“What in the world for?” Mrs. Borglum inquired.
“I’d shut all those struggling young painters in a room and throw it at them,” he replied. “It would keep them while they were hunting up something to do besides art.”
He told of some of the studios he had visited while organizing the new association and of the hard time some of the students were having. Nearly all successful artists have been through such trials but not many of them remember.
The National Sculpture Society had elected Gutzon to membership in 1903 shortly after his return from Europe. Here, too, he found among the younger set a feeling of revolt against the older members. He suggested changes in the constitution that enlisted strong support from some of the members. However, President J. Q. A. Ward took exception to this threat to his power and refused to let the report of the committee favoring changes come to a hearing. Promptly the sculptor denounced such tactics as “unfair and discourteous,” which did not add to their friendship. Most of the reforms were later adopted.
With the National Arts Club his relations were more pleasant. When the club had to move to other quarters he helped make the selection of the Gramercy Park site and was given full charge of the food department which had fallen deeply into debt. Under his personal management the dining room soon showed a profit—a most difficult thing to achieve in any art club.
Borglum belonged to the Salmagundi Club, to the Fencers, (where he used to take lessons from a Cuban fencing master in the studio) and to numerous flying clubs. His lifelong memberships in the Players of New York and the Metropolitan of Washington gave him constant pleasure and satisfaction.
He taught one year at the Art Students’ League in New York and returned the fees he received for teaching as prizes to his pupils, several of whom are now outstanding sculptors. At the time of the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, he joined with other New York artists in donating works to a public auction for the relief of artists caught in the disaster.
Through his old friend Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, he got the fund through to California in record time. Another of his old friends, Arthur Matthews, San Francisco painter, was the custodian of the money. He did so good a job of spending it that a considerable sum was left over. The balance lay in a bank for forty years until it was turned over to a new committee by the State Banking Commission in 1946. The chairman of the committee was William B. Faville, the architect, another good friend. But by that time both Arthur and Gutzon were gone.
The sculptor became involved in so many outside matters that one wonders how he could have found time for them. His answer was that life and art are inseparable.
He wrote for a magazine in 1908 that the three elements absolutely joined for the production of great art are sincerity, individuality and reverence. He said: