For, having completed these commissions, Niehaus set out for Rome and established himself in a studio just outside the Porta del Popolo, in close proximity to the Villa Borghese, devoting himself, as I have said, to the study of the nude. The only three statues which survive from this period--an athlete scraping himself with a strigil, another binding on the cestus, and a “Silenus,” pirouetting on one foot as he blows his pipes--are quite remarkable examples of the modern interpretation of the antique. Movement continuous through every part of the body and absolutely adjusted to the action; a poise of balance in the disposition of the torso and limbs, which combines the pleasure of repose with that of movement; anatomical accuracy that includes the structure of the figure and the varieties of tension according as the muscles are separately employed; and throughout a salience of modelling which imparts a dignity as well as naturalness to the whole--these are the qualities so admirably attained. The knowledge of form and the feeling for it thus perfected has naturally influenced all the sculptor’s subsequent work. He exhibits them obviously in the colossal nude, “The Driller,” executed for the Drake monument at Titusville, Pennsylvania; but no less in numerous portrait-statues. An American sculptor has unfortunately few opportunities for displaying his ability in the treatment of the nude, the commissions which perforce engage his time being almost exclusively problems of figures in modern civilian garb or in the uniform of the army or navy. He may occasionally introduce it into a piece of decorative sculpture, or fashion some ideal subject for the pure love of doing it, since his chances of disposing [Illustration: THE DRILLER By Charles Henry Niehaus From the Drake Monument, Titusville, Pennsylvania] [Illustration: THE HAHNEMANN STATUE By Charles Henry Niehaus From the Hahnemann Memorial, Washington, D. C.] of it are very limited. For while the old Puritan objection to the nude may have almost died out in America, it has scarcely been succeeded by a true appreciation of the abstract expression and beauty of the human form when treated by an artist. An old-fashioned bluntness of vision fails to see more in a nude than nakedness; may enjoy very thoroughly the structural and muscular development, play of movement and texture of skin in a horse, or the analogies of these qualities in a tree or plant, and yet miss entirely their subtler manifestations when exhibited in the freely exposed human form. Prejudice or lack of imagination obscures the fact that it is the expression of these qualities in their highest possible degree, that is the end and purpose of the artist; an obscurity, however, which, it must be admitted, not a few nude paintings and sculptures tend to perpetuate.