The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860. Various
are to a great degree involuntary agents, and subject to the laws of science, to the operations of which they are obliged to conform. The private fact of the man is hidden by the public general truth. If, however, the energies of the individual overtop the science, enabling him to assert himself above the summit of its history, then is he accessible to all generations, and can in no wise avoid or forfeit his just fame.
In Art, this intimate relation of the result of action to the actor is complete,—inasmuch as, to be Art, to rise above being something else, the shadow and mockery of Art, it must be of and from the man, a spontaneity, a reflection, light for light, shade for shade, color for color, of his entire being; and with this effect his will has little to do. Therefore, unless he be an impostor, he need give himself no trouble regarding his future. His works shall serve as a clue, produced century after century, along which posterity shall feel its way back to his studio and heart. No need of thought for his morrow.
But for his to-day he may well be solicitous. If fame be his reflection, he has also the shadow of himself, his reputation.
It is a great error to assume that these two effects are so related that the augmentation of the one must increase the other, and as great a mistake to confound the two. The truth is, that reputation and fame are rarely coincident. They are not unfrequently in direct opposition,—so much so, that some names, which the world cannot give up, have to be filtered through a thick mass of years, to purify them of their reputations, and leave them simply famous.
No name has suffered more than that of Powers. His friends, blind to the laws which govern these matters, have wrought bravely to construct for him a reputation commensurate with his vaguely imagined worth; but upon his real worth they have evinced no desire to lay their foundation. No accurate survey has been made of his abilities, no definite plan of his artist-nature. Often a place has been demanded for his name in the history of Art, and the first place too, because of his fine frank eye, or the simplicity of his manners,—because his workmen cut the chain of the Greek slave out of one piece of stone, or the marble of the statue itself had no spot as big as a pin-head,—because he himself chooses to rasp and scrape plaster, rather than model in plastic clay,—because he tinkered up the "infernal regions" of the Cincinnati Museum years ago, or spends his time now in making perforating-machines and perforated files; in fine, for any reason rather than for the right legitimate one of artistic merit, they have demanded room for their favorite.
Even those who look deeper than this, appreciating Mr. Powers as a gentleman, an ingenious mechanic, and a skillful manipulator in sculpture, have been content or constrained to urge his claims to attention upon false considerations. We have heard it gravely remarked, as a matter of astonishment, that there were individuals—refined men, apparently—who looked upon the Venus de' Medici as a finer work than the Greek Slave. In the files of a New York paper may be found an article, written by a highly cultivated man, in which Powers's busts are asserted to be rather the effect of miracles than the results of human effort. The spirit which has prompted these and many kindred expressions cannot be too much deplored by those who love Art and know the artist. It has succeeded in creating for him a reputation broad and remarkable, but most unfortunate, because not his own, because not the reputation which should have formed about his name here, as fame will yonder; unfortunate, because, though broad, it is the breadth of an inverted pyramid, which must naturally topple over of itself, and incumber his path with ruins.
The false position in which Mr. Powers has been placed by his friends has of course won him many enemies.
Bold, sincere, working enemies are highly useful in developing an artist's character, especially if he be a law-abiding follower of the art. But enemies must be dealers of fair blows, wagers of honorable warfare; no assassin is worthy of the name of enemy. Sometimes, however, those who are worthy of the name, and entitled to respect, may make injudicious and unfair use of censure and invective. It is unwise, when the necessity arises to set aside a worthless or an imperfect image, to turn Iconoclast and demolish those surrounding it which are worthy of a place in the temple. True criticism, for its own sake, if prompted by no higher motive, deals justly.
The friends of Mr. Powers have, in their estimate of his ability, given him credit for that which he does not possess, and claimed recognition for merit unsupported by the value of his works. His enemies have labored assiduously, not only to deprive the estimate of its unwarranted quantity, but to overthrow the whole, and leave him merely a mechanic, a dexterous mechanic, with small views, but large ambition, trying to pass himself off as an artist. His busts are asserted to be but more elaborate examples of his skill in the "perforated-file-and-patent-punch" line.
But as the struggles to elevate this artist's reputation above its proper level have proved signal failures, so the effort to depreciate it must ultimately be defeated. Only one kind of injustice ever proves irreparable wrong: that which a man exercises towards himself. Mr. Powers had a specialty.
So constituted that the most difficult executive operations are to him but play and pleasure, he has also, to govern and inform this rare organization, a broad, manly, and most genial human nature. This combination decided the question of his proper mission, and in virtue of it he has been enabled to model a series of most remarkable busts, the true excellence of which must be recognized in spite of friends and foes, and the epithets "miraculous" and "mechanical."
It is possible that the highest type of portrait-sculpture is beyond the limit of this specialty; indeed, it is almost impossible that with the elements constituting it there should be associated the still rarer power to achieve the most exalted ideal Art; and such Art we believe the highest portraiture to be.
A consummate representation of a man in his divinest development, the last refined ideal of him then, would be indeed somewhat miraculous!
The world asks less. It claims to know of a man what the face of him became under the influences of human, temporal relations. It wants preserved of the statesman the statesman's face, of the merchant the merchant's face; and this demand, when governed by a cultivated taste, is a legitimate one,—as legitimate as is the demand for any history. The public requires the image of the man whom the public knew, and they regard as valuable that which can be received as a definite and trustworthy statement of a great man, or of one whom it esteemed great. It requires this, has a right to such information; and the generation which fails to demand of its artists a true record of its prominent men fails utterly in its duty. The bust of a man goes down to posterity, not only the history which it is in itself, but as an interpreter of the history of its age. Were it not for Art, an age would recede into the unknown, to be recorded as dark, or into the shadowy world of myth. Portraiture, more than aught else, serves to elucidate the tradition or story of a people. How impossible to explain to the twentieth century the bad mystery of our present, without the aid of Powers's head of Calhoun, the less adequate bust of Stephen A. Douglas, and the one which should be modelled of Mr. Buchanan! A faithful delineation of the features of some men is needful. We should be thankful for that black frown of Nero, for the bald pate of Scipio, for those queer eyes of Marius, and for the long neck of Cicero, as seen in the newly discovered bust. These are the signs of the men, and explain them.
Mr. Powers has succeeded in reporting more accurately than any other recent artist the physical facts of the individual face. From one of his marbles we derive definite ideas of the human character of its subject, what its ambition is, and what its weakness; what have been its loves and its antipathies, its struggles and its victories, its joys and its sorrows, may be revealed to him who has learned what the human face becomes under the influence of these incessant forces. No mere talent can accomplish such results. Behind all that kind of strength lies the fact of peculiar sympathies, relating the artist to this phase of Art-representation; and within certain limits, which should have been undebatable, his rule was absolute.
The great mistake with Mr. Powers has been his oversight regarding these limits. There has been debate, hesitation, and a continual wandering away from the duties of his errand. Years have been devoted to those ghosts of sculpture, allegorical figures; other years wasted in the elaboration of machinery. Not that his ideal statues are worthless, or fall short of great beauty and exquisite delicacy; not that his skill as a mechanician is other than great. But the age cannot afford these things, nor can the sculptor afford them. A year is too great a sum to give for a statue