It seems to me that a candid person will wish to pause a little
before condemning Gibson's colored statues. They have been grossly
misrepresented. They do not impress one at all as wax-work, and there
is great wrong in saying that their tinted nakedness suggests impurity
any more than the white nakedness of other statues. The coloring
is quite conventional; the flesh is merely warmed with the hue
representing life; the hair is always a very delicate yellow, the eyes
a tender violet, and there is no other particularization of color; a
fillet binding the hair may be gilded,--the hem of a robe traced
in blue. I, who had just come from seeing the fragments of antique
statuary in Naples Museum, tinted in the same way, could not feel
that there was any thing preposterous in Gibson's works, and I am not
ashamed to say that they gave me pleasure.
As we passed, in his studio, from one room to another, the workman who
showed the marbles surprised and delighted us by asking if we would
like to see the sculptor, and took us up into the little room where
Gibson worked. He was engaged upon a bass-relief,--a visit of Psyche
to the Zephyrs, or something equally aërial and mythological,--and
received us very simply and naturally, and at once began with some
quaint talk about the subject in hand. When we mentioned our pleasure
in his colored marbles we touched the right spring, and he went on to
speak of his favorite theory with visible delight, making occasional
pauses to bestow a touch on the bass-relief, and coming back to his
theme with that self-corroborative "Yes!" of his, which Hawthorne
has immortalized. He was dressed with extraordinary slovenliness and
indifference to clothes, had no collar, I think, and evidently did
not know what he had on. Every thing about him bespoke the utmost
unconsciousness and democratic plainness of life, so that I could
readily believe a story I heard of him. Having dined the greater part
of his life in Roman restaurants where it is but wholesome to go over
your plate, glass, spoon, and knife and fork with your napkin before
using them, the great sculptor had acquired such habits of
neatness that at table in the most aristocratic house in England
he absent-mindedly went through all that ceremony of cleansing
and wiping. It is a story they tell in Rome, where every body is
anecdoted, and not always so good-naturedly.