After the middle of the century, French art became emotional and dramatic, the notorious “Dance” for the Paris Opera House, by J. B. Carpeaux, being one of the first of the new utterances. Paul Dubois was less astonishing in manner, and Henri Chapu was still more restrained, although far more vital than the old conventional school. The name of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi should be known to every American by reason of his colossal statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” now standing sentinel in New York harbor. This, and his figure of Lafayette offering his services to Washington, were presented to America by the French government. Antoine Louis Barye (1795–1875) was a sculptor sui generis, a law unto himself of his own development; and though he has many followers, as a sculptor of animals he has no rivals. In many branches of art he was proficient, but his best-known works are the marvelous studies of animal life, modeled with infinite skill.
When the great wave of impressionism rose and flooded the land, carrying music, literature, and the drama before it, plastic art as well as pictorial was caught up too, and whirled into a variety of strange forms. Auguste Rodin led the new movement in sculpture, his manner being copied with varying degrees of success by lesser lights, and like all new movements run to foolish extremes by incompetent followers. His heroic group, “The Bourgeois of Calais,” will indicate his style. From extreme realism on one side, with portrait statues in the last detail of modern costume, silk hats, kid gloves, and in one case holding a cigar, to the vague suggestions of a shapeless mass of marble, out of which protrude unfinished limbs and half-developed heads, sculpture has been pushed from side to side, but is settling into a vigorous, steady, onward movement, in which the best men of all nations stride along together. In the limits of a short article it is impossible to mention all deserving names, but a few will serve as types, and the Americans are well worthy to head the list.
Daniel French’s grand majestic golden figure of Liberty, towering above the Court of Honor, the imperial hostess of the World’s Fair at Chicago, placed him at once on a pedestal of fame. From the prominence of his beautiful Columbian Fountain opposite the golden Goddess, Frederick MacMonnies became known the land over. His greatest late work is the crowning of the soldiers’ and sailors’ memorial arch for Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with a colossal quadriga of Triumph and groups of the army and navy. Augustus St. Gaudens, though a cosmopolitan, is truly an American sculptor of the first rank, whose statues of Admiral Farragut in New York, Lincoln in Chicago, and the sturdy Puritan, Chapin, in Springfield, Mass., are well known. Olin Warner is another distinctively American product, although he had the advantage of some training in Paris. His work is French in technique but not French in spirit, having the native traits of freedom and originality, as shown in his figure of William Lloyd Garrison, and later in his relief portraits on the art building at the Columbian Fair. This great occasion offered opportunities to American sculptors of which they took full advantage, showing the high rank to which they were entitled. It made an American of Carl Bitter, the talented Austrian, whose decorations on the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, Philadelphia, are well known. It added further lustre to the name of John J. Boyle, whose heroic “Indian Mother” in Fairmount Park, and seated statue of Benjamin Franklin, are matters of just pride to Philadelphians. It gave prominence to such men as Lorado Taft, with his graceful work on the Horticultural Building; Philip Martiny, on the Agricultural Building; the great Columbus quadriga, by E. C. Potter and Daniel French, whose beautiful relief of “Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor” is a masterpiece. All visitors to the White City will remember the vigorous animal studies by Edward Kemys, and the Indian figures of A. C. Proctor. The sculptural commissions of the Congressional Library in Washington have produced a remarkable collection of works by talented Americans, and every great exhibition brings interesting examples from those already named, and such others as Herbert Adams, Edwin Elwell, Bessie Potter, with her dainty little statuettes, portrait work by Charles Grafly, Catherine Cohen, C. E. Dallin, strange visionary suggestions, in the Rodin manner, by George Bonnard, and an array of lesser names too numerous to mention.
THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT, FAIRMOUNT PARK.
For this reason, but few of the notable names of modern foreigners can be given. However, Hamo Thornycroft, of England, must not be overlooked, whose famous “Mower” is much admired; nor Onslow Ford, more youthful and romantic in style. John Henry Foley, of Dublin, has had a pronounced effect on English sculpture, being a successful teacher, including among his pupils several distinguished women, among them the Princess Louise and the Earl of Elgin’s granddaughter, Miss Grant. George Tinworth’s terra cotta reliefs must conclude the list of English works. A few Russians have reached eminence, mainly by animal studies. Antocolski, a Jew of Wilna, of poorest parentage, has done powerful figure work of a serious, rather melancholy sort, the most important being a “Christ Bound.” What is best in modern Italian and German work is practically French, and of the French themselves the list is too long to complete. A few must suffice, such as Jean Alexandre Falguière, who aspires, like Carpeaux, to give vitality by means of vigorous action to his figures. Emanuel Frémiet has worn with some distinction the mantle descended from Barye’s shoulders. Vidal, another pupil of Barye, was blind for twenty years, yet gained two medals for correct anatomy in his modeling. Carrier Belleuse’s “Hebe Asleep” is an example of the delicate style, and Alfred Boucher shows the other extreme in his rendering of sturdy masculine figures, toiling or racing, striving to present in sculpture the picture of human struggle for existence, as did Millet in his paintings. These materialistic studies represent the fight for the bread and breath of life, while the impressionist contortions of the Rodin school try to suggest the conflict of emotions, good and bad, and the battle of spiritual and physical desires and development.
III. CERAMICS AND GLASS WORK.
From time immemorial to the present day men have been fashioning shapes of clay, experimenting with different kinds, different degrees of heat, and different chemical combinations to form glazes and colorings. The fundamental processes of pottery making have changed but little since prehistoric times, and wall pictures of the days of the Ptolemies show the potter’s wheel whirling much as it does at present, although, of course, many modern inventions have been made to facilitate different forms of work. In the famous Sèvres factories in France, established under royal patronage and still remaining government property, a modern device has rendered possible the making of large vases of extremely thin ware. To prevent the delicate paste of which these are made from collapsing by its own weight before it can harden, the vase or jar is moulded in an air-tight chamber, the mouth of the object sealed, and the air exhausted from the chamber, leaving the object in a vacuum. The air contained in itself is sufficient to hold up the sides until they harden and danger of collapse is over, when it can be fired. Attempts were made in vain to equal the delicacy of the Chinese egg-shell ware, when, one day an educated Chinese visitor to the factories observed the method employed, and exclaimed, “This is the way we make those cups,” and, taking a mould, he dipped it into the liquid paste, rinsed it around and emptied it at once. A thin film like a soap bubble remained in the mould, which hardened enough to form the dainty ware the workers had been trying without success to produce; so the Chinese method was at once adopted. About the middle of the last century an impetus of development in ceramic art appeared all over the continent of Europe and in England. This was probably due to the discovery, in different places, of kaolin or the fine clay of which porcelain is made, which stimulated the pottery industry and caused the establishment of many factories which are still working to-day. The Dresden works, founded in 1700, were hidden in an old fortress, and their secrets jealously guarded. After about a century they went into decay, but in 1863 were revived and reëstablished in large new buildings of their own, where dainty flowered ware is produced, which has again come into popular favor. Italian ceramics are apt to be florid and overloaded with decoration, that called “majolica” deriving its name from the island of Majorca, where it was first made. “Fayence” comes from Faenza, and the French form of the name, “faïence,” has been used to designate porcelain in general. The town of Limoges, in France, has been a centre of ceramic art since 1773, when a French firm established a factory for the production of a peculiarly fine ware, made possible by the superior quality of the kaolin found in the neighborhood. In 1839 a lady in New York showed the Haviland firm a cup of delicate ware, asking them to match it for her. It was so much finer than anything they had seen that they desired to import some for their own business. With this end in view, Mr. David Haviland took the cup and went to France trying to find where it had been made. He was directed to Limoges and, in the factories there, he tried to have English shapes and decorations copied in the exquisite ware. The conservatism and slow methods of the place were not equal to his demands, and he therefore established a factory of his own, which, since the middle of the century, has been the most important in the town.
In England, the most celebrated potteries are all over a century old, and the ceramic art has been developed to the highest degree both in technical and artistic directions. The works of the Doulton firm, who own many potteries, are particularly rich in color, and decoration, those from their factory at Lambeth being especially fine. So also are the Coalport wares, celebrated for their rich blue color, the Royal Worcester and the Crown Derby. In these English factories, and also in those on the Continent, artists of great skill are employed as decorators, and in the Wedgwood works the delicate cameo figures in white relief on a tinted ground were originated by the famous sculptor, John Flaxman. In America, the Trenton potteries turn out a vast quantity of wares of varying degrees of artistic excellence, and one factory has the secret of an old Irish ware, the Belleek, of indescribable delicacy, like an iridescent sea shell, long thought to be a lost art. The Rookwood pottery, of most artistic quality in design and color, is made in Cincinnati, and was the invention of a woman who has trained a school of girls as decorators; as has also the Tiffany firm in New York for their marvelous glass work. An adequate description of the work of this firm would fill a book, as they have developed undreamed-of possibilities in the use of glass for decorative purposes. They have revived forgotten arts of coloring and invented new processes of treatment, that give results like fairy work, no two pieces being alike. These and many other forms of industrial art products are brought to a high plane of perfection nowadays, although the word “art” is grievously abused, being applied to everything salable, from writing paper to soap. The great schools and institutions which teach the arts and industries combined are doing vast good, however, in improving public taste and teaching the world to discriminate between true art and false, and their influence can already be felt in higher standards of decoration in articles of common daily use.