American Masters of Sculpture: Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Sculptors and of Some Phases of Sculpture in AmericaCaffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
History
American Masters of Sculpture: Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Sculptors and of Some Phases of Sculpture in America
Caffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
Sculptors -- United States
“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.
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