typical character. Our cities and parks are peopled in bronze, not as
much as possible to their embellishment. By all means hand down the
effigies of great and worthy men; but why not with more regard for the
really salient thing, the head, introduced as bust or bas-relief, and
with less for the frock coat and trousers, the cut of which can be taken
on trust or, better still, forgotten? Instead of demanding such prosaic
record, how much better it would be to call upon the sculptor to create
out of his imagination some subject that may represent or symbolise the
greatness of the hero and appeal to the imagination of succeeding
generations, meanwhile gladdening all who pass and repass it daily with
its essential beauties. Have you not seen a trousered, frock-coated
statue against the pedestal of which are a row of seats and sitters with
their back to the man that is to be remembered? Substitute, however, for
example, a fountain to his memory; and in parched summer weather, at
least, all eyes would be turned toward its refreshment, and possibly
some hearts reminded of the man in whose honour it was placed; who, if
he were fit to be remembered, must have brought in his lifetime some
refreshment and stimulus of suggestion to his fellowmen. So with our
battalions of generals, mounted and unmounted, scattered over the
country. Great men they were, but there was greatness also in the
volunteers of the rank and file; and I for one shall continue to find
more incentive to enthusiasm in the recognition of this in the Shaw
Memorial than in dozens of solitary individuals. Once more, it is
imagination in which we are wont to be lacking; and the best that is in
our artists is seldom called forth because of our insistence upon the
obvious and trite.
“The Driller,” therefore, was an unusual opportunity for Niehaus, of
which he has made characteristic use. That is to say, the realism of the
figure as it kneels with hammer uplifted to drive the drill into the
ground, is admirably true, while the figure has a classic dignity of
composition; and its expression of control, as well as of the putting
forth of force, brings it within the domain of ideal beauty. In some
groups which were among the ephemeral sculpture of the Pan-American
Exposition he also freely introduced the nude, in a number of figures
symbolising various kinds of industry. Individually they were
excellent, but the combined effect was unfortunate. The composition as a
whole lacked cohesion and dignity, representing little more than an
aggregation of figures, separately employed; so that one missed the
idealising touch and found their realism of the crudely, story-telling
kind.
And this last characteristic--I do not know whether it is a symptom of
German _genre_ feeling derived from Munich--reappears elsewhere in his
work. While his statues are strongly sculptural, his bas-reliefs betray
not only a very pictorial feeling, but that particular _genre_ phase of
it which is mainly occupied with enforcement of the facts. Not, however,
in his earliest work of the kind, the historical doors of Trinity
Church, New York, in which the representation of incidents was demanded.
These he represented very realistically, but with a regard for the
decorative charm of full and empty spaces and of receding planes of
distance. Compared with the pictorial _nuance_ displayed in these six
panels, the treatment of the four which embellish the Hahnemann monument
is very deficient in artistic imagination. They represent the founder of
homeopathy in a series of scenes which are baldly illustrative and seem
to have little interest of subject and still less of decorative value.
Yet they are affixed to a monument setting off a portrait-statue which
is Niehaus’s finest work, and equalled by few others in the country. The
expression of benign dignity in the head flows through the whole length
of the figure, which is disposed in lines that are as suave as they are
noble. From every point of view it has the grandeur of monumental
repose, softened, one might almost say humanised, by this exquisite
winding movement. Among modern portrait-statues I can remember few that
make so sweet and serious an impression. In the composition of this
figure one can trace unmistakably the effect of the sculptor’s close
study of the antique, not only in the suppleness of movement and
statuesqueness of pose, but also in the abstract appeal to one’s
esthetic enjoyment that the composition of the figure yields. Moreover,
this freedom, force and sensitiveness extend to the handling of the
drapery, in which every fold has a grace of naturalness and also a value
of expression. These qualities are again happily united in the sitting
statue of Lincoln at Muskegon, Michigan. While it is neither so forceful
nor so persuasive as the “Hahnemann,” it yet has a liberal measure of
graciousness and dignity and a finely monumental feeling.
In these statues and in some others, as in the Gibbon in the Library of
Congress and, though perhaps by more apparently contrived means, in the
standing statue of Stephen Girard, Niehaus obtains from the composition
of the single figure a degree of decorative effect which seems to fail
him in treating groups. Thus the pediment of the Appellate Court, New
York, while good in detail, is without much unity or harmonious feeling.
It is, indeed, in the portrayal of character--as in his fine,
straightforward rendering of Farragut, or in those striking busts of
Rabbi Gottheil and of Ward, the sculptor, and in the statues already
noticed, wherein the pose and drapery, besides contributing to the
character, yield an additional suggestion of monumental dignity--that he
is at his best.
IX
OLIN LEVI WARNER
In these days when we are trying to raise “artists,” as we do chickens,
by a process akin to incubation, we regard it as an anomaly if one
emerges to eminence from surroundings which, according to our system, do
not seem congenial. And people have expressed surprise that Warner, the
child of a New England Methodist minister, brought up in a community
which had no artistic inclinations, should have made up his mind to
become a sculptor before he had ever seen a statue. But the history of
art is full of such surprises; and the thoughts of youth are ever like
the wind, “which bloweth where it listeth; thou canst not tell whence it
cometh or whither it goeth.” The greater and more beautiful surprise is
that the boy had foundation of character on which to nourish the flowers
of his imagination, and that when in after years they were matured, it
was found that he had kept them so choicely select, that their fragrance
was not unlike that of the flowers which in old time bloomed on the
hills of Hellas. Something of the old Greek spirit had been revived in
this son of Connecticut: intellectual stability, moral balance and
spiritual serenity. Presently we shall consider how these qualities
became translated into terms of art in his work--into a feeling for
form, monumental rather than picturesque, a rhythmical and harmonious
reserve, a peculiar sensitiveness to the significance of the essential
facts in the design--but at the moment let us note how they affected his
early conduct.
By the time that he left school at the age of nineteen, the desire of
being a sculptor had so grown upon him as to press for a decision.
Accordingly he arranged for himself a test. He would attempt a bust of
his father, and thus determine once and for all the “to be or not to be”
of his ambition. So, in ignorance of the easier way by which sculptors
proceed, he bought some plaster of Paris, converted it into a block, and
set to work with a knife. His only notion of art was to produce a good
likeness, and in this he succeeded. The bust was exhibited and commended
at the State Fair, and Warner felt that his cherished wish was
justified. But the deliberation which had characterised the choice of a
profession was followed by an equal seriousness in determining the means
of attaining it. He could not have known that sculpture in America at
that time was in a poor way; he had, in fact, no acquaintance even with
the mediocre kinds of statue; but the old-fashioned, New England
conscience within him viewed the matter very earnestly. Already he felt
a reverence for the work to which he was to devote his life, and that
the best of preparations must be made. He would seek it in Paris. But he
had no funds nor could his father spare them, so he quietly laid aside
his longings and proceeded to earn the necessary money. Mastering the
trade of telegraph operator, he pursued it for six years, not, as may be
supposed, without some ultimate benefit to the facility and delicacy of
his manipulation. At length, with his savings of $1,500 he started for
Paris. This was in 1869, when he was twenty-five years of age.
Arriving in the great city without introduction, friends or knowledge of
the language, he made his way to the Louvre. Here were students busy
copying; fellows such as he meant to be, and he was drawn toward them,
wandering from easel to easel, until upon the woodwork of one he espied
a name, “Arthur Wilson.” He ventured to address the owner and tell him
of his quest, and was directed to a studio occupied by two young
sculptors, an American and an Englishman. With them he studied for nine
months, until, through the influence of United States Minister
Washburne, he was admitted to the École des Beaux Arts. Here he worked
in the studio of François Jouffroy, where he had the benefit of
associating with such artists as Falguière, an older pupil of the
master, and with Falguière’s pupil, Mercié, a man of his own age. Both
of these artists had broken away from the master’s severely academic
style and were tempering their own with the life and movement of the new
naturalistic tendencies. Warner also in modelling from nature incurred
the old master’s strictures, because his sturdy individualism refused to
lend itself to conventional methods; but, on the other hand, his studies
from the antique were commended. In time, however, his funds were
exhausted, and, having to find employment, he entered as an ordinary
workman the studio of Carpeaux, the strongest decorative sculptor in
France since Rude, whose pupil he had been. Warner’s ability was
recognised by the master, and he received the great compliment of an
invitation to remain and study in the studio. But he declined, being
eager by this time to return home.
The years of studentship had been diversified by the thrilling events of
the Siege of Paris and the Commune. Warner in his own country had
experienced the war-fever, and, eager to join the Army of the Republic
as a drummer-boy, had been dissuaded by his father, who during the
stormy days of the Civil War carried him off to a quiet spot among the
Vermont hills, that he might continue his studies. So, when the empire
fell and a republic was established, he regarded the action of the
Germans in continuing the war as an attack upon liberty, and enlisted
with many of his comrades in the Foreign Legion. But his duties were
confined to mounting guard upon the fortifications.
When, in 1872, Warner returned to New York it was to suffer the hard
experience of disillusionment. In Paris he had found art occupying a
prominent position in the public and private life of the community,
artists honoured and encouraged by the State and his own ability
acknowledged by some of the masters of his craft. He returned to his
native country to find a prevailing ignorance concerning art; to find
the trained artist competing for jobs with the commercial stonecutter
and metal-worker, the competitions decided more by political favoritism
and wire-pulling than by artistic merit; to find, indeed, that he was
transplanting the delicate growth of his ideals from a congenial soil to
what was, artistically speaking, very much of an arid and howling
wilderness. These words are scarcely too strong to express the
conditions of the field of art in this country more than a quarter of a
century ago, before the Centennial Exhibition had sounded the tocsin of
an improved taste; before the students of art had begun to return in
numbers from the foreign schools, and schools of art in this country had
been put upon a better basis; before the importation of all sorts of
works of art from Europe and the East, and the travel of our own people
abroad had become so extensive; before the spread of interest and
knowledge which all these causes operated to produce. Even now the slime
of politics is very apt to foul the fair working of competitions, and it
is often difficult for a sculptor, unless he is at the very top of his
profession, to secure a public commission without some degree of
wire-pulling. But in 1872, when the factories kept on hand a stock of
military statues, complete in every particular except the number of the
regiment--which was riveted on to suit the requirements of the intending
purchasing committee--the outlook for an unknown artist with high
ideals, clean of purpose, who reverenced his profession as his life, was
dark indeed. Warner held hunger and despair at arm’s length for four
years, and
[Illustration: BUST OF DANIEL COTTIER
By Olin Levi Warner]
[Illustration: CUPID AND PSYCHE
By Olin Levi Warner]
then decided that he had better return to his trade of telegraph
operator.
So he wrote to Mr. Plant, the president of the Southern Express Company,
with whom he had previously been employed, asking for a position. This
gentleman, however, learning the circumstances of the case, met them
with a commission for a portrait-bust of himself, followed by one of
Mrs. Plant. About this time, too, Warner made the acquaintance of Mr.
Daniel Cottier, who had recently opened a gallery for the display of the
objects of art which he was importing, and now invited the sculptor to
make an exhibition of his works. This proved to be the turning-point of
his affairs; commissions began to come in with increasing frequency,
until he was fully engaged upon a number of important works. He was
elected a full member of the National Academy, and was one of the
original group of painters and sculptors who founded the Society of
American Artists.
In the too short period left to him before his sudden death in 1896,
which resulted from a bicycle accident in Central Park, New York, he
produced a variety of works of high merit. They comprise portrait-busts,
among the best of which are those of Daniel Cottier, Alden Weir, W. C.
Brownell and Miss Maud Morgan; three heroic statues, representing,
respectively: Governor Buckingham of Connecticut, William Lloyd Garrison
and General Devens; fountains for Union Square, New York, and for
Portland, Oregon; many medallion portraits, including some of Indian
Chiefs; ideal subjects, “Twilight,” “The Dancing Nymph” and “Diana”; an
alto-relievo of “Cupid and Psyche” and one of the sets of bronze doors
for the Library of Congress at Washington. In all these works, covering
so wide a range of motive, there is present a union of monumental
feeling with extreme sensitiveness, which gives them in a marked degree
the sculpturesque character and invests them with a singular
individuality.
I shall never forget the impression made on me by a memorial exhibition,
held in 1897, of a considerable number of his busts and medallions and
of the “Psyche.” It may sound a little incongruous, but they suggested
the impression that a highly bred, finely trained race-horse makes upon
the imagination; an intensity of force and suppleness, nothing
superfluous, everything expressive of its function, the whole an
embodiment of keen vitality, of power and grace. There was a similarly
high-bred feeling in these heads, the sign-manual of an unusually keen
perception of facts and of a most refined sensibility in the rendering
of them. I doubt if anywhere in modern art, except in that of Rodin,
will you find busts of such vital power. They exhibit the same regard
for the structural significance of the head; something more than the
suggestion of form and bulk--a rich, strong, jubilant recognition of
these facts as the ones of peculiar interest to the sculptor, offering
him the opportunity of indulging his especial delight. They exhibit
also, as do Rodin’s, the same delicately precise handling of details:
like the obligato which a musician composes upon his basic theme, yet
with a different range of motive. Warner’s work does not reveal the
psychological analysis of Rodin’s; the penetrating, almost troublous
intensity of his bust of Dalou, for example. He is scarcely less keen or
subtle in his analysis than the French master, but studies the ripple of
flesh above the muscles, the tremor or fold of an eyelid, the curves of
nose or mouth, the disposition of the hair, with a pure delight in their
expressional force or grace. He views the head as a type rather than as
an individuality, and seeks to extract from it the essence of its
character. It is in this respect, among others, that he shows himself to
be imbued with the kind of spirit that animated the Greeks. As compared
with Rodin, whose vision grasps the complexities of modern emotion and
the underlying sadness of an age that has come late in time and whose
energy is enclosed in a frail web of nerves, Warner is a child-man, with
a man’s reserve and poise, and a child’s unsophisticated eagerness of
eye and its pure delight in beauty and the joy of living.
And this strain of the Greek temperament in sculpture is a very
different thing from the motive of the so-called “classic” school. The
latter drew its primary inspiration from Roman sculpture, in a search
for something supposedly heroic, that would fit the genius of the new
republicanism which had arisen out of the chaos of the Revolution. It
was at first grandiloquent, but, growing senile, fell to babbling of the
abstract beauty of line and form, always without direct reference to
nature and gradually with the increased formalism that grew from the
perpetuation of certain arbitrary rules and precedents. Such “classic”
statues, when they are the work of a master, have their beauty, but it
is inert, without the thrill of life; when the work of a mere
practitioner, they are unspeakably jejune and paltry. Both kinds are
alike in their divorce from nature-study, from the inspiration which it
gives to an intimate appreciation of line and form. They will not show
the fluidity of line, the delicate surprises of curve, the infinite
subtleties of modelling that invite caress, the texture and quality of
flesh, nor the mingling of firm and supple in the form, the pliant
movement adjusted to the action of the figure--in a word, the stir of
life within the material. Warner gives us this sensation and with so
choice an instinct for the exact point at which the naturalism should
melt into plastic immobility, with a love so keen and unalloyed for the
manifestations of nature and in a spirit so seriously jocund, that we
recognise, as I have said, his affinity with the old Greek ideal.
We may trace it also in his feeling for the monumental rather than for
the picturesque; for those qualities in sculpture which belong to it
preëminently, as opposed to those which it derives by analogy from
painting. It appears in the alto-relievo, “Cupid and Psyche,” most
conspicuously, because the subject might have been treated differently.
The modern sculptor, working from the background to the front plane by
repeated superlayers of clay, can introduce a variety of subtly
differentiated planes, and may become absorbed in this composition of
light and shade, producing an effect which we can describe as full of
colour and which is exceedingly beautiful. The artist of old time,
however, graving the marble, wood or metal, started with the form of
the figures under his hand, absorbed himself in them and regarded the
open spaces of his composition, when he reached them, simply as a
background. Instead of a quasi-pictorial subtlety of light and shade he
strove for a purely sculptural tangibility of modelled form. It is this
insistence upon form which is so conspicuous in the “Psyche”; in the
contrast between the child’s podgy softness and the maiden’s long,
lithe, firm figure.
This principle, applied to decoration, is most successfully represented
in the artist’s last completed work, the bronze doors of the Library of
Congress. In the lunette-shaped spaces above the doors the figures are
in very high relief, and the background is modelled with forms of
mountains and clouds, producing an effect of great richness, while upon
each valve of the door is a single figure in low relief; the flesh parts
having an emphasis of roundness, the draperies being flattened, yet
amply indicating the dignity of the form beneath. The left-hand figure
with the lyre (how I wish that it were possible to reproduce it here!)
is supremely beautiful in its poise between life and art, in its
exquisite rhythm of lines and in the alternate ebb and flow of the
planes of surface.
But it was in his rendering of the nude that Warner exhibited the
loveliest qualities of his art. He viewed it, as one views a flower,
with single vision for its exquisite abstract beauty. Flower-like and
fragrant, the “Psyche,” the “Dancing Nymph” and “Diana,” have the
quivering sensibility of contour that one finds in the free growth of
nature; united, however, to a firmness of texture and strength of
structure and to a conscious play of movement, responding to the play of
spirit, which in their perfect alliance are only to be found in the
human form. The spirit which animates these figures is, of course, the
sculptor’s, and it reveals itself most choicely in the serenity of the
“Diana,” in the suspense between absolute repose and projected movement.
For the figure seems about to rise; the carriage of the head and body
alike suggest the activity inherent in the languor. One may believe that
in the precision of beauty displayed in this statue, in the complete
adjustment, that is to say, of every one of its qualities of beauty to
the supreme idea of discovering that imaginary line upon which life
merges into art, the mobile into the immobile, Warner reached most
nearly his ideal. For in his busts and heroic statues, as in the
fountains and decorative subjects, he was more or less constrained to a
point of view. But in his nudes, and particularly in this one, the
product of his maturity, he could work in the full liberty of his
imagination. And the latter is found to be the ideal expression of those
qualities of character which I have already attributed to him:
intellectual stability, moral balance and spiritual serenity.
The singularly choice discretion which governed Warner’s appreciation of
form is shown equally in his Portland fountain: a circular bowl with
broad, flat brim, supported upon a rectangular pedestal and balanced by
two caryatides. The design is almost severely simple, yet tempered with
a grace of fitness in every detail, so chaste and noble as to produce an
impression of perfect repose. It has, indeed, just that suggestion of
being firmly rooted, of strong growth upward and of natural spread at
the top, which exactly befits its architectural character, while in the
contour and details it is as delicate as a lily.
We have traced this feeling for the monumental side of sculpture in
Warner’s reliefs, where it is revealed in the thoroughly plastic
treatment of form, so that it quivers on the edge between immobility and
life; in his fountain, that presents a conspicuous immobility quickened
with animation, and in his busts, wherein the form
[Illustration: DIANA
By Olin Levi Warner]
is made the foundation of lifelike character. It remains to note how
this last combination is carried to its highest conclusions in his
heroic statues.
A standing figure could scarcely be planted on its feet or mount with
more inevitableness of free, strong growth than the statue of General
Devens, while in the carriage of the whole body, more especially in that
of the alert, intellectual head, the type of the citizen-officer is
convincingly expressed. But a sitting figure offers a more complicated
problem, owing to the number and variety of planes which it presents and
to the necessity of harmonising these contrasted items into a completely
balanced _ensemble_. Warner, in the statue of Garrison, has united such
a variety of lineal directions and opposing planes into a stately,
stable mass; has mingled with the dignity of repose an energy of
character and gesture all the more impressive that it is kept in
control, and has made every detail of movement respond to the suppressed
fire of character in the head. The latter is modelled with a touch as
tenderly appreciative as will be found in any of his busts or reliefs,
so that this statue of the great abolitionist, perhaps the most
important work of his career, sums up the diverse characteristics of his
art.
How noble that was in sentiment and expression, how thoughtfully taken
up and with what a loving gravity pursued, even the least of his works
declare.
X
SOLON HANNIBAL BORGLUM