The sculpture at this exposition was under the supervision of Karl Bitter, and his equestrian “Standard Bearers,” surmounting the pylons of the Triumphal Bridge, were the most arresting features of the scheme. Ten years earlier he had modelled the colossal groups that stood at the base of the dome on the four corners of the Administration Building. They presented a fanfare of form against the sky; and these rearing horses at Buffalo, with their riders holding aloft a draped flag, had the same fling of action, only more controlled by experience. Instead of an explosion of limbs and movement, there was a sustained and concentrated energy, infinitely more impressive. It is in decorative subjects of this sort, which permit a certain heroic exaggeration, that Bitter seems at his best. An Austrian by birth and training, he has the Teutonic exuberance, touched with the gaiety of the French influence, and it is when the occasion warrants the exercise of both qualities that he finds his best chance. When he is deprived of an excuse for festivity he is liable to abandon himself to an excess of force, as in the “Atlantes” of the St. Paul Building in New York, which are uniting their titanic strength with contortion of limbs and muscles to support--one little balcony! Or if, as in a memorial to the dead, he is constrained to moderation and set toward the expression of sentiment, his work is apt to be characterised by sentimentality and ineffectualness. Yet, in the sitting statue of Doctor Pepper, he has made a sincere attempt to render in straightforward fashion the personality of the subject. The figure is realistically treated, even to the adoption of an awkward pose, which, however, fairly corresponds with the meditative suggestion, while the expression of the head unquestionably enlists our interest. Nevertheless, it is in such a group as Bitter furnished for the Naval Arch at the Dewey celebration, full of stirring action and heroic suggestion, that he is to be seen most characteristically.