Give the man room : $b The story of Gutzon BorglumCasey, Robert J. (Robert Joseph)
General
Give the man room : $b The story of Gutzon Borglum
Casey, Robert J. (Robert Joseph)
Borglum, Gutzon, 1867-1941
He rarely spent money on his person, except for small lovely things that
he could carry in his pocket. He often had holes in his shoes, and his
unpressed clothes were always a distress to his friends. To emphasize
the sacrifices of a struggling artist, he used to tell of buying baked
potatoes on the street corners of London to keep his hands warm. The
potato-buying story was undoubtedly true, but it was hardly a record of
a typical condition.
Building was his chief delight--always. In London, after he had lived
for months in a studio apartment in West Kensington, he rented a villa
in St. John’s Wood and proceeded to make repairs and additions to it,
regardless of cost. The villa had a rose garden, and he frequently
talked of how he mowed the lawn early in the morning before starting
the day’s work. All his life he enjoyed the work of beautifying his
surroundings. During the years he built at least six other studios and
houses for himself without ever being satisfied. His ideal home, which
he was always ready to describe in detail and with feeling, was a
fabulous sort of place that existed only in his restless mind.
In his diary he mentions having gone shopping with the painter Frank
Brangwyn to consider taking over Sir Edward Leighton’s studio. They
decided it was too pretentious. In Paris he rented a studio in the
Boulevard Arago. He still found some of his old friends and business
acquaintances in the neighborhood when he visited it in 1931, thirty
years after he had moved out of it. It was a place of rare memories. He
had fitted the little stove with a red isinglass front, and he had
burned a solitary candle in it in those freezing days to give the
illusion of rosy warmth.
In Gutzon’s reminiscences it seems always to have been cold in the
neighborhood of Boulevard Arago. A sculptor, living in one of the
garrets with which the region seems to have been plentifully supplied,
fashioned a masterpiece. It was still in the wet clay when the
thermometer dropped below freezing. The artist was frantic. In the
bitter cold of night he began to fear for his statue. He got up and
wrapped it in rags of clothing and finally in his only blanket to keep
the ice away. He died of the cold. But the statue for which he froze to
death now reposes in warm, serene quarters in the Luxembourg.
Frank Brangwyn, some of whose work may be seen in Rockefeller Plaza in
New York City, was the one artist who made a deep impression on Gutzon
in England. The Borglum diary is filled with notations such as this:
“November 19, 1897--Short half hour with Brangwyn.... He belongs to
_art_ and will do work that will live.” And the feeling was mutual. In
later years Brangwyn wrote, “I admire those strong virile things of
yours. It is like a strong sea breeze on a hot and listless day to see
your honest works....” Each foresaw for the other a greatness that he
could not hope for himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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