THE NEO-CLASSICAL REVIVAL: EUROPEAN SCULPTURE OF THE REVOLUTION AND THE
REACTION
(1789-1848 A.D.)
The period we are now to consider, covering the last few years of the
eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, is one of the
most elusive in the history of sculpture. That is to say, it evades
characterization. Moreover, when its individual qualities are stated,
it is still more difficult to correlate these with the very definite
ideas and emotions astir during a time which includes the French
Revolution and the consequent Reaction.
The difficulty in tracing the connection between such men as Canova,
Thorvaldsen, Flaxman, and the age in which they worked, seems to
be due to the necessity for first abandoning the method which has
served us hitherto. In dealing with Greek and Roman, Italian and
French sculpture, we have appealed to national history—national
circumstances. Now we are concerned with a body of thought and feeling
which is not national but European. Instead of thinking in states,
we have to think in continents. The men who created the sculpture
of the Revolution and Reaction were essentially cosmopolitans;
Winckelmann—Saxon; Raphael Mengs—half-Dane, half-Bohemian;
Canova—Venetian; Thorvaldsen—Danish; Flaxman and Gibson—Englishmen,
long resident in Rome. They did not drift towards Rome as the
Hellenistic sculptors had done, because the city was the centre of
the political force of the age. Nor did they come with the purpose
of Michael Angelo, that they might add to the glory of a universal
church seeking to extend its power over the known world. Far from this
being the case, in the early part of the nineteenth century Rome was
a no-man’s land. If it stood for anything, it was for a disintegrated
Italy and an enfeebled Papacy. At the very time Canova was working
there, Italy was powerless to prevent Napoleon stripping it of its
choicest art treasures. Anything approaching a national stimulus to
sculptural production was entirely lacking.
The first result was the rise of the essentially eclectic style which
we recognize in the sculptures of Canova and Thorvaldsen. Nominally,
it was based upon a return to the Greek example. In reality, it was no
more than a borrowed Hellenism, misunderstood and misapplied by men
who did no more than steal “The livery of the Court of Heaven.” We
shall not be misunderstood. No one can deny—it is impossible to do
so—the graceful beauty of very many statues of the later eighteenth
and earlier nineteenth centuries. Indeed, no school of sculpture has
produced a larger number of popular works—in the best sense of that
rather dubious term. But our criticism is justified by the fact that
such men as Canova and Thorvaldsen deliberately set out to interpret
their experience in the terms of classic art. They rightly judged this
to be the highest achievement attained by the sculptor. Unfortunately,
they only filched the Hellenic externals.
Strange to say, this fervid adoption of a bastard Hellenism coincided
with the re-discovery of the principles at the root of Greek art, and,
in consequence, with a renewed appreciation of the best qualities in
Hellenic sculpture. Throughout the Renaissance and until the middle
of the eighteenth century, Europe did not understand Greek sculpture.
Even the best judges rated the “Apollo Belvedere” above the “Theseus”
of the Parthenon pediment. A truer standard was advanced by Johann
Joachim Winckelmann (murdered 1768). His dictum, “Greek art has been
perpetuated by Roman copies,” revealed the error which had vitiated all
earlier criticism. Aided by the poet-philosopher Lessing, Winckelmann
led men to distinguish between the Roman and the Greek elements
in classic sculpture—between the Hellenic and the Hellenistic.
Winckelmann’s “History of Greek Art,” published in 1764, enunciated all
the great principles we now recognize in the best Greek sculpture—its
truth to nature, its almost austere reserve, the preference accorded to
the typical as opposed to the particular. The “History of Greek Art”
in turn led to Lessing’s “Laocoon” and the magnificent exposition of
Hellenism in the works of Goethe. Through these three men the very soul
of Greek sculpture lay bare to the later eighteenth-century artists.
[Illustration: CANOVA
CUPID AND PSYCHE Villa Carlotta, Lake of Como]
[Illustration: PAULINE BORGHESE Borghese Gallery, Rome]
CANOVA AND THORVALDSEN
The first really gifted sculptor to absorb the new revelation and give
expression to it in marble and bronze was Antonio Canova. Born in 1757,
Canova came of a family of sculptors. In his youth he manifested a
facility as a modeller which was sufficient to lead his patron, the
Senator Falieri, to make it possible for him to visit Rome. Coming
there at the age of twenty-two, Canova encountered the full tide of the
ideas enunciated by Winckelmann and his school. Like most successful
sculptors, the Venetian was a man of boundless energy. His patrons and
rivals in Rome soon became impressed with the belief that Canova was
capable of founding a school of sculpture worthy of comparison with
those of classic times. Indeed, to-day, it is quite easy to realize the
intense enthusiasm aroused by the works of Canova. Such a statue as
the beautiful “Cupid and Psyche,” produced in the year 1787, has not
yet lost its power to charm. Canova has chosen the moment when Cupid
comes to aid the unfortunate girl who has opened the box of Proserpine
and has sunk fainting to the earth. It is characteristic of Canova’s
sentimental method that he should choose the moment when Psyche,
throwing back her head, discovers the god-youth bending over her.
An equally fine example of Canova at his best is the famous statue
of “Pauline Borghese,” a work of later date than the “Cupid and
Psyche.” The light-hearted sister of Napoleon is represented as Venus,
despite the fact that she was the wife of Prince Borghese, the ruler
of Piedmont. The story runs that a friend remonstrated with her and
ended with the question whether Pauline had not found the ordeal “a
trying one.” “Trying, not at all,” replied the Princess, “there was a
stove.” The anecdote serves to illustrate the difference between Canova
and his Greek predecessors. Comparing the story of Pauline Borghese
with that of the Hetaera Phryne, the difference between the spirit
animating Hellenic art and that animating the imitation Greek art of
two thousand years later is unmistakable. Praxiteles’ statue of Phryne
was the incarnation of womanhood as he felt it. Pauline Borghese
merely suggested to Canova a number of graceful lines and masses,
which his sense of form enabled him to combine in a pleasing fashion.
He willingly preserved a sufficient likeness to compliment the fair
model, who had risked a physical and spiritual chill in the cause of
art. But the difference between the lasting value of Canova’s “Venus”
and that of Praxiteles’ “Aphrodite of Cnidus” can be estimated exactly.
It is that which separates the idea of womanhood from the idea of the
princely light-o’-love—Pauline Borghese. Canova’s work has not a
suggestion of that contact with the eternal verities which is the very
essence of a great Greek statue.
No one can doubt that both the “Cupid and Psyche” and the “Pauline
Borghese” are the works of a man who feels the full beauty of pure
line. If formal grace were the best that sculpture could give us, there
would be no more to be said. But the achievements of the Greek masters
prove that this is not the case. A work of sculpture can convey a sense
of palpitating life, of vigorous emotion, which is worth far more than
the graceful beauty with which Canova has endowed his conception of
Cupid and Psyche, and the Goddess of Desire.
It cannot be said that Canova lacked any opportunity vouchsafed to the
earlier sculptors. Before he died, his reputation rivalled that of the
great artists of the Renaissance. In 1802 he was appointed curator of
the Vatican art treasures, a post resembling that held by Raphael and
Michael Angelo. Like Bernini, he was called to France. Instead of a
bust of Louis XIV., Canova’s task was to model a colossal statue of
Napoleon. If Canova had had it in him, he might have been a Michael
Angelo. As it was, he lived and died Antonio Canova.
If our estimate of Canova is correct, can more be said for his rival,
the Danish sculptor, Thorvaldsen? Thorvaldsen was born about the year
1770, his father being a journeyman wood-carver of ship’s figure-heads.
As a boy he worked on the quays at Copenhagen, much as Puget had done
a century earlier at Marseilles. In 1793 Thorvaldsen, then a youth of
twenty-three, won the Copenhagen Academy’s gold medal and a travelling
scholarship, which made a visit to Rome possible. Four years later, in
1797, Thorvaldsen came to Rome.
Between May and December of the previous year, Italy had been overrun
by the French. In October 1797 the Venetian territories were divided by
Austria and France. In the following February Pius VI. was deposed by
Napoleon. Italy had never stood lower in the scale of nations. Perhaps
for that very reason Rome was able to welcome artists from all parts of
Europe, and imbue them with entirely non-national ideals, drawn from
the treasures of art stored in the Eternal City.
“I was born on March 8, 1797,” said Thorvaldsen himself. “Up to that
time I did not exist.”
The Dane’s scholarship only amounted to £24 a year, insufficient for
the bare necessities of life. But the young sculptor struggled along
until 1803, when his “Jason” was purchased by the English banker,
Thomas Hope, and he was relieved from his most pressing difficulties.
A little later Thorvaldsen found himself the talk of artistic Rome.
The Baron de Schubart, Danish Ambassador at Naples, had commissioned
a “Cupid and Psyche.” The sculptor was in the midst of the work when
his studio at Montenero was struck by lightning. The only model which
escaped destruction was the Baron’s “Cupid and Psyche.” Thorvaldsen
himself was in Rome at the time, and the pretty little story naturally
ran the round of the studios. The tale caught the fancy of the smart
set, ever on the look-out for an excitement, and “the miracle of the
marble” became the sensation of the hour. A flood of sonnets and
epigrams resulted. Thorvaldsen found himself suddenly recognized as the
coming sculptor—second only to Canova.
There is no finer example of the genius of Thorvaldsen than his
“Venus.” There is certainly no statue upon which he lavished more care.
It exists in several forms, including a fine marble copy in the Duke of
Devonshire’s collection at Chatsworth. Starting in 1805, he took ten
years to complete the design to his satisfaction. Not that Thorvaldsen
was a slow worker. He had no love for the actual carving, and left the
greater portion of the marble-work to his assistants. But in the clay
he worked with extreme facility, and few sculptors have excelled him in
the number and variety of his designs. A statue like the “Venus” proves
that he also possessed qualities of breadth and emotional austerity,
which cannot be claimed for the prettier works of Canova.
But, judging the life-work of the Danish sculptor in its broadest
aspects, the only possible verdict is that which must also be passed
upon Canova. Both men preferred to echo an earlier art. They made
no attempt to realize nature afresh. This acceptance of a purely
artificial creed, based upon their admiration for their Greek
predecessors, entailed an abandonment of the personal standpoint which
alone gives an art the highest value.
[Illustration: THORVALDSEN
VENUS Duke of Devonshire’s Collection, Chatsworth]
THE SCULPTURE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Why Canova and Thorvaldsen should have found this necessary in an
age which was full of pregnant thought and feeling, is hard to say.
One can only note a similar tendency in other branches of European
activity in the latter years of the eighteenth century. The painter
David, for instance, was content to work to a pseudo-Greek standard,
instead of constructing a fresh one, fitted to the new state of things
in France. The great picture in the Louvre, “The Intervention of the
Sabine Women,” is almost icy on account of the artist’s pre-occupation
with the externals of classical art. Were it not for the evidence of
David’s portraits one would regard the painter of the “Sabine Women”
as entirely lacking in human emotion. As it is, we know that the
assumption of classical externals is merely the outcome of a bad habit.
A similar tendency to pose in the outworn robes of an earlier
civilization was a common fault among the men and women who sought to
bring the ideals of the French Revolution home to Europe. Witness the
days which the National Assembly devoted to the unending wrangle over
the precise wording of the “Rights of Man.” The time was wasted, not
because the Declaration really forwarded the ideal of equality before
the law and the abolition of all class distinctions, but because the
founders of the American Republic had framed a similar Declaration of
Rights. The civic dinners in Paris in imitation of the Spartan manner
were equally mere poses. Parisians sat, surrounded by their servants,
at tables spread in the very streets, while fashionable hostesses
called upon passers-by to note “how we love equality.” The tendency
which led the Parisians to such follies, led Canova, Thorvaldsen,
and Flaxman to follow a pseudo-classic style instead of allowing the
passions and thoughts astir in their souls to find an adequate method
of expression. This initial error deprived even their most ambitious
works of that almost mystical appeal which gives the statuary of the
greatest Hellenes and Florentines its unique value. Though full of
grace and charm, their marbles impress us at once as devoid of either
deep feeling or high thinking.
The one sculptor, who absorbed the patriotic spirit generated by the
French Revolution, and also found means to express it in marble, was
François Rude (1784-1855). Unlike Thorvaldsen, Canova and Flaxman, Rude
never lived in Rome. He was French to the marrow. Indeed, when he won
the Grand Prix in 1812, he did not take advantage of the opportunity
to visit Italy. The son of a Dijon blacksmith, Rude came to Paris
in 1807 with £16 in his pocket. He had nothing except an invincible
determination to become a sculptor, to ensure success. However, he
secured work and joined the École des Beaux Arts. “Seven lost years,”
was Rude’s opinion of the time he spent in this centre of academical
method. Rude had always been an ardent politician, and the support he
gave to Napoleon during “The Hundred Days” led to his exile. After
twelve years in Brussels, he returned to Paris—aged forty-three. The
exhibition of the “Neapolitan Fisher Boy” in 1833, established Rude’s
reputation. The work is now in the Louvre. The circumstances under
which it was carved recall those under which Michael Angelo produced
his “David.” Rude was furnished with an odd prism-shaped piece of
marble. The delightful ingenuity with which he has used the happy pose
arising from the boy’s crossed legs is worthy to be remembered along
with the achievement of Michael Angelo himself.
[Illustration: RUDE “THE MARSEILLAISE” RELIEF
Arc de Triomphe, Paris]
Charming as the “Neapolitan Fisher Boy” is, Rude’s genius is more
completely illustrated by his great bas-relief in the Arc de Triomphe
at Paris. Thiers was Louis Philippe’s minister at the time, and he
gave Rude the commission for all the “grande sculpture” upon the Arch.
The intrigues of rivals, however, resulted in half of the work being
handed over to Etex, and finally, Rude only contributed a single group.
This was the “Chant du Départ,” generally known as “The Marseillaise.”
The magnificent force and vigour with which Rude has carried out the
purpose of the memorial is beyond praise. His task was to perpetuate
the fame of the Imperial armies which cowed Europe and won such fights
as Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland. Surely the difference
between the emotion expressed in Rude’s “Chant du Départ,” and any
works by the more highly endowed Canova and Thorvaldsen is beyond
question. Surely it is equally certain that the difference can only
be traced to one thing. The Frenchman was expressing what he felt,
whereas, the other two men were only expressing what Wincklemann and
Lessing had proved to be correct. Rude was able to infuse his marble
with the passion it contains because he had _lived_ through a stirring
age. The “Chant du Départ” only nominally dates from the ’thirties of
the last century. Really, it was carved in the year 1793, when Rude
as a boy of nine, marched up and down the squares of Dijon, with his
child-companions in the Royal Bourbon Regiment of the National Guard,
and felt his loyal little heart burning within him as he sang the
Marseillaise before the bust of Marat or Robespierre. It makes us feel
that it is the direct outcome of real feeling—experienced at first
hand.
THE RISE OF ENGLISH SCULPTURE
The sculpture of Rude leads naturally enough to that of Great
Britain—the only other country in Europe with national emotions
capable of being translated into a vital art at that time.
Unfortunately, no lover of sculpture, writing in English can turn
from the art of France to that of his own country without a pang. For
hundreds of years, the sculptor met with no encouragement in Great
Britain. The land which had nourished the genius of a Shakespeare,
a Milton and a Wren, of a Gainsborough and a Reynolds, could only
advance a list of shadowy names against the tangible achievements of
its great rival on the other side of the Channel. In the early days of
the Renaissance, there was some promise that sculpture might obtain a
foothold in England as it was doing in France. Henry VIII. and Wolsey
took a keen interest in the infant art, and persuaded several Italian
artists to take up their abode in England. Such a tomb as that of Henry
VII. in the Abbey, the contract for which was made in 1512, affords
an interesting comparison with the tombs of the French kings of the
sixteenth century. It was the work of the Italian Torrigiano, best
known nowadays as the breaker of Michael Angelo’s nose. Unfortunately,
Torrigiano was the greatest, and not the least, of the band of foreign
artists who came to England in those days. Consequently, our native
sculptors never had the advantage of seeing men like Leonardo da Vinci
and Andrea del Sarto working among them. Torrigiano and Antonio Toto
were poor substitutes for Cellini and Primaticcio.
No one can say what would have happened had a more vigorous artistic
impulse been received from the country of Michael Angelo and Donatello.
But this is certain. Neither sculpture nor painting in England became
the living things they were in France. While Francis I. and the three
Louis were purchasing statues by Goujon and Pajou, the English kings
and nobles preferred to repeat lyrical snatches by such men as Lovelace
and Rochester. Almost the only British sculptures from the end of the
Tudors to the middle of the reign of George III. were the memorial
monuments which still decorate our older churches. For the rest,
there was such a work as the Nightingale monument by the foreigner
Roubilliac, the still-life carvings of Grinling Gibbons, and the fine
tombs by Nicholas Stone in Westminster Abbey.
The profound difference between the English character and the French
accounts, in great measure, for Britain’s slowness to develop a
national school of sculpture. The temperament which really feels that
pure form can adequately express the emotional experience of mankind
is rare at any time. It is far less likely to develop among men who
prefer positive, concrete mental images than among those who seek the
definite, abstract conceptions which the French mind creates. Moreover,
during the century after Shakespeare, Britain was fully occupied in
settling her religious and political difficulties, and upon such tasks
as the absorption of Ireland and Scotland. During the seventeenth
century and the early part of the eighteenth England should be pictured
by the aid of Arnold’s magnificent image:
“The weary Titan, with deaf
Ears, and labour-dimm’d eyes,
Regarding neither to right
Nor left ...
Staggering on to her goal.”
The Scottish Revolution of 1745 marked the conclusion of the period of
political and social stress. By the middle of the eighteenth century
Great Britain had “found itself.” The foundations of a system of
party government had been laid. The rule of Walpole, “the first Prime
Minister of England,” had indicated the direction in which the future
of English politics lay. For the first time the country was able to
devote a portion of its spare energy to an art which was admittedly not
quite attuned to the national temperament.
The establishment of the British Museum was an early indication of
the new mood. The Royal Academy, founded in 1768, with Reynolds as
its first president, indicated the public recognition that a national
school of sculpture was possible. Finally, society—with a capital
S—condescended to interest itself in classical art. The influence of
this upon English sculpture can be happily illustrated from the history
of the “Society of Dilettanti.”
At the time of the foundation of the Society of Dilettanti, between
1733 and 1735, young British noblemen were wont to make the “Grand
Tour” through France and Italy, much as the Roman aristocrats had
visited Greece and Asia Minor, during the later days of the Republic
and the Empire. Usually the Englishman was accompanied by a tutor, who
enabled his young charge to acquire the rudiments of a classical art
education. The youth came back to London equipped as an arbiter in all
matters of taste. The Society of Dilettanti only admitted such men as
these, and its avowed object was to cultivate a taste for works of art
which had attracted them during their tours. At first the Society of
Dilettanti was little more than a dining club. Horace Walpole, writing
in 1743, sneered: “The nominal qualification is having been in Italy;
the real one being drunk.”
As the Society became more staid, with the advancing years of its
founders, more ideal methods were adopted. Several of the promoters
took leading positions in English life. Sir Francis Dashwood, for
instance, became Bute’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. The fourth Earl
of Sandwich not only enriched the language with a new term and a novel
article of diet, but posed as a leader in all branches of English
activity from gambling and theatricals to art criticism. In course of
time such men as these had the spending of very considerable funds
accumulated by the society. The sources whence the Society derived its
income make amusing reading. There was, for instance, the “face money,”
levied under a rule which ordained that every member’s portrait should
be painted by Kneller for the benefit of the Society. Still larger sums
accrued from the “Rule Ann. Soc. Undec.” This set forth that any member
who was fortunate enough to secure an advance in his salary should
contribute one per cent. of the first year’s rise to the Dilettanti
coffers. In the Annals, under date January 6, 1744-5, one finds the
following: “Received of the Duke of Bedford eleven guineas for having
received the place of the first Commissioner of the Admiralty.”
On the whole, the funds of the Society of Dilettanti were expended
with good judgment. Students’ scholarships were endowed in connection
with the Royal Academy schools. Finely illustrated works dealing
with various antiquarian subjects were published from time to time.
Excavations were encouraged. Above all, a body of public opinion was
created which took a real interest in classic sculpture.
Proofs of a sincere appreciation of classical art among the leaders
of English society in the second half of the eighteenth century could
be readily multiplied. We might instance the case of Charles Lennox,
third Duke of Richmond, who celebrated his Italian tour by setting up a
collection of painting, sculptures and casts in a gallery of his house
in Whitehall and establishing schools of art there under Cipriani, the
painter, and Wilton, the sculptor. But the supreme evidence of the
value of the system is furnished by the case of Thomas, Earl of Elgin.
That nobleman was engaged about 1802 upon a mission to the Ottoman
Porte. He was fortunate enough to obtain a _firman_ to examine and
remove certain “inscriptions” from the Acropolis of Athens, at that
time a Turkish fortress. His agents, under this _firman_, collected
the Elgin marbles, which were conveyed to England in 1812 and finally
purchased by the British Government in 1816. Even at this date, in
spite of the writings of Lessing and Winckelmann, public opinion was
in grave doubt as to the desirability of paying the beggarly £35,000
which the Earl of Elgin asked for his treasures. He had spent upwards
of £70,000, so the offer was an exceptionally generous one. Even a man
like Flaxman was doubtful as to the real value of the marbles. Like
many art-lovers of his age, he preferred Raphael to Rembrandt—the
“Venus of Medici” to the “Three Fates.”
[Illustration: FLAXMAN MICHAEL AND SATAN (SKETCH)
Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington]
Flaxman was the first English sculptor of European reputation. He was
born in 1755 and died in 1826, so his career practically coincided with
that of Canova. The son of a manufacturer of plaster of Paris casts,
the boy Flaxman was terribly handicapped by a threatened deformity.
But when he laid aside his crutches at ten years of age, his natural
bent towards art began to display itself definitely. In 1770 he won
the silver medal for sculpture at the Royal Academy. Patrons, however,
proved few and far between and the necessity for making a living drove
Flaxman to accept the commissions for the classical designs made famous
through their association with Wedgwood pottery. His real career as a
sculptor began in 1787. Like Thorvaldsen he could have said: “I was
born when I first saw Rome. Before I merely existed.” When Flaxman
returned to England eight years later, his future was assured. He
became an A.R.A. in 1797 and an R.A. in 1800.
Perhaps no modern artist has produced work more nearly approaching
the sculpture of Greece in spirit. In Flaxman’s best known work, the
“Michael and Satan,” we can trace a severe restraint which is foreign
to the more florid styles of Canova and Thorvaldsen and which brings
the Englishman far closer to the masters of the Hellenic school whom he
sought to follow. He equalled either Canova or Thorvaldsen in fertility
and purity of design, particularly in bas-relief. But Flaxman also
suffered as they had done from a too close adherence to the eclectic
influences derived from Winckelmann. When Flaxman sought to portray
the intense passions, his borrowed style betrayed him. If intensity of
emotion was of little moment in sculpture, Flaxman would rank among
the immortals. As a fact, we know that it constitutes its very life.
Consequently, one can only regret that it was not given to the first
great English sculptor to emulate the achievements of Gainsborough
and Reynolds, and evolve a style capable of expressing the manifold
energies of his age in marble, as truly as they did on canvas. As it
was, the genius of Flaxman only served to perpetuate a false ideal.
His English followers made no effort to rid themselves of the methods
which had marred even the finest work of the earlier masters of their
school. Truth to tell, Flaxman’s reputation depends much more upon his
non-sculptural work than it does upon his marbles—upon his Homeric
illustrations, upon his drawings, with their mysterious reminiscences
of Blake, for instance. Flaxman’s facility in design was so tremendous
that it alone made him stand out far above his fellow sculptors.
Added to this, there is a certain natural austerity in his sculptures
which distinguishes them from the conventional theatricalities of the
earlier eighteenth-century artists and the Georgian and early Victorian
sentimentalities which followed. But it would be untrue to suggest that
as a sculptor he rose superior to his age. Weighed in the scale of
European art, ancient and modern, the life-work of Flaxman contains the
same lesson as that of Canova and Thorvaldsen. It stands as a perpetual
memorial of the eternal law, that no living art can be built upon a
borrowed style—even though that style be Greek.