The French sculptor may draw his inspiration from the sources of
originality itself, his audience will measure the result by conventions.
It is this fact undoubtedly that is largely responsible for the
over-carefulness for style already remarked. Hence the work of M.
Aimé-Millet and of Professors Guillaume and Cavelier, and the fact that
they are professors. Hence also the election of M. Falguière to succeed
to the chair of the Beaux-Arts left vacant by the death of Jouffroy some
years ago. All of these have done admirable work. Professor Guillaume's
Gracchi group at the Luxembourg is alone enough to atone for a mass of
productions of which the "Castalian Fount" of a recent Salon is the
cold and correct representative. Cavalier's "Gluck," destined for the
Opéra, is spirited, even if a trifle galvanic. Millet's "Apollo," which
crowns the main gable of the Opéra, stands out among its author's other
works as a miracle of grace and rhythmic movement. M. Falguière's
admirers, and they are numerous, will object to the association here
made. Falguière's range has always been a wide one, and everything he
has done has undoubtedly merited a generous portion of the prodigious
encomiums it has invariably obtained. Yet, estimating it in any other
way than by energy, variety, and mass, it is impossible to praise it
highly with precision. It is too plainly the work of an artist who can
do one thing as well as another, and of which cleverness is, after all,
the spiritual standard. Bartholdi, who also should not be forgotten in
any sketch of French sculpture, would, I am sure, have acquitted himself
more satisfactorily than Falguière did in the colossal groups of the
Trocadéro and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. To acquit himself
satisfactorily is Bartholdi's specialty. These two groups are the
largest and most important that a sculptor can have to do. The crowning
of the Arc de Triomphe at least was a splendid opportunity. Neither of
them had any distinction of outline, of mass, of relation, or of idea.
Both were conventional to the last degree. That on the Arc had even its
ludicrous details, such as occur only from artistic absent-mindedness in
a work conceived and executed in a fatigued and hackneyed spirit. The
"Saint Vincent de Paul" of the Panthéon, which justly passes for the
sculptor's _chef-d'oeuvre_ is in idea a work of large humanity. M.
Falguière is behind no one in ability to conceive a subject of this kind
with propriety, and his subject here is inspiring if ever a subject was.
The "Petit Martyr" of the Luxembourg has a real charm, but it too is
content with too little, as one finds out in seeing it often; and it is
in no sense a large work, scarcely larger than the tiresomely popular
"Running Boy" of the same museum, which nevertheless in its day marked
an epoch in modelling. Indeed, so slight is the spiritual hold that M.
Falguière has on one, that it really seems as if he were at his best in
such a frankly carnal production as his since variously modified "Nymph
Hunting" of the Triennial Exposition of 1883. The idea is nothing or
next to nothing, but the surface _faire_ is superb.
M. Barrias, M. Delaplanche, and M. Le Feuvre have each of them quite as
much spontaneity as M. Falguière, though the work of neither is as
important in mass and variety. M. Delaplanche is always satisfactory,
and beyond this there is something large about what he does that confers
dignity even in the absence of quick interest. His proportions are
simple, his outline flowing, and the agreeable ease of his compositions
makes up to a degree for any lack of sympathetic sentiment or impressive
significance: witness his excellent "Maternal Instruction," of the
little park in front of Sainte Clothilde. M. Le Feuvre's qualities are
very nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quite
hostile in his case to simplicity. In his very frank appeal to one's
susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations,
which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends. The result is a
mannerism that in the end ceases to impress, and even becomes
disagreeable. As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders on
sentimentality, and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures become
limp, and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear less
touching than lackadaisical. But his being himself too conscious of it
should not obscure the fact that he has a way of his own. M. Barrias is
an artist of considerably greater powers than either M. Le Feuvre or M.
Delaplanche; but one has a vague perception that his powers are limited,
and that to desire in his case what one so sincerely wishes in the case
of M. Dubois, namely, that he would "let himself go," would be unwise.
Happily, when he is at his best there is no temptation to form such a
wish. The "Premières Funérailles" is a superb work--"the chef-d'oeuvre
of our modern sculpture," a French critic enthusiastically terms it. It
is hardly that; it has hardly enough spiritual distinction--not quite
enough of either elegance or elevation--to merit such sweeping praise.
But it may be justly termed, I think, the most completely representative
of the masterpieces of that sculpture. Its triumph over the prodigious
difficulties of elaborate composition "in the round"--difficulties to
which M. Barrias succumbed in the "Spartacus" of the Tuileries
Gardens--and its success in subordinating the details of a group to the
end of enforcing a single motive, preserving the while their individual
interest, are complete. Nothing superior in this respect has been done
since John of Bologna's "Rape of the Sabines."