The history of American sculpture

Introduction

more composite nation than the United States has exist lern times. The influx of foreign elements has been enormyet, despite the varied antecedents and the wide affinities American people, our language remains English

:h as exist), are and always have been English. I religion and law, the inheritance was adequate, pies were readily harmonized with literature, likewise, the ancestral potent; but in regard t though not less unpromising

En: ;as alwa)

but until c< her native prodi

eedingb < nimport;

at the tir~: Ln colonies were

making, it may be said that British sculpture d And thus it came about that our ancestors here ii :-out sculptural tradition. Not only this, but in they were of a humble class — working even the allied arts — and often, with the p ibuting the arts one and all to the in im Fathers were the elder brothers of tl the cathedral statua burned

Wen their n

PLATE I.

SAINT GAUDENS: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, CHICAGO.

INTRODUCTION

No more composite nation than the United States has existed in modern times. The influx of foreign elements has been enormous; yet, despite the varied antecedents and the wide affinities of the American people, our language remains English and our traditions (such as exist) are and always have been English. In matters of religion and law, the inheritance was adequate, and familiar principles were readily harmonized with a new environment. In our literature, likewise, the ancestral traditions have been positive and potent ; but in regard to the other fine arts they have been negative, though not less significant, since they explain, in large measure, the unpromising conditions amid which our national art was cradled.

England's patronage of foreign artists has always been liberal, but until comparatively recent times her native production has been exceedingly meagre. If British painting was unimportant in England at the time when the American colonies were in process of making, it may be said that British sculpture did not exist at all. And thus it came about that our ancestors here in America were without sculptural tradition. Not only this, but in large measure they were of a humble class — working people unacquainted with even the allied arts — and often, with the prejudice of ignorance, attributing the arts one and all to the invention of the devil. The Pilgrim Fathers were the elder brothers of those men who decapitated the cathedral statuary, who burned paintings and tabooed the drama. Even their music was of an unhappy sort. This world was to them a vale of tears, and art was a temptation to be strenuously resisted.

It is not surprising, then, that stock of this character transplanted to an unsettled and inhospitable shore should have been practically immune from artistic inspirations ; that painting should not have come into vogue for many a long year, and that two whole centuries were to elapse before sculpture should make a shy appearance. It may be urged that the Virginian colonies were made up of different material ; that the cavaliers and adventurers who founded Jamestown were to some extent men of culture and luxury. To this fact may be attributed the earliest patronage of sculpture in America — the commissions given by Virginia to Houdon in 17S1 and 1785 for representations of Lafayette and of Washington ; but beyond this we find no appreciable results, since native production in the South came even later than in the North.

The Quakers who followed in Pennsylvania were hardly more favorable to the fine arts than were their brothers of New England, and although some of our best artists are of Quaker descent, there was nothing to encourage plastic expression in Philadelphia until recent times. The early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam came direct from the land where Rembrandt and Franz Hals were even then producing their masterpieces; but there was neither a Rembrandt nor a Hals among them, nor by any possibility a sculptor, since the artistic expression of the Hollanders has always been pictorial rather than plastic.

So this broad land lay in the sun and waited — waited without knowing it for the day of art to appear. Meanwhile, to be sure, there was something else to be done. Six days of arduous toil every week, grubbing and ploughing and building; weaving and baking and brewing; and then the abrupt pause of the Sabbath, bringing with its inevitable recurrence a sort of rhythm into the patient lives of these plain men and women. The preachers did their share of work, like the others, and despite their long-drawn-out sermons, found time for writing chronicles and tracts, and even hymns of questionable rhyme and metre. By the time these had given way in part to political pamphlets, painting had made its appearance here and there. Benjamin West's triumphs in England lent a glamour to the craft, and Copley and Gilbert Stuart successively produced their admirable portraits in Boston and elsewhere. But as yet no sculpture appeared.

INTRODUCTION

%l)t pstorp of £merfcan art

THE HISTORY OF

AMERICAN SCULPTURE

•

BY

LORADO TAFT

MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE SOCIETY

WITH TWELVE FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES AND ONE HUN- DRED AND FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

Ncto gorfc THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1903

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1903, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up, electrotyped, and published November, 1903.

Norwood. Press

J. S. Ousting fef Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

THE HISTORY OF

AMERICAN SCULPTURE

2Tj)C history of American 3rt

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN SCULPTURE. By Lorado Taft, Member of the National Sculpture Society. With 12 photogravures and many text illustrations. Imp. Svo.

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN MUSIC. By Louis C.

Elson, Musical Editor of the Boston Advertiser ; author of "Our National Music," etc. With 12 photogravures and many text illustrations. Imp. Svo. Nearly ready.

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN PAINTING. By Samuel Isham, Member of the Society of American Artists. With 12 photogravures and many text illustrations. Imp. Svo.

In preparation.

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ETCHING, ENGRAV- ING. AND ILLUSTRATION. By Joseph Pennell, author of " Pen and Ink Draughtsmen," " Modern Illustration," etc. Illustrated with original materials. Imp. Svo.

In preparation.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This series of books brings together for the first time the materials for a history of American Art. Heretofore there have been attempts to narrate some special period or feature of our artistic development, but the narrative has never. been consecutive or conclusive. The present volumes begin with the founding of the nation, and carry the record clown to the year 1904. They are intended to cover the graphic, the plastic, the illustrative, the architectural, the musical, and the dramatic arts, and to sum up the results in each department historically and critically. That the critical summary should be authoritative, the preparation of each volume has been placed in the hands of an expert — one who practises the craft whereof he writes. The series is therefore a history of American Art written from the artist's point of view, and should have special value for that reason.

The " History of American Sculpture " is the initial volume of the series. The writer of it makes acknowledgment for help received from many sources ; but the editor of the series thinks it proper to say that the great bulk of the volume is original material gathered at first hand and here presented for the first time.

November, 1903.

Greenough and his Times ....

Hiram Powers and the •• Greek Slave "

Crawford and Sculpture at the Capitol .

PAGE I

37 57 72 92 114

Part II Middle Period

VII. Palmer and Ball 131

VIII. Story and Randolph Rogers 150

IX. Rinehart and John Rogers 171

X. Other Sculptors born before 1830 1S7

XI. Harriet Hosmer and the Early Women Sculptors . . . . 203

XII. John Quincy Adams Ward 216

XIII. A Group of Builders of Monuments 234

XIV. New Influences 256

Part III Contemporary Men

XV. Augustus Saint Gaudens 279

XVI. Augustus Saint Gaudens {continued) 294

XVII. Daniel C. French 310

XVIII. Frederick MacMonnies . • 332

XIX. George Grey Barnard 356

XX. Bartlett and Adams 373

XXI. NlEHAUS AND BOYLE 394

XXII. Other New York Sculptors 411

XXIII. The Younger Generation in New York 437

XXIV. Decorative Sculptors and Men of Foreign Birth .... 452 XXV. Sculptors of Animals 470

XXVI. Present-day Sculptors of Boston and Philadelphia . . . 489

XXVII. Sculptors of the South and West; Conclusion . . . . 51S

vii

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT xm

FIGURE

Martiny.

So.

Bitter.

Si.

Konti.

Kemeys.

Potter.

Proctor.

tt

SS.

BORGLUM.

a

KlTSON.

Pratt.

tt

Dallin.

Brooks.

Grafly.

tt

Stewardson

Barnhorn.

DUVENECK.

IOI.

Mulligan.

Bringhurst.

TlLDEN.

tt

Fountain of Abundance

Victory .....

Standard Bearer

Villard Memorial

Sacred Music ....

Panther and Cubs

Farm Horse ....

Sleeping Faun ....

Indian Warrior ....

Striding Panther

On the Border of White Man's Land

Burial on the Plains .

Music of the Sea

Bishop Brooks ....

Butler Memorial

The Medicine Man

Colonel Thomas Cass

5°3

Symbol of Life ....

Truth

Fragment of Fountain of Man

The Bather ....

5[5

Magdalen .....

Tomb of Mrs. Duveneck

Miner and Child

The Kiss of Eternity .

Football Players

Mechanics' Fountain .

INTRODUCTION 5

A few works of art had been imported into the country during this period, and some of the more elegant homes, like Mount Vernon, even boasted of marble reliefs brought from Italy. Houdon and other foreign sculptors came and went; but until the third decade of the nineteenth century there was no native sculpture other than the wax reliefs of Patience Wright, the wood-carvings of William Rush, and the unrelated efforts of Hezekiah Augur. Our first professional sculptor was born in 1805. Thus the record of the glyptic art in the United States is practically bounded by the short span of a single century. In other countries the chronicle of the last hundred years is but a fragment, a brief sequel to the story of ages of endeavor. It is difficult to realize that our actual achievement from the very kindergarten stage of an unknown art to the proud position held by American sculpture in the Paris Exposition of 1900 has been the work of threescore years and ten — has been seen in its entirety by not a few men now living.

As beginners seldom attempt groups, but work timidly on single figures, so the beginnings of American sculpture are discovered in isolated workers appearing here and there in most unexpected localities: Rush in Philadelphia; Augur in New Haven; Frazee in New Jersey. Then, with the opening years of the last century, came the first Americans destined to make sculpture a profession: Greenough in Boston, Crawford in New York, Powers in Cincinnati. One is reminded of the first adventurous flowers of early spring peeping out inquiringly from sheltered nooks, but soon to be reenforced by a host of companions. To-day our sculptors thrive in groups; the isolated practitioners of the art are few.

Almost without exception these sculptors of the first half of the century were animated by a single desire, — to get to Italy as soon as possible. The reasons for this are not far to seek. Their own country afforded neither sculptural instruction nor examples. Those who went abroad remained there ; hence no returning current of helpful knowledge and counsel came to aid those left behind. Nor was there even the privilege of study from nature. The Puritan horror of the " flesh " made the introduction of life classes very difficult. As late as 1870 a sculptor's opportunity for study in Boston was limited to Dr. Rimmer's lectures on anatomy ; in

1876 a model posed one evening in the week at the Lowell Institute.

While paintings were to be met with in the homes of wealth and in the growing art collections, works of sculpture were still extremely rare. A few casts from the antique, brought over from Paris and exhibited in Philadelphia about 1845, are said to have caused a grave scandal. The initial collection of the National Academy of Design remained boxed for several years, but was on view in 1820 and thereafter. The condition, so far as concerned sculpture, was in most cities what it is to-day in the smaller towns of the West and the South, excepting for the important difference that seventyfive years ago there were no photographs and no popular illustrated magazines to familiarize the public with current works of art. Steel engravings were to be found in rare and expensive volumes, and rude woodcuts in cheaper works; but beyond these there was nothing to suggest sculpture in any form. The old-time prejudice had weakened somewhat, but a dense ignorance of the art still persisted. Can there be much wonder, then, that all sculptors' eyes turned eagerly toward that almost fabled land beyond the sea where art was known and appreciated ?

Another sufficient reason for the unanimous hegira of this time lay in the dearth of good materials in this country. Our early sculptors were as a rule expert carvers according to the standard of the day, but America offered them no fine marble. What little they used was imported at great expense and with exasperating delays from Italy. As for bronze casting, the case was still more hopeless. Suitable sand was not to be had, and the experts who knew the caster's art guarded their secret well in Munich and in Paris. It was not until 1847 that the first bronze statue was cast in the United States, and this attempt was not a brilliant success.

With these conditions in mind, it may seem strange that so many aspirants should have suddenly turned to sculpture as a profession. When it is recalled, however, that the discovery of the daguerreotype was not announced until 1839, and that up to that time almost the only available reproductions of the human countenance had been paintings and silhouettes, it is not surprising that portrait sculpture should have been favored by the well-to-do, nor that Yankee

INTRODUCTION 7

ingenuity should have come to discover its resources in this direction. Almost all of these early sculptors were intelligent but uncultivated men who had come to their craft by way of the marble yard, and who troubled themselves little with politics, philosophy, or poetry. Greenough was exceptional in his education ; Powers and Crawford in their later mental development ; but the rank and file were largely of the character described. They had nothing in particular to say, but had early discovered an aptitude for the chisel and the modelling tool, as the next one might for music or rhyming. Opportunity came — or was made — and the modest talent was cultivated, often through hardships which were silently borne or perhaps quite overlooked in the radiant vision of a career as distinguished and as profitable as that of the sculptor then promised to be.

With one accord these early men hastened to Italy, where in Florence or Rome they carved portrait busts for a living, and modelled figures as nearly in the style of Canova and Thorwaldsen as their unschooled hands and minds would permit. There were no masters among them, for masters come only with the high tides of art. The great artist is rarely found in a season of mediocrity. He comes usually as a culmination; hardly ever by way of antithesis. Hence it was impossible that there should be a great American sculptor in the first half of the nineteenth century, just as it was impossible that there should have been any at all during the two preceding centuries of colonial life. There was nothing to make sculptors out of, and even had there been a latent sense of form, there was nothing; to bring it to fruition.

It has been well said of the Late Renaissance that " it did not think, it merely adapted thought ; it did not feel, it appropriated the masks of classic feeling." How much more true is this of that later classic revival in Italy which followed with such servility the letter, but failed so completely to catch the spirit, of Greek art ! We have grown so far away from its " classic " formula, which our primitives wrere reared upon, that we are scarcely able to do these men justice to-day. In the presence of their uninspired works we can sympathize with Emerson, who thought, back in the thirties, that " the art of sculpture has long ago perished to any real effect." We can understand, too, Hawthorne's petulance toward the succeeding phase of Italo- American art, — " this universal prettiness, which seems to be the highest conception of the crowd of modern sculptors." No doubt it was the reaction from such irresponsibility and childishness on the part of our sculptors which led Sidney Lanier to make the surprising claim for John Rogers' war groups that they revealed " the brightest examples of genius in the art yet afforded by our country." For it must be acknowledged that up to the time of the Centennial but little significance had crept into American sculpture. It was alien and impersonal, expressing in no way the spirit of the people nor even the emotions of its authors. The lyric strain was almost unknown ; our sculptors were executants, not composers. They thought that they were doing original work, but with most of them it was mere rearrangement and recitation by rote.

Since that time the evolution of taste has been so rapid that many a worthy craftsman has been left stranded and bewildered by the receding tide of popularity. A few bridged over the period of artistic revolution and adjusted themselves to a new environment; a few — a very few — escaped the levelling influence of Italy. Generally this was the result of failure to go abroad ; sometimes it was the price of ignorance ; but in more than one case it was the protest of a natural independence which disdained to follow the beaten path and proposed by its own unaided efforts to blaze new trails to fame. Such men are indeed exceptional and stand out, rugged and distinct, in the history of our art. Their works speak for themselves and demand attention. Other men of less note must be mentioned in the early annals because they were first, or because of special achievement, or of the influence which they exerted, or for some other reason ; but there must necessarily remain a colorless and nameless multitude, the now silenced " Greek chorus " of endeavor. These are as necessary in all periods as are the master performers, — without them are no masters, — but they leave slight record. For their unheralded efforts and their forgotten contributions we should be thankful. They had their value in the sequence of progress.

With the Centennial Exposition of 1876 came an artistic quickening such as our country never had known before. A new and growing appreciation dates from that year. It began with the

INTRODUCTION 9

recognition of our own shortcomings as compared with other lands. France in particular made strong appeal to our newlyawakened tastes, and the work of one or two Americans who had studied in Paris had great influence. The demand for a better and more forceful art was not long to remain unanswered. With the advent of Saint Gaudens there came a notable change in the spirit of American sculpture, while the rapid transformation of its technic was no less marked and significant. Though we owe this change largely to Paris, the result has not been French sculpture. Paris has vitalized the dormant tastes and energies of America — that is all. A pronounced and helpful feature of the new order is the fact that as a rule the Parisian-trained sculptors do not remain abroad; they return to live with their own people and, like their French masters, they delight in teaching. The influence of such a man as Saint Gaudens, for instance, becomes incalculable when multiplied through the pupils whom he has brought up to share his labors and his triumphs. Thus the art schools of America are at the present time in a flourishing condition, and the opportunity for study from nature is so abundant in all of our large cities that it is no longer necessary for a student of sculpture to go abroad excepting for travel and observation. Hands have grown skilful and eyes discerning here in America, while not a few of our sculptors have learned the art of thinking and expressing themselves in truly sculptural terms — something which is quite distinct, it may be said in passing, from realistic imitation, and which presupposes a motive very different from one of either a picturesque or a literary character.

But while the men of the new generation have acquired such mastery of the "mechanics" of the profession as wins the praise of their foreign instructors and fellow-workers, their language is not always understood at home. Our people have no intuitive grasp of its meaning. In spite of the oft-repeated assurance that we know what we like, we do not even know what we are saying when we say it. It is true that we recognize what we like, and that we like it well, for the time at least. On the other hand, we do not have a " grand passion " for sculpture, taking it to heart like the modern French. Our feelings are not outraged by bad work, nor by transgressions of

IO THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN SCULPTURE

venerated laws of style, of balance, of movement, and of other sacred traditions. Likewise are we insensible, in large measure, to the charm of these fundamental virtues. Unless a work of sculpture shows something more ; unless it makes special appeal by its significance, its emotion, or its insistent beauty of face or form, we are as indifferent to it as though it were not; we do not, perhaps, even see it.

We lose much, of course, but there is after all something rather fine in this sturdy independence. It may, indeed it must, result in an art of greater meaning and intensity than we have heretofore known. We say to the artist, as it were, " Put in all the 'composition,' all the ' technic ' you please; we have nothing against them; but first of all give us something that we can understand and sympathize with." Hence it follows that the mere " Beaux-Arts figure " so closely allied to the objet de Paris, has already had its day with a considerable portion of our community. It has followed the Graces and the Cupids of our Italian age.

Perhaps, however, we underestimate our own development in the appreciation of form for its own sake. Unconsciously the better technic has made itself a necessity ; the Parisian bronze, the Paris-trained sculptor, and — let it not be forgotten — increasing familiarity with the real masterpieces of the past have raised the standard all along the line. While we may not be able to formulate an artistic creed, innumerably more people enjoy good art in this country at present than was the case a generation ago. In monumental sculpture the change is particularly noticeable. Fully one-half of our existing public monuments would fail to pass muster to-day with the municipal art commissions which have recently been created to protect the parks and avenues of our great cities.

Although any attempt at classification must be more or less arbitrary, the space of time covered in this history may be divided in a general way into three sections: —

I. The Beginnings of American Sculpture, 1 750-1850. II. Middle Period, 1S50-1S76.

III. Contemporary Sculpture, 1 876-1 903.

The first of these periods goes far back in order to bring to view the faint foreshadowings of our coming achievements, but its latter

INTRODUCTION 1 1

half is a story of fascinating interest — a story of struggles and successes of the deepest significance to American art.

The second period, though including the years of the Civil War, was largely one of commercial activity, — a time of opulence rather than of enthusiasm, — and its achievements were by so much less distinctive, excepting in the case of a few sturdy men who were too strong in their own individualities to bow to the fashion of the hour. These men made the succeeding period possible.

The third period has brought a new revelation of the beautiful in nature and is showing to the people of this country the possibilities of sculpture. In this period it has reached for the first time the dignity of a national expression, something neither Anglo-Saxon nor Italian nor French ; but a fusing of all these elements into an art which is vital and significant — the true product of the country and the age which have given it birth.

Part I American Sculpture The Beginnings, 1 750-1850

CHAPTER I

The earliest sculptural expression of which we find record in the American colonies is the work of Mrs. Patience Wright of Bordentown, New Jersey. Her miniature heads in wax were celebrated by the elder chroniclers, but in the absence of ocular proof we must needs be a trifle sceptical regarding their superlative merits.

Patience Lovell was born at Bordentown in 1725. Of her parents nothing is known excepting that they had become Quakers, and as little is known of the childhood of the future artist. In 1748 she married Joseph Wright. Although there was not a statue or a cast in that part of the country, Mrs. Wright's talent revealed itself early, and long before the Revolution she had acquired a wide reputation for clever portraits in wax. Upon the death of her husband, in 1769, she removed with her three children to London, where she had a remarkable success in her art, the English periodicals of the time giving her high praise and styling her the " Promethean modeller." We are told that at one time she was freely admitted into the presence of the king, but that she lost his favor by scolding him for sanctioning the American war. It is a well-known fact that she rendered valuable service to the American cause during that trying period. Whenever a squadron was being fitted out or a general appointed, this keen-witted Quaker woman would transmit the number of troops and the place of their destination to the leaders of the Revolution. She corresponded a great deal with Benjamin Franklin, who at that time resided in Paris.

The London Magazine for 1775 contains a curious portrait of Mrs. Wright, showing her seated and holding a miniature bust of a man which she has apparently just modelled. The cut is accompanied by the following notice : —

" Her likenesses of the king, queen, Lords Chatham and Temple, Messrs. Barre, Wilkes, and others, attracted universal admiration. Her natural abilities are surpassing, and had a liberal and extensive education been added to her intimate qualities, she would have been a prodigy. She has an eye of that quick and brilliant water that it penetrates and darts through the person it looks on, and practice has made her so capable of distinguishing the character and dispositions of her visitors that she is very rarely mistaken, even in a minute point of manners ; much more so in the general cast of character."

The " likeness " of Lord Chatham was a full-length portrait in wax, to which was accorded the high honor of a position in Westminster Abbey, where, protected by a glass case, it stood for many years.

Mrs. Wright died in London in 1785. Her younger daughter married John Hoppner, the English portrait painter; while her son, Joseph Wright, after studying with Benjamin West, returned to the United States to play a modest but interesting role in the history of American painting.

It was in 17S5, also, that Houdon, the great French sculptor, was commissioned by the state of Virginia to execute a marble statue of George Washington. For this purpose he crossed the ocean and spent two weeks at Philadelphia, making studies and a life mask of the future president. It is said that he even made a plaster cast of his entire person. An interesting glimpse of the facilities of ocean travel at that time is afforded by the following note in Louis Gonse's " La Sculpture Francaise " : " Houdon sailed with Franklin from Havre on the 22nd of July, 1 7S5. He was with Washington for fifteen days in Philadelphia, made his models, and returned to France, reaching home on January 4th, 1 786."

The modelling and carving of the statue occupied two years, and the completed work, arriving at Richmond in 1788, was at once installed in the rotunda of the state Capitol, where it still remains. The little cistern-like room, connecting two legislative halls where history has been made, is dingy and without decoration other than a few busts and a typewriter's conspicuous card ; but it has a fine top light which is worth more than upholstery and gilding. The head and shoulders of the figure are superbly illuminated, and the effect is noble beyond any impression given by replicas of the statue in other locations. The workmanship is exceedingly skilful and grows upon one with study ; but there is, it must be confessed, a feeling of leanness and angularity in the lower portion of the statue. It may be that it was inherent in the subject, and it is doubtless accentuated by the costume — the uniform of a Revolutionary officer. Whatever may be the cause, there is, in spite of irreproachable drawing, an effect as of pasteboard or tinware about the lower limbs. This is further enhanced by the wide angle of the feet, which gives the figure from one view the look of having been cut out of a folded paper and then spread open. The close-fitting nether garments combined with their " tightness" of treatment, and the unheroic but doubtless circumstantial swell of the abdomen, produce a result more curiously individual than majestic, until the eye returns to the noble head, which is one of the finest examples of simplification to be found in modern art. It has in it the serenity and greatness of all time. Nearer approach discovers the perfection of drawing and of marble-cutting in the gloved right hand, which rests upon a long cane, and in the bared left, which lies upon a cloak thrown over the fasces — a bundle large, tall, and insistently prominent. This strange accessory rests in turn upon a ploughshare. The sharp lines of cane and plough and fasces are unpleasant and unsculptural, but the transfigured head welcomes the gaze after each bewildering excursion.