M. Paul Dubois, for example, in the characteristics just alluded to,
presents the greatest possible contrast to Chapu; but he will never, we
may be sure, give us a work that could be called insignificant. His
work will always express himself, and his is a personality of very
positive idiosyncrasy. M. Dubois, indeed, is probably the strongest of
the Academic group of French sculptors of the day. The tomb of General
Lamoricière at Nantes has remained until recently one of the very finest
achievements of sculpture in modern times. There is in effect nothing
markedly superior in the Cathedral of St. Denis, which is a great deal
to say--much more, indeed, than the glories of the Italian Renaissance,
which lead us out of mere momentum to forget the French, permit one to
appreciate. Indeed, the sculpture of M. Dubois seems positively to have
but one defect, a defect which from one point of view is certainly a
quality, the defect of impeccability. It is at any rate impeccable; to
seek in it a blemish, or, within its own limitations, a distinct
shortcoming, is to lose one's pains. As workmanship, and workmanship of
the subtler kind, in which every detail of surface and structure is
perceived to have been intelligently felt (though rarely
enthusiastically rendered), it is not merely satisfactory, but visibly
and beautifully perfect. But in the category in which M. Dubois is to be
placed that is very little; it is always delightful, but it is not
especially complimentary to M. Dubois, to occupy one's self with it. On
the other hand, by impeccability is certainly not here meant the mere
success of expressing what one has to express--the impeccability of
Canova and his successors, for example. The difficulty is with M.
Dubois's ideal, with what he so perfectly expresses. In the last
analysis this is not his ideal more than ours. And this, indeed, is what
makes his work so flawless in our eyes, so impeccable. It seems as if of
what he attempts he attains the type itself; everyone must recognize its
justness.
The reader will say at once here that I am cavilling at M. Dubois for
what I praised in Chapu. But let us distinguish. The two artists belong
to wholly different categories. Chapu's inspiration is the antique
spirit. M. Dubois, is, like all academic French sculptors, except Chapu
indeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured of
the Renaissance. The two are so distinct as to be contradictory. The
moment M. Dubois gives us the _type_ in a "Florentine Minstrel," to the
exclusion of the personal and the particular, he fails in
imaginativeness and falls back on the conventional. The _type_ of a
"Florentine Minstrel" is infallibly a convention. M. Dubois, not being
occupied directly with the ideal, is bound to carry his subject and its
idiosyncrasies much farther than the observer could have foreseen. To
rest content with expressing gracefully and powerfully the notion common
to all connoisseurs is to fall short of what one justly exacts of the
romantic artist. Indeed, in exchange for this one would accept very
faulty work in this category with resignation. Whatever we may say or
think, however we may admire or approve, in romantic art the quality
that charms, that fascinates, is not adequacy but unexpectedness. In
addition to the understanding, the instinct demands satisfaction. The
virtues of "Charity" and "Faith" and the ideas of "Military Courage" and
"Meditation" could not be more adequately illustrated than by the
figures which guard the solemn dignity of General Lamoricière's sleep.
There is a certain force, a breadth of view in the general conception,
something in the way in which the sculptor has taken his task, closely
allied to real grandeur. The confident and even careless dependence upon
the unaided value of its motive, making hardly any appeal to the fancy
on the one hand, and seeking no poignant effect on the other, endues the
work with the poise and purity of effortless strength. It conveys to the
mind a clear impression of manliness, of qualities morally refreshing.
But such work educates us so inexorably, teaches us to be so exacting!
After enjoying it to its and our utmost, we demand still something else,
something more moving, more stirring, something more directly appealing
to our impulse and instinct. Even in his free and charming little "St.
John Baptist" of the Luxembourg, and his admirable bust of Baudry one
feels like asking for more freedom still, for more "swing." Dubois
certainly is the last artist who needs to be on his guard against
"letting himself go." Why is it that in varying so agreeably Renaissance
themes--compare the "Military Courage" and Michael Angelo's "Pensiero,"
or the "Charity" and the same group in Della Quercia's fountain at
Sienna--it is restraint, rather than audacity, that governs him? Is it
caution or perversity? In a word, imaginativeness is what permanently
interests and attaches, the imaginativeness to which in sculpture the
ordinary conventions of form are mere conditions, and the ordinary
conventions of idea mere material. One can hardly apply generalities of
the kind to M. Dubois without saying too much, but it is nevertheless
true that one may illustrate the grand style and yet fail of being
intimately and acutely sympathetic; and M. Dubois, to whose largeness of
treatment and nobility of conception no one will deny something truly
suggestive of the grand style, does thus fail. It is not that he does
not possess charm, and charm in no mean proportion to his largeness and
nobility, but for the elevation of these into the realm of magic, into
the upper air of spontaneous spiritual activity, his imagination has,
for the romantic imagination which it is, a trifle too much
self-possession--too much sanity, if one chooses. He has the ambitions,
the faculties, of a lyric poet, and he gives us too frequently
recitative.