Saint-Gaudens’ sense of refinement led to conventions, and his lack of imagination to a repetition of these conventions. Another thing--I do not recall in all his work one single group of creation that may be called a “pipe dream.” In other words, I do not know of one work of Saint-Gaudens that was not commissioned, that was not suggested to him and produced for another. I speak thus because I believe few people realize how little sculptural art is shown in this country that is purely the output of the sculptor’s imagination, produced creatively because the sculptor has something he must say. Saint-Gaudens, master that he was, was a great workman; he was not a creator. It is but natural that his following should, in their effort to catch his spirit, acquire only his style. His reserve becomes in their hands more reserved, his architectural and impersonal manner more mannered, and we have a pseudoclassic school which for dull mediocrity is without a rival in the whole field of art. This analysis of another man’s work did incalculable harm to Gutzon’s position in New York art circles. The controversy became nationwide when the newspaper headlines announced, “Borglum Attacks Saint-Gaudens.” Partisans joined the argument with more zeal than discretion, and the wrangling went on without end. Another controversy that swirled about George Gray Barnard and his undraped figures on the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg caught up Gutzon in its progress. Borglum had a wholehearted respect for Barnard and took up cudgels in his defense, thus further antagonizing the “sourdoughs,” as he called the Academicians. Long afterward when Barnard was excluded from his studio on the Billings estate, which had been bought for a public park, Gutzon offered him his Stamford studio to work in and, at Barnard’s request, appeared before the New York City Board of Aldermen in an effort to iron out his troubles with the city. Barnard’s “Two Natures” and Gutzon’s “Mares of Diomedes” were the first pieces of American art purchased for the Metropolitan Museum. Of the former, the sculptor wrote: “The ‘sourdoughs’ took ‘Two Natures,’ perhaps the finest marble in its dimensions by an American in our country, and as quickly and quietly as possible relegated it to the basement. Not long after my ‘Mares of Diomedes’ followed the same descent.” His antipathy to the National Academy was based on his observation that there was too little fraternity about it and always a lack of _esprit de corps_. It followed too much the general tendency of all academic organizations against anything new, he said. It was probably his undiplomatic manner of expressing his convictions that aroused the enmity of the older set, who successfully kept him out of any monumental work in New York City.