American Masters of Sculpture. Charles H. Caffin

THE year 1876, the date of the Centennial Exhibition, is a landmark in the progress of American sculpture as it is in that of American painting. Not to be fixed too definitely, and yet serving approximately as a starting-point of new conditions which have transformed what had been a sporadic and largely exotic product into a lusty, homogeneous and thoroughly acclimatised growth. I speak of the gradual improvement and spread of taste in the community; the steady trend of students to Paris and the habit of American sculptors to make their own country the scene and inspiration of their labours.

The earlier tendency had been toward Italy; to Rome and Florence, especially, where American colonies existed. Here the student adopted the Canova tradition of sweetened classicism, or the infusion of naturalism into the classic vein, represented in the work of a few romanticists; and, having learned his craft, remained in Italy to practise it. His sources of instruction had not been of the best and he worked in an atmosphere tainted with artistic and political decadence. It is not surprising that much of the sculpture of this period, though considerably admired in its day, strikes us now as coldly and pedantically null, unconvincing and grandiloquent or, at best, innocuously sentimental. Only once in a while is there a statue of such moment as “The Greek Slave,” by Hiram Powers, which very closely follows and attains to the purity of Canova’s style. The more memorable works of this period came chiefly from those sculptors who, although living abroad, kept in touch with home. Of these the most distinguished was William Henry Rinehart; yet his classical pieces will not compare in force and dignity with his sitting statue of Chief Justice Taney at Annapolis, reproduced in Mount Vernon Square, Baltimore, which still remains one of the most impressive monuments in this country. In like manner Thomas Crawford’s best works were the bronze doors for the Capitol, illustrating events in the Revolution, the colossal “Liberty” which crowns the dome and an equestrian statue of Washington at Richmond. Equally it was in another equestrian statue of Washington, the one which stands in the Boston Public Gardens, that Thomas Ball reached his best achievement. But it is inferior in ease and dignity to the same subject executed by Henry Kirke Brown, whose equestrian statue of General Scott at Washington also stands out conspicuously among the best we have. Brown, too, studied in Italy, but with the conviction that Americans should occupy themselves upon American subjects returned home and established his studio in New York. It would be going too far to attribute the excellence of these two statues to the fact of their having been conceived and executed in the American environment, the more so as Brown’s work was uneven in quality and did not in other subjects reach the dignity of these. Yet his deviation from the custom of the time was the outcome of a very individual force of character, and the influence of the latter upon his work may very well have been reënforced by the environment. At any rate, his action was considered notable in his own day and has always been remembered since, and undoubtedly marks the beginning of the reaction against self-expatriation.

It will not, however, escape the thoughtful student of this period how natural such self-expatriation was. A stout heart, indeed, was needed to bear up against the dearth of artistic incentive at home. Necessarily the time was devoted mainly to material expansion and building up, especially calling for the heroic qualities of brain and muscle, and accompanied inevitably by a spirit of materialism. It was not until the conscience and soul of the nation had been re-awakened by a great moral question and chastened by the stern discipline of a tremendous struggle that it began to return to the higher enthusiasms of its youth. Hero-worship was reborn—or, rather, took a nobler, more spiritualised form—for a nation will always have its heroes. But now, instead of the hero of the market or the stump, whose service to the public is subordinate to self-aggrandisement, there had sprung up in every State—indeed, from every village and most firesides—heroes of sacrifice. The hero-worship which ensued was bound up with a fuller, deeper sense of national life, eager to express itself. It found vent in the spoken and written word, it sought to free itself in visible, tangible expression. As the birth of the Republic had been identified with the erection of noble buildings, so the rebirth of national conscience and soul found in a revived architecture the means of expressing its national state and civic pride, and in sculpture its worship of heroes. And it is a remarkable coincidence that the beginning of this esthetic demand fitted in with the appearance in America of a band of trained artists, returning from their studies abroad. The Centennial Exhibition opened the eyes of the country to the wonders of foreign art, and here were Americans on the spot trained in those foreign schools.

With only a few exceptions all our sculptors of the present generation have acquired their training, either wholly or in part, in Paris; that is to say, in the best school in the world. For France, ever since the Middle Ages, has never been without a succession of great sculptors. When the Gothic spirit had spent itself, that of the late Italian Renaissance was imported; and the art, continually adjusting itself to the changing conditions of national life, has been held in uninterrupted honour to the present time. It is in this branch of the fine arts that the French genius has found its most individual expression. Corresponding with the maintenance of fine traditions is the excellence

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