American Masters of Sculpture: Being Brief Appreciations of Some American Sculptors and of Some Phases of Sculpture in AmericaCaffin, Charles H. (Charles Henry)
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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
I wonder if there is not more incentive to revere the memory of a man in
a memorial like this, representing him folded in the sleep of death,
than in one which figures him as he lived! Yet the latter is the more
usual method in this country, possibly because of the lack of space in
city churches. Saint-Gaudens has done some memorable work in this
direction, notably in the portrait-panels of James McCosh at Princeton,
and of Doctor Bellows in the Church of All Souls, New York; so too have
French and Herbert Adams. Again in mural tablets, bearing instead of a
portrait some ideal figure, work of technical merit and of very
beautiful spirit has been done by Clement J. Barnhorn of Cincinnati.
Especially would I mention an angel design of his for the Poland
Memorial and a “Madonna of the Lilies.” In both these low reliefs he
displays a quite exquisite appreciation of the beauty of simplicity of
design, of the expression of tender differences of plane, and of the
mingling of firm and vanishing lines. Nor in the refinement of treatment
is the structural character of the figure and drapery lost.
DOMESTIC DESIGN
Among the various decorative designs by Barnhorn is one for a cottage
piano, carved in wood. Conventionalised tree-forms compose the legs,
extend a bough from each side along the lower part of the keyboard and
then mount up the sides and spread their foliage in a canopy along the
top, a draped figure occupying the centre of the front. The design has
one good feature, that it grows out of and expresses the character of
the material. Yet it deviates from what experience suggests to be worth
regarding as an axiom: that in such objects as are actually a part of
the structure of a room, for instance a mantelpiece, or in those which
by their size and importance emphasise their structural character, the
contours should conform to the straight and curved lines, which
experience has found necessary in architecture. In a word, that the
structure of the object should be first attained and the decoration then
subordinated to it, instead of the latter being allowed to encroach upon
the structural lines. An ivy-mantled tower takes its place suitably in
an open-air setting; and, on the other hand, a small object indoors,
such as a clock on a shelf, may assume any variety of outline; but with
the larger, formal ones, whether built into, or detached within, the
room, you cannot indulge in irregular contours without making them
amorphous, more or less clumsy or else trivial. And this piano seems
open to the charge of cumbersomeness, which again offends the instinct
of the musician, who would feel in the instrument a suggestion of
yielding to the vibrations of the music--a feeling so prominent in the
delicate simplicity of the violin and to be desired in the form of all
instruments. Yet one welcomes in this piano the inventiveness of fancy
displayed, and the skill and individuality of the craftsmanship,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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