"Well," said he, "it is not a subject of rejoicing! Look at the poor Curé d'Ars! How odd it is," added he, "your power of giving life to plaster!"
IV.
I have given this dialogue at length, as it was repeated to me by the artist. If I am not deceived, it represents well the character of the good priest; his humility, his humor, his brusqueness touched with raillery, his politeness and goodness—all are well portrayed. All this is reproduced in the statue. It gives us the character of the dialogue, and the almost legendary figure that our contemporaries have seen, and which will pass to posterity.
The Curé d'Ars is kneeling in his cassock, with the surplice, rabat, and stole. His hands are joined, his eyes uplifted to heaven. A sweet smile brightens his face. His hair, cut off square, falls on his neck in abundant locks, and shaven closely on the top of his head; his forehead is left free. The priest prays with such fervor and such faith, I may say a passion which makes us think of paradise. Angels must pray in this way. His hands are extended toward heaven with an intensity of emotion; the eyes have so much ardor in their expression that the spirit of prayer seems to lift the body from earth and carry it to heaven. I know no work with more life in it; there does not exist a more impassioned statue. Faith, love, and desire, transfigured in this marble block, animate it and give it a striking reality.
As a whole, the work offers a new and excellent type of the religious sculpture of our age. The artist has set aside classical lessons and proved himself in the right. The remembrances of antiquity should not interfere in the realization of an ideal taken from the very heart of contemporary life and the present Christian age. Gothic traditions are even neglected, and the author has been careful to give the figure the seal of its own time, his good taste causing him to avoid the quicksands into which so many others have fallen. Wishing to represent a man of our time, the sculptor would have committed an anachronism to be regretted if he had impressed his character with a mysticism and power which distinguished the personages of the art of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the spirit of truth he was to give to the world a saint, and in this saint the beatific expression which in the prerogative of the saints of every age; but over and above this general feature there was an order of secondary shades he was obliged to respect, to give to the figure its age and physiognomy.
M. Cabuchet has admirably seized and rendered the double character I have tried to define. His saint is as mystical as the saints of the middle ages, yet he has the reality of a man of our time. Gothic, or rather Christian, in sentiment, he is modern, and even French, in his exterior aspect. Such, in a few words, is the exact appreciation shown in this work of M. Cabuchet, and the double reflection gives him, in my opinion, the highest rank among sculptors of his age.
The imitation of antiquity would have produced a dead work; the imitation of the middle ages would have produced a work impersonal and hieratic; but going out of himself and all national traditions, inspired only with his subject and his time, the artist has brought to light a new and striking piece of work, a true specimen of religious and modern sculpture.
It is easy to see what remembrances and what masters have directed this statue. French sculpture, as its painting, has particular traits which are easily recognized. Less correct, perhaps, and less noble than Greek or Italian sculpture, it has an ease, a power, a life, that has no equal. Puget and Houdon are the two foremost artists in our school, so essentially French. Using Greek models only to simplify and enrich their style, they have sought beyond everything expression and the power of motion. M. Cabuchet has followed their example, and, walking in their footsteps, has given us a work of which his masters could not be ashamed.
In looking at the statue of the Curé d'Ars the spectator is reminded of the celebrated statue of Voltaire by Houdon; not only that the resemblance of the two faces is unaccountably striking, but because the build and the exterior appearance of the marbles offer incontestable analogies. In both statues we find the same amplitude, the same facility, the same light and soft manner; in both the details are uniformly sacrificed to the whole, and the whole owes to this mode of execution a more decorative and lifelike representation.