Borglum came to America a sculptor. He painted very little after 1901. Among his first direct contacts with American art methods on the Atlantic coast was a competition for an equestrian monument to General Grant to be placed in Washington. He devoted a great deal of time and thought to the making of a model and worked it out in fine detail. Grant and two other officers on horseback were mounted on a high pedestal, Grant a little higher than the other two. Around the base of the pedestal and extending out on both sides was a rich frieze of figures more than life-size, showing events leading to the Civil War, the struggle itself and the period of reconstruction.
Gutzon was told afterward that Augustus Saint-Gaudens, all-powerful in the selection, had thrown out the model because he felt that no sculptor in America could carve so elaborate a frieze and that he suspected foreign help.
Subsequent steps in the contest are interesting as an indication of how memorials were sometimes produced in those days. The jury could not decide which of the two remaining models was best, so each sculptor was asked to submit a second model. It happened that Solon Borglum had made the horse on which the principal figure was riding in both models. The two sculptors called for help and Solon said that he would do what he could for whichever one got to his studio first.
The disappointed contestant went to Gutzon and asked him to provide a horse, but Gutzon refused to compete with his brother. As it turned out, the one who received Solon’s help a second time was given the commission.
Neither of the brothers thought that Gutzon’s unwillingness to enter a contest was anything but routine. Solon and he were devoted to each other. Gutzon had called him away from ranch life to develop an art sense that became remarkable. Gutzon had instructed him personally and had helped to finance his career in Cincinnati. He believed himself personally responsible for giving Solon a chance at a sculptor’s career; he could never consider himself free to accept any commission in which he thought that his brother might have an interest.
Only once again, in Cuba, did Gutzon Borglum enter a competition. He steadfastly refused to accept attractive offers on the ground that the principle was wrong. A sculptor, he said, should be selected for his known ability to do what was asked of him and should be allowed to offer a variety of designs, if necessary, until he produced one that was satisfactory to the committee. He declared flatly that it was unjust to ask an artist to risk his best effort on a gamble, to ask him to spend his time, energy and money on something that might only be thrown away. It is interesting to note that his ultimate declaration on this subject was made after his Cuban experience. That was something that he failed to talk about.
The question of talented artists losing their identity in work for other artists, sometimes of less or even mediocre ability, was a grievous one to him and caused many heartaches with which he frankly sympathized. Often talented artists could not even get a job in another studio, no matter what their ability. Such a one was Paul Nocquet.
Paul Nocquet was a Belgian of real ability who had known Gutzon in Paris and had come over to be near him. Eventually he lost his life in a balloon ascension which he had undertaken in sheer despair. In an open letter to the Evening Sun he called attention to the humiliating role played by unrecognized artists in this country, all of which gave Gutzon Borglum new voice. Borglum wrote:
I have read with astonishment and pleasure the letter by Paul Nocquet pleading for the sculptor’s art in America. It is no exaggeration to say that a large part of the sculpture in this country is produced under false pretenses. Much of it is from the studios of celebrities, the labor, the thought and even the basic ideas of poor devils who are paid so much a day.
That the abuses Mr. Nocquet speaks of exist, there is abundance of proof. A glamor has been thrown about sculpture here that is not deserved. For a century the bulk of us have ambled along timidly, following a single lead, sniffing the trail, only to assure our questioning souls that we were on the beaten path. We fear a new lead. We placard our homes with safe, old sentiments. We permit no passion, no action, nothing to disturb the even tenor of a puritanism that has hardly warmth enough or blood enough to produce great sculpture and that rarely ventures beyond the meaningless nudes that disgrace our museums.