OF SMALL BRONZES AND GREAT CRAFTS
I
Akin to the faculty for creating garden sculpture is the gift for
designing those “small bronzes” in which American connoisseurs are
now taking a happy interest. The general public also is being made
familiar with the best of these pieces; a result reached through the
initiative of the National Sculpture Society and the enthusiasm of
our American Federation of Arts in sending out traveling exhibitions
of small bronzes to various cities. The small bronze may be either a
potentially perfect reduction from some full-sized masterpiece, as in
the well-known Saint-Gaudens reliefs reduced from larger originals;
or it may on the other hand be designed from the start in the ultimate
size. Both types are excellent. American sculpture today counts scores
of artists with a sure and delightful touch for the latter type.
Some of our women sculptors have created little masterpieces in this
intimate and friendly form.
Bessie Potter Vonnoh is an acknowledged leader here; one might say
that she is the originator of an American genre, in which small size
does not for a moment imply either a trifling imagination or a petty
rendering. I well remember Mr. Howells’s enthusiasm for Bessie Potter’s
figurines when they were first shown at a New York exhibition. Their
authentic American note captivated him. “These,” he declared, “are
_real_ creations in sculpture.” The same may be said of Miss Eberle’s
vivid groups and figures from street and fireside and doorstep; they
have the charm and integrity of folk-lore tales told in a plastic
medium. Animal form, as in the days of Barye and Frémiet, easily
disports itself in this field. Miss Hyatt, Mr. Roth, Mr. Laessle and
others press all the imaginable joys of La Fontaine’s fables within
the contours of their bronze goats and bears, tigers, turkeys, and
elephants. Like the fables themselves, these bronzes are classics, as
in the stricter sense, the delightful groups of Manship and Jennewein
are classics.
Generally speaking, we do not like a look of toil and endeavor in our
small bronzes; we want something spontaneous, whether graceful or
humorous. Well and good. Yet here again is a real danger; anyone who
has had the sobering privilege, year by year, of reviewing the rank
and file of little plastic works presented for exhibition knows very
well that many of these pieces utterly lack the solid qualities of
construction, workmanship and an understanding of nature’s detail.
II
One of the brighter possibilities of the small bronze designed in its
ultimate size is that it may well be cast by the _cire perdue_ process.
That name is not altogether a happy one, because in truth less of the
sculptor’s personal touch is “lost” by this method than by the sand
process of bronze casting. By the lost wax method, it’s the sculptor’s
own fault if there’s anything wrong with the wax figure as it leaves
his hands. A mold made of a composition suitable for enduring the
subsequent impact of molten metal is then built up directly on the wax
figure, which has of course its insoluble core. This stout mold or
shell, closely enveloping every knob and crevice of its wax kernel,
is subjected to heat; the wax is thus melted out; and, if all is
well, an absolutely perfect space is left behind it, between core and
shell, ready to receive the red-hot bronze. The _cire perdue_ process
theoretically avoids all unseemly seams, all ill-joined joints. At its
best, it approaches perfection; and such work is as well done in our
country as anywhere on earth.
[Illustration: CENTAUR AND DRYAD
BY PAUL MANSHIP]
The small bronze has then its two separate manifestations. It may
present itself either as a reduction from some much larger work worthy
of wide recognition and ownership, or as a spontaneous first-hand
offering of a sculptural thought well-suited for expression within
modest confines. In either shape, its cost is not prohibitive for many
of our private citizens as well as for our museums. The cause of art
and the delights of possession are advanced side by side.
III
Whether we look at a little book-end bear in bronze, or at a heroic
equestrian statue in bronze and stone, or at a colossal monument in
granite or marble, the importance of fine craftsmanship is evident. The
artist is the last person in the world who can afford to underrate the
craftsman.
Not long ago in reading an essay on literary criticism, I was
confronted with this impressive query: What has the navel done for
modern life? Of course modern literature in its desire to be impressive
asks many curious questions of the reader, but this one about the
navel seemed unduly wide of the mark. I was disturbed until I suddenly
perceived that the printer had used an _a_ for an _o_; the luckless
author had meant to ask about the novel, not the navel. But the artist
in words suffers less often at the hands of his helping craftsman than
does the artist in paint or clay. The sculptor in particular runs grave
risks. Even the forces of nature conspire against him; the fair-faced
marble hypocritically hides her blemishes until weeks of carving lay
them bare. Even chemistry betrays him; the bronze that should be
perfect everywhere has perhaps a spongy place or a “tin spot” or a
treacherous seam just where it does the greatest possible damage to his
statue.
One of the advantages of the ancient apprentice system was that the
beginner in art could learn all the tricks, and not only the tricks but
the very serious difficulties of the various trades that help to bring
the artist’s work to completion. Our American sculpture, which after
all began timidly enough as a kind of craftsmanship, has at certain
periods of its immaturity forgotten the importance and dignity of the
crafts on which it depends for a fair presentation. Bronze casting
has indeed advanced greatly through the fact that modern sculpture has
become largely an expression in clay, to be made permanent in bronze;
sculptors have demanded good casting, and they have obtained it. In
general, the sculptors of the world are no longer masters who release
from stone, either hard or soft, the image circumscribed within. To
reach their results, they do not as a rule start from the assumption of
Michelangelo, as Symonds translates it:
The best of artists hath no thought to show
Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
Doth not include:
They look on their work as a building-up in clay, rather than as a
cutting-down in stone. Well, why not? If the word _plastic_ keeps
its old meaning of something _shaped_, and _glyptic_ its meaning of
something _carved_, surely the sculptor may without reproach choose his
approach; always provided that this approach is the one best suited to
the matter in hand.
But even here, changes are already visible. On both sides of the
Atlantic a few sculptors are harking back to the fine old Gothic
tradition which animated Michelangelo, that spirit who was at once a
late fruit of the Gothic and a great flowering of the Renaissance.
Perhaps we owe to Rodin this modern return from plastic to glyptic? At
any rate, the movement is but lightly sketched, except as seen in some
of the enormous monuments of Middle Europe, and in particular in the
powerful works of the Serbian Mestrovic, as well as in those of recent
insurgent followers of Rodin. An odd fact is, that some of these last,
in seeking the titanic, have attained the Teutonic, especially when
their theory of deformation has betrayed them. And, of course, any new
style, vital or not, will breed new errors.
Criticism has had of late a tendency to scold sculptors for not seeing
things as Michelangelo did, or as the artist of “Le Beau Sourire
de Reims” did. It is perhaps surprising that the eloquent mediæval
craftsmanship suitable for Caen stone or limestone, and beautiful in
its place, has not attracted a larger interest and a wider experiment
among us. However, Miss Hoffman has just completed an important and
unusual War Memorial in Caen stone. Mr. MacMonnies’s great Washington
monument at Princeton is of limestone, most thoughtfully carved,
and not at all in the impetuous new manner; it may prove to be a
forerunner of other ambitious enterprises in this material. But ours
is an unkind climate. The sculptured forms of Italy and France have
not had to endure the extreme changes of heat and cold well-known
here. We have interesting varieties of marble and granite, and have
made but a beginning in the exploration of their possibilities as
adapted to our weather. A very beautiful tradition in marble-cutting
has been built up in our country by the Piccirilli family, six brothers
among whom are distinguished sculptors and distinguished craftsmen.
Their output, which includes both their own original works and their
faithful renderings in stone of the works of other sculptors, is known
throughout the country, and has inspired good craftsmanship.
Thus in the major crafts of bronze casting and of marble-cutting,
American sculpture is fairly fortunate today. In the one, we have come
a long way from that first attempt in 1847; in the other, we have
craftsmen who for large work to be seen at a distance can sufficiently
well translate into stone the sculptor’s finished models. We have
also for our salvation a few sculptors, who, like Chester Beach, are
peculiarly gifted in wresting from the marble, and with their own
hands, their own visions. But Mr. Beach is different again from most
of his contemporaries, in that he is successful in his command over
_all_ the final materials in which a sculptor’s work may be presented,
whether terra-cotta, stone, or bronze. With a modern and highly
interesting vision of beauty, and with an absolute understanding of
the principles of sculpture, this artist respects both the _art_ and
the _craft_ of sculpture. Sometimes it would seem that the finer the
artist, the finer his appreciation of craftsmanship.
Of course if one were to judge by the pictures in the Sunday
supplements, all sculptors carve their marbles themselves; they seem
to do little else. That is not true, alas. Certainly a busy sculptor
may well save himself for other matters besides roughing-out a block
of marble. But a serious sculptor will generally wish to give the
finishing strokes, few or many, a matter of weeks or of months, to
any marble work that leaves his hands. In modern stone-cutting, the
pneumatic tool is indeed a miracle-worker; and for that very reason,
it bears constant watching from the sculptor whose work it translates.
Mr. John Kirchmayer, an artist in the field of wood-carving, has
described in a recent article the mischief wrought for this art by too
great a dependence on the machine, a dependence that atrophies the
native genius of the craftsman. His counsel is the same that all arts
and crafts must follow: Use the machine but do not abuse it. When the
cheapening of production means the debasing of the product, it is time
for art and the machine to part company.