Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

Here in all the sublimity of majesty we see the symbolism of life, the symbolism of love, affection, devotion and piety. Like the chrysalis that liberates the butterfly, we see the soul that hovers above this classic piece of marble. We seem to feel the same thrill as we watch the distended lips that drink the breath of life. We wonder. There is something in this appealing countenance that strikes us with peculiar awe. We see a soul rising above passion. We feel the same admiration that we do for a flower that forces itself up through the muddy soil into a new life and light—a sort of emancipation. We see the early morning sun break through the skies of splendor, the unfolding of the rose, the Wille zum Guten, the revelation.

The group called “I Have Piped and Ye Have Not Danced” was produced in the studio at about this time, but never during his life got out of the plaster stage because Gutzon could never afford a large enough piece of marble when he had the time to carve it. The thought of it had been in his mind a long time. The initial idea, he said, had come to him at a concert where Ysaye, the violinist, had been playing. The way the women stood up at the end of the concert, arranging their furs and chattering about where they were going next made him feel that the music had passed completely over them, leaving no impression. He exhibited the female figure alone as a pastel sketch in Boston in 1901, where it elicited the following description of the group from Lillian Whiting, poet and art critic:

It is the ideal figure of a girl, her hands thrown up and clasped to the right, the head turned a little to one side, and the countenance bearing the most inscrutable expression. She has been piping to Pan, who lies at her feet unmoved, unrecognizing, until she drops the pipes and the melody ceases. Then he is aroused and turns to see why the music is heard no more. It is one of the most typical interpretations of life. The artist paints his ideal vision. The poet offers his dream. The musician sings his song. And the world goes on, careless, unheeding. At last, saddened and spent for want of that sympathy which should have made life all joy and ecstasy, the painter turns his canvas to the wall. The poet drops his pen. The song of the singer is heard no more, and the world turns to ask the meaning of this silence.

Since Borglum’s death the figure has been carved in marble and is in California.

In the meantime a very large “pipe dream,” something made for his own pleasure, the sculptor said, was gradually taking shape in his New York studio. His love for horses and the exceptional opportunity for studying their movements at the Baldwin ranch in California were still bright in his mind. They always were. He said once that he never saw a horse anywhere that he didn’t study it and learn something new.

In his studies for the Grant competition he had become acquainted with army equipment, and he later began a group of artillery horses with their trappings. Because such externals were bothersome to his composition, he abandoned them and concentrated on horses alone, adding the figure of an Indian for interest. He was familiar with the ways of those expert riders—how a man could decoy horses out of a corral and by riding around and around them until they followed his mount could lead a dash into the open. That was the moment chosen by the sculptor for his group—five wild horses in full gallop.

The group was cast in bronze by the Gorham Company and exhibited in their window on Fifth Avenue. Not only because the action of those horses was very lifelike but because the plan was wholly American in both subject and design, it attracted instant attention and was purchased by James Stillman and presented to the Metropolitan Museum. It happened that Sir Purdon Clarke, an Englishman, was director of that institution at the time.

For a long time it stood in the entrance hall and was almost the first thing that caught the eye of the visitor. Near it was Rodin’s “Age of Bronze,” a slight figure which was one of Gutzon’s favorites. School children, who were taken on regular tours through the museum, used to vote the horses as their favorite exhibit. The name “Mares of Diomedes” was given to the group by some classical scholar who recalled the story of Hercules and the wild horses of King Diomedes. The sculptor never cared much for the name; it harked back too loudly to outworn mythology.

More and more Gutzon’s sense of the bigness of America, of her value to the world, of the importance of her heroes, was growing upon him. He had bought a large block of marble and one day began to carve the head of Abraham Lincoln—his first experiment in colossal sculpture. He worked on it for weeks until it became a perfect likeness of the man, but still he worked while watchers feared that one more stroke of the chisel might ruin the whole work. And then a miracle happened. Suddenly a real character seemed to look out from the carved features. The face became inhabited.

A colored woman, whose duty it was to sweep the studio and to whom that huge block of marble had always been a nuisance because she couldn’t push it around, at last raised her eyes from the floor and exclaimed in astonishment: “How’s Mista Bo’glum know ol’ Abe was in dat rock?”