with much care, being only architectural sculptures. This is quite a
modern idea. The Greeks did not entertain it, as is proved by those
gems which Lord Elgin sawed away from the walls of the Parthenon. I
cannot admit that a noble art should ever be prostituted to purposes
of mere show. They do not make rough columns, coarse and uneven
friezes, jagged mouldings, etc., for buildings. These are always
highly finished. Are figures in marble less important? But speed,
speed, is the order of the day,--'quick and cheap' is the cry; and
if I prefer to linger behind and take pains with the little I do,
there are some now, and there will be more hereafter, to approve it.
I cannot consent to model statues at the rate of three in six months,
and a clear conscience will reward me for not having yielded to the
temptation of making money at the sacrifice of my artistic reputation.
Art is, or should be, poetry, in its various forms,--no matter what
it is written upon,--parchment, paper, canvas, or marble. Milton
employed his daughter to write his 'Paradise Lost,' not to compose it;
her hand was moved by his soul; she was his modelling-tool,--nothing
more. But to employ another to model for you, and go away from him,
is not analogous. He then composes for you; modelling is composition.
And whom did Shakspeare get to do this for him? Whom did Gray employ
to arrange in words that immortal wreath set with diamond thoughts
which he has thrown upon a country churchyard? Whom did Michel
Angelo get to model his Moses? How many young men did Ghiberti employ
during the forty years he was engaged upon the Gates of Paradise? I
cannot yield my convictions of what is proper in Art. I will do my
work as well as I know how, and necessity compels me to demand ample
payment for it."
We have sometimes wondered that some aesthetic philosopher has not
analyzed the vital relation of the arts to each other and given a
popular exposition of their mutual dependence. Drawing from the
antique has long been an acknowledged initiation for the limner, and
Campbell, in his terse description of the histrionic art, says that
therein "verse ceases to be airy thought, and sculpture to be dumb."
How much of their peculiar effects did Talma, Kemble, and Rachel owe
to the attitudes, gestures, and drapery of the Grecian statues! Kean
adopted the "dying fall" of General Abercrombie's figure in St.
Paul's as the model of his own. Some of the memorable scenes and
votaries of the drama are directly associated with the sculptor's art,--
as, for instance, the last act of "Don Giovanni," wherein the
expressive music of Mozart breathes a pleasing terror in connection
with the spectral nod of the marble horseman; and Shakspeare has
availed himself of this art, with beautiful wisdom, in that melting
scene where remorseful love pleads with the motionless heroine of the
"Winter's Tale,"--
"Her natural posture!
Chide me, dear stone, that I may say, indeed,
Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she
In thy not chiding: for she was as tender
As infancy and grace."
Garrick imitated to the life, in "Abel Drugger," a vacant stare
peculiar to Nollekens, the sculptor; and Colley Cibber's father was
a devotee of the chisel and adorned Chatsworth with free-stone
Sea-Nymphs.
Crawford's interest in portrait-busts was secondary, owing to his
inventive ardor; the study he bestowed upon the lineaments of
Washington, however, gave a zest and a special insight to his
endeavor to represent his head in marble, and, accordingly, this
specimen of his ability, which arrived in this country after his
decease, is remarkable for its expressive, original, and finished
character. For ourselves, in view of the great historical value,
comparative authenticity, and possible significance and beauty of
this department of sculpture, it has a peculiar interest and charm.
The most distinct idea we have of the Roman emperors, even in regard
to their individual characters, is derived from their busts at the
Vatican and elsewhere. The benignity of Trajan, the animal
development of Nero, and the classic rigor of young Augustus are
best apprehended through these memorable effigies which Time has
spared and Art transmitted. And a similar permanence and
distinctness of impression associate most of our illustrious moderns
with their sculptured features: the ironical grimace of Voltaire is
perpetuated by Houdon's bust; the sympathetic intellectuality of
Schiller by Dannecker's; Handel's countenance is familiar through
the elaborate chisel of Roubillac; Nollekens moulded Sterne's
delicate and unimpassioned but keen physiognomy, and Chantrey the
lofty cranium of Scott. Who has not blessed the rude but
conscientious artist who carved the head of Shakspeare preserved at
Stratford? How quaintly appropriate to the old house in Nuremberg is
Albert Dürer's bust over the door! Our best knowledge of Alexander
Hamilton's aspect is obtained from the expressive marble head of him
by that ardent republican sculptor, Ceracchi. It was appropriate for
Mrs. Darner, the daughter of a gallant field-marshal, to portray in
marble, as heroic idols, Fox, Nelson, and Napoleon. We were never
more convinced of the intrinsic grace and solemnity of this form of
"counterfeit presentment" than when exploring the Bacioechi _palazzo_
at Bologna. In the centre of a circular room, lighted from above,
and draped as well as carpeted with purple, stood on a simple
pedestal the bust of Napoleon's sister, thus enshrined after death
by her husband. The profound stillness, the relief of this isolated
head against a mass of dark tints, and its consequent emphatic
individuality, made the sequestered chamber seem a holy place, where
communion with the departed, so spiritually represented by the
exquisite image, appeared not only natural, but inevitable. Our
countryman, Powers, has eminently illustrated the possible
excellence of this branch of Art. In mathematical correctness of
detail, unrivalled finish of texture, and with these, in many cases,
the highest characterization, busts from his hand have an absolute
artistic value, independent of likeness, like a portrait by Vandyck
or Titian. When the subject is favorable, his achievements in this
regard are memorable, and fill the eye and mind with ideas of beauty
and meaning undreamed of by those who consider marble portraits as
wholly imitative and mechanical. Was there ever a human face which
so completely reflected inward experience and individual genius as
the bust which haunts us throughout Italy, broods over the monument
in Santa Croce, gazes pensively from library niche, seems to awe the
more radiant images of boudoir and gallery, and sternly looks
melancholy reproach from the Ravenna tomb?
"The lips, as Cumae's cavern close,
The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin,
The rigid front, almost morose,
But for the patient hope within,
Declare a life whose course hath been
Unsullied still, though still severe,
Which, through the wavering days of sin,
Kept itself icy chaste and clear."
National characters become, as it were, household gods through the
sculptor's portrait; the duplicates of Canova's head of Napoleon
seem as appropriate in the _salons_ and shops of France, as the
heads of Washington and Franklin in America, or the antique images
of Scipio Africanus and Ceres in Sicily, and Wellington and Byron in
London.
There is no phase of modern life so legitimate in its enjoyment and
so pleasing to contemplate as the life of the true artist. Endowed
with a faculty and inspired by a love for creative beauty, work is
to him at once a high vocation and a generous instinct. Imagine the
peace and the progress of those years at Rome when Crawford toiled
day after day in his studio,--at first without encouragement and for
bread, then in a more confident spirit and with some definite triumph,
and at last crowned with domestic happiness and artistic renown,--his
mind filled with ideal tasks more and more grand in their scope, and
the coming years devoted in prospect to the realization of his
noblest aspirations. From early morning to twilight, with rare and
brief interruptions, he thus designed, modelled, chiselled,
superintended, every day adding something permanent to his trophies.
This self-consecration was entire, and in his view indispensable. Few
and simple were the recreative interludes: a reunion of
brother-artists or fellow-countrymen and their families,--an
occasional journey, almost invariably with a professional intent,--a
summer holiday or a winter festival; but, methodical in pastime as
in work, his family and his books were his cherished resources.
Often so weary at night that he returned home only to recline on a
couch, caress his children, or refresh his mind with some agreeable
volume provided by his vigilant companion,--the best energies of his
mind and the freshest hours of life were absolutely given to Art.
This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or
dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much;
but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of
character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human
experience, than true artist-life. Rome is the shrine of many a
dreamer, the haunt of countless inefficient enthusiasts. But there,
as elsewhere, will must intensify thought, action control imagination,
or both are fruitless. Those melancholy ruins, those grand temples
of religion, the immortal forms and hues that glorify palace and
chapel, square, mausoleum, and Vatican, the dreamy murmur of
fountains, the aroma of violets and pine-trees, the pensive relics
of imperial sway, the sublime desolation of the Campagna, the mystery
of Nature and Art, when both are hallowed by time, the social zest
of an original brotherhood like the artists, the freedom and
loveliness, the ravishment of spring and the soft radiance of sunset,
all that there captivates soul and sense, must be resisted as well
as enjoyed;--self-control, self-respect, self-dedication are as
needful as susceptibility, or these peerless local charms will only
enchant to betray the artist. Crawford carried to Rome the ardor of
an Irish temperament and the vigor of an American character.
Hundreds have passed through a like ordeal of privation, ungenial
because conventional work, and slow approach to the goal of
recognized power and remunerated sacrifice; but few have emerged
from the shadow to the sunshine, by such manly steps and patient,
cheerful trust. It was not the voice of complaint that first
attracted towards him intelligent sympathy,--it was brave achievement;
and from the day when a remittance from Boston enabled him to put
his Orpheus in marble, to the day when, attended by his devoted
sister, he paid the last visit to his crowded studio, and looked,
with quivering eyelids, but firm heart, on the silent but eloquent
offspring of his brain and hand, the Artist in him was coincident
with the Man,--clear, unswerving, productive, the sphere extending,
the significance multiplying, and the mastery becoming more and more
complete through resolute practice, vivid intuition, and candid
search for truth.
In the fifteenth century, and earlier, the lives of artists were
adventurous; political relations gave scope to incident; and Michel
Angelo, Salvator Rosa, and Benvenuto Cellini furnish almost as many
anecdotes as memorials of genius. In modern times, however,
vicissitude has chiefly diversified the uniform and tranquil
existence of the artist; his struggles with fortune, and not his
relations to public events, have given external interest to his
biography. It is the mental rather than the outward life which is
fraught with significance to the painter and sculptor; consciousness
more than experience affords salient points in his career. How the
executive are trained to embody the creative powers, through what
struggles dexterity is attained, and by what reflection and earnest
musing and observant patience and blest intuitions original
achievements glimmer upon the fancy, grow mature by thought, correct
through the study of Nature, and are finally realized in action,--
these and such as these inward revelations constitute the actual
life of the artist. The mere events of Crawford's existence are
neither marvellous nor varied; his early love of imitative pastime,
his fixed purpose, his resort to stone-cutting as the nearest
available expedient for the gratification of that instinct to copy
and create form which so decidedly marks an aptitude for sculpture,
his visit to Rome, the self-denial and the lonely toil of his
novitiate, his rapid advancement in both knowledge and skill, and
his gradual recognition as a man of original mind and wise
enthusiasm are but the normal characteristics of his fraternity.
Circumstances, however, give a singular prominence and pathos to
these usual facts of artist-life. When Crawford began his
professional career, sculpture, as an American pursuit, was almost
as rare as painting at the time of West's advent in Rome; to excel
therein was a national distinction, having a freshness and personal
interest such as the votaries of older countries did not share; as
the American representative of his art at Rome, even in the eyes of
his comrades, and especially in the estimation of his countrymen, he
long occupied an isolated position. The qualities of the man,--his
patient industry,--the new and unexpected superiority in different
branches of his art, so constantly exhibited,--the loyal, generous,
and frank spirit of his domestic and social life,--the freedom, the
faith, and the assiduity that endeared him to so large and
distinguished a circle, were individual claims often noted by
foreigners and natives in the Eternal City as honorable to his
country. It was remembered there, when he died, that the hand now
cold had warmly grasped in welcome his compatriots, shouldered a
musket as one of the republican guard, and been extended with
sympathy and aid to his less prosperous brothers. At the meeting of
fellow-artists, convened to pay a tribute to his memory, every
nation of Europe was represented, and the most illustrious of living
English sculptors was the first to propose a substantial memorial to
his name. What his nativity and his character thus so eminently
contributed to signalize, the offspring of his genius, the manner of
his death, solemnly confirmed. By no sudden fever, such as
insidiously steals from the Roman marshes and poisons the blood of
its victims,--by no violent epidemic, like those which have again
and again devastated the cities of Europe,--by no illusive decline,
whereby vital power is sapped unconsciously and with mild gradations,
and which, in that soft clime, has peopled with the dust of
strangers the cemetery which the pyramid of Cestius overshadows and
the heart of Shelley consecrates,--by none of these familiar gates
of death did Crawford pass on; but, in the meridian of his powers
and his fame, in the climax of his artistic career, in the noontide
of his most genial activity, a corrosive tumor on the inner side of
the orbit of the eye encroached month by month, week by week, hour
by hour, upon the sources of life. Medical skill freed the brain
from its deadly pressure, but could not divert its organic affinity.
The mind's integrity was thus preserved intact; consciousness and
self-possession lent their dignity to waning strength; but the alert
muscles were relaxed; the busy hands folded in prayer; what Michel
Angelo uttered in his eighty-sixth Crawford was called upon to echo
in his forty-fifth year:--
"Wellnigh the voyage now is overpast,
And my frail bark, through troubled seas and rude,
Draws nigh that common haven where at last,
Of every action, be it evil or good,
Must due account be rendered. Well I know
How vain will then appear that favored art,
Sole idol long, and monarch of my heart;
For all is vain that man desires below."
The cheerful voice was often hushed by pain; but conjugal and
sisterly love kept vigil, a long, a bitter year, by that couch of
suffering in the heart of multitudinous Paris and London; hundreds
of sympathizing friends, in both hemispheres, listened and prayed
and hoped through a dreary twelvemonth. With the ripe autumn closed
the quiet struggle; and "in the bleak December" the mortal remains
were followed from the temple where his youth worshipped, to the
snow-clad knoll at Greenwood; garlands and tears, the ritual and the
requiem, eulogy and elegy, consecrated the final scene. By a singular
coincidence, the news of his decease reached the United States
simultaneously with the arrival of the ship in James River with the
colossal bronze statue of Washington, his crowning achievement.
One would imagine, from the eagerness and intensity exhibited by
Crawford, that he anticipated a brief career. Work seemed as
essential to his comfort as rest is to less determined natures. He
was a thorough believer in the moral necessity of absolute
allegiance to his sphere; and differed from his brother-artists
chiefly in the decisive manner in which he kept aloof from extrinsic
and incidental influences. If Art ever made labor delectable, it was
so with him. He seemed to go through with the ordinary processes of
life with but a half consciousness thereof,--save where his personal
affections were concerned. One of the first works for which he
expressed a sympathetic admiration was Thorwaldsen's "Triumph of
Alexander,"--one of the most elaborate and suggestive of modern
friezes. He early contemplated an entire series of illustrations of
Ovid. He alternated, with infinite relish, between the extreme phases
of his art,--a delicate Peri and a majestic Colossus, an extensive
array of basso rilievo figures, a sublime ideal of manhood and an
exquisite image of infancy. His alacrity of temper was co-equal with
his steadiness of purpose; and the cheerfulness of an active mind,
sanguine temperament, and great nervous energy did not abandon him,
even in the state of forced passivity so intolerable to such habitude;
for hilarious words and, once or twice, the old ringing laugh
startled the fond watchers of his declining hours. The events of his
life are but a few expressive outlines; his works embody his most
real experience; and the thoughts and feelings, the observation and
the sentiment, not therein moulded or sketched, happily found
adequate record in the ample and ingenuous letters he wrote to his
beloved sister, from the time of his first arrival in Europe to that
of his last arrival in America,--embracing a period of twenty-two
years. Each work he conceived and executed, each process of study,
the impressions he gained and the convictions at which he arrived in
relation to ancient and modern art,--each journey, achievement, plan,
opinion,--what he saw, and imagined, and hoped, and did,--was
frankly and fondly noted; and the time may come when these epistles,
inspired by love and dictated by intelligent sympathy and insight,
will be compiled into a priceless memorial of artist-life.
ASIRVADAM THE BRAHMIN.
Who put together the machinery of the great Indian revolt, and set
it going? Who stirred up the sleeping tiger in the Sepoy's heart,
and struck Christendom aghast with the dire devilries of Meerut and
Cawnpore?
Asirvadam the Brahmin!
Asirvadam is nimble with mace or cue; at the billiard-table, it is
hinted, he can distinguish a kiss from a carom; at the sideboard
(and here, if I were Mr. Charles Reade, I would whisper, in small
type) he confounds not cocktails with cobblers; when, being in trade,
he would sell you saltpetre, he tries you with flax-seed; when he
would buy indigo, he offers you indigo at a sacrifice. Yet, in
Asirvadam, if any quality is more noticeable than the sleek
respectability of the Baboo, it is the jealous orthodoxy of the
Brahmin. If he knows in what presence to step out of his slippers,
and when to pick them up again with his toes, in jaunty dandyisms of
etiquette, he also makes the most of his insolent order and its
patent of privilege, and wears the rue of his triple cord with a
demure and dignified difference. High, low, or jack, it is always
"the game" with him; and the game is--Asirvadam the Brahmin,--free
tricks and Brahmins' rights,--Asirvadam for his caste, and
everything for Asirvadam.
The natural history of our astute and accomplished friend is worth a
page or two. And first, as to his color. Asirvadam comes from the
northern provinces, and calls the snow-turbaned Himalayas cousin;
consequently his complexion is the brightest among Brahmins. By some
who are uninitiated in the chemical mysteries of our metropolitan
milk-trade, it has been likened to chocolate and cream, with plenty
of cream; but the comparison depends, for the idea it conveys, so
much on the taste of the ethnological inquirer, as to the proportion
of cream, and still so much more, as in the case of Mr. Weller's
weal pies, on the reputation of "the lady as makes it," that it will
hardly serve the requirements of a severe scientific statement.
Copper-color has an excess of red, and sepia is too brown; the tarry
tawniness of an old boatswain's hand is nearer the mark, but even
that is less among man-of-war's men than in the merchant-service,
and is least in the revenue marine; it varies, also, with the habits
of the individual, and the nature of his employment for the time
being. The flipper of your legitimate shiver-my-timbery old salt,
whose most amiable office is piping all hands to witness punishment,
has long since acquired the hue of a seven-years' meerschaum; while
the dandy cockswain of a forty-gun frigate lying off the navy-yard,
who brings the third cutter ship-shapely alongside with a pretty
girl in the stern-sheets, lends her--the pretty girl--a hand at the
gangway, that has been softened by fastidious applications of
solvent slush to the tint of a long envelope "on public service."
"Law sheep," when we come to the binding of books, is too sallow for
this simile; a little volume of "Familiar Quotations," in limp calf,
(Bartlett, Cambridge, 1855,) might answer,--if the cover of the
January number of the "Atlantic Monthly" were not exactly the thing.
Simplicity, convenience, decorum, and picturesqueness distinguish
the costume of Asirvadam the Brahmin. Three yards of yard-wide fine
cotton cloth envelope his loins, in such a manner, that, while one
end hangs in graceful folds in front, the other falls in a fine
distraction behind. Over this, a robe of muslin, or silk, or piña
cloth--the latter in peculiar favor, by reason of its superior purity,
for high-caste wear--covers his neck, breast, and arms, and descends
nearly to his ankles. Asirvadam borrowed this garment from the
Mussulman; but he fastens it on the left side, which the follower of
the Prophet never does, and surmounts it with an ample and elegant
waistband, beside the broad Romanesque mantle that he tosses over
his shoulder with such a senatorial air. His turban, also, is an
innovation,--not proper to the Brahmin,--pure and simple, but, like
the robe, adopted from the Moorish wardrobe, for a more imposing
appearance in Sahib society. It is formed of a very narrow strip,
fifteen or twenty yards long, of fine stuff, moulded to the orthodox
shape and size by wrapping it, while wet, on a wooden block; having
been hardened in the sun, it is worn like a hat. As for his feet,
Asirvadam, uncompromising in externals, disdains to pollute them
with the touch of leather. Shameless fellows, Brahmins though they be,
of the sect of Vishnu, go about, without a blush, in thonged sandals,
made of abominable skins; but Asirvadam, strict as a Gooroo when the
eyes of his caste are on him, is immaculate in wooden clogs.
In ornaments, his taste, though somewhat grotesque, is by no means
lavish. A sort of stud or button, composed of a solitary ruby, in
the upper rim of the cartilage of either ear,--a chain of gold,
curiously wrought, and intertwined with a string of small pearls,
around his neck,--a massive bangle of plain gold on his arm,--a
richly jewelled ring on his thumb, and others, broad and shield-like,
on his toes,--complete his outfit in these vanities.