truth being more generally sought for and applied. Thus, the unmistakably Teutonic aspect of German sculpture in the early half of this century shows in the great monument to “German Unity,” by Schilling, at Niederwald on the Rhine, and the Walhalla decorations, by Ludwig Schwanthaler, for King Louis of Bavaria. German seriousness of purpose lends a dignity of appearance, even if it becomes somewhat grandiose at times, and German painstaking accuracy perfects the technique even to the finish of small details. During the same periods, in Italy, the classic influence was more dominant where the Roman school still held sway, and delicacy deteriorated into insipidity, and finish became finical. Religious and classic subjects were most frequently produced, beside more vital work in portraits, statues, and busts. Some there were who struggled for freedom, among them Lorenzo Bartolini (1777–1850), a Florentine professor, whose group, entitled “Charity,” is in the Pitti Palace. Luigi Pampaloni achieved a surprising fame for his figures of children, one of which, from a monument on a Polish sepulchre, has been widely copied in cheap plaster under the erroneous title of “The Praying Samuel.”
NAPOLEON I. (CANOVA.)
In France, the advance of sculpture has been more continual and consistent, the national artistic temperament finding abundant means of expression in the plastic art. The French dramatic instinct has a sure perception of the effect of a pose, the value of graceful or vigorous lines and the balance of proportion, so that whether under bonds to academic tradition in matters of technique, or broken loose and working under individual inspiration, the French sculptor is likely to create an artistic result. The minds of the common people are more awakened to artistic impressions through the general excellence of the public monuments and sculptural decorations, so freely displayed throughout the land, than are the masses in countries where art is at a low standard. Until after the middle of the century, French sculpture, like the rest, was mainly of smooth and delicate finish and inclined to be romantic, though François Rude was powerful and vigorous, as shown in his patriotic group “Le Chant du Départ” on the Arc de Triomphe. In England, the seeds of Flaxman’s sowing slowly began to bear fruit in an awakening public interest, though the earlier efforts were sedate and conventional rather than spirited, the most important works being dignified and stately monuments and memorials. Westmacott (1777–1856), Francis Chantrey (1782–1841), whose large fortune was bequeathed to the Royal Academy as the “Chantrey Fund;” John Gibson (1791–1866), a pupil of Canova; Henry Weeks (1807–1877), who made the first bust of Victoria as Queen; and Alfred G. Stevens (1817–1875), are a few of the more notable men of the past generation. Thomas Woolner (1825–1892) expressed the feeling of the pre-Raphaelite movement in sculpture, as did Hunt, Burne-Jones, and Rossetti in painting.
STATUE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. (BOYLE.)
American sculpture began with the new century and, like most American growths, began in a very small way; for although Rush had made a few figures, notably a fountain now in Fairmount Park, one of the first pieces of sculptural work in the country was that of a poor New Jersey stone-cutter, John Frazee, who tried to comfort himself for the death of his child by making a memorial figure of him, although he had never seen a statue. From this meagre beginning started a line of ever-increasing strength, until now, in the plastic arts, as in all others, we can hold our own with the best in the world. Of course the earlier students, led by Horatio Greenough, of Boston, Hiram Powers, of Vermont, and Thomas Crawford, of New York, made their way to Rome, where they applied the traditional methods to traditional subjects with conventional results. Greenough’s colossal statue of Washington is in the Capitol grounds; Powers’s “Greek Slave” is owned by the Duke of Cleveland; and Crawford’s “Orpheus seeking Eurydice,” now in the Boston Museum, and “Colossal Liberty” in the Capitol, are his best-known works. Erastus Palmer, of Albany, contemporary with these, developed his talent at home, and secured models and subjects from his own neighborhood, giving a distinctly American character to his work. Among the most noted of the American colony at Rome, although not particularly given to American subjects, was William Wetmore Story, of Salem, Mass., born in 1819. Thomas Ball, born in the same State in the same year, was of the same class in Rome; but his themes are more patriotic, notably the “Emancipation” group in Washington. Harriet Hosmer is the first feminine name on the American list of sculptors. She also settled in Rome, where she completed many works. William Henry Rinehart and Randolph Rogers were both of the idealist school, the latter completing Crawford’s unfinished Washington monument at Richmond. The name of Rogers is more commonly connected with the familiar little statuette groups of every-day domestic scenes so appealing to the popular taste. The sculptor John Rogers, of Massachusetts, has also made a few large works, among them the equestrian statue of General Reynolds, before the City Hall, Philadelphia. Henry Kirke Browne (1814–1886) made a number of equestrian statues of note, one of Washington being the first bronze actually cast in America. His figure of General Scott was cast from captured cannon, relics of the Mexican war. His pupils, Larkin Meade and J. Q. A. Ward, both attained high places, the latter being especially prominent in the progress of American sculpture through such works as his colossal Washington for the New York Treasury Building, and his “Indian Hunter,” “Pilgrim,” and “Shakespeare,” in Central Park.