Sculpture -- United States -- History; Sculpture, American
Among the greatest virile portraits of our age are those of the “all
around” American sculptor, Charles Grafly; for style and workmanship
and seizing of character any half-dozen of his busts would proudly hold
their own if placed beside Rodin’s male portraits in the Metropolitan
Museum. Furthermore, they have the old-fashioned advantage of looking
like the persons they represent, an advantage not always attained in
the Rodin portrayals. Perhaps a fairer tribute to Mr. Grafly’s power
would be to say that his busts need not fear comparison with the
Saint-Gaudens Sherman, that most spirited portrait of a war-chief.
One of our memorable sculptured portraits is Mrs. Burroughs’s bust
of John La Farge, modeled at about the period of Mr. Lockwood’s
painted portrait. Both artists have attained truth. Mr. Lockwood’s
broadly enveloping technique shows La Farge as the cosmopolitan,
the artist who is also the gracious citizen of the world; Mrs.
Burroughs’s point of view emphasizes La Farge the individualist, the
thinker habitually pursuing his own spiritual adventures in many
realms, oriental and occidental. The painting tells wherein La Farge
resembles his fellow-men, while the sculpture with equal force brings
out his valuable points of difference. Twenty years ago, Jonathan
Scott Hartley’s sturdy renderings of masculine character delighted
his colleagues; and even today, his bust of John Gilbert as Sir Peter
Teazle loses nothing of its rich whimsical earnestness when considered
beside modern work of the highest order, such as Robert Aitken’s
portrait of Augustus Thomas, or one of Fraser’s presentments of our
great American citizens.
Naturally remote in intent and result from these virile modelings are
the lovingly rendered portraits of women and children familiar in our
sculpture. A well-known example is Manship’s realistically carved
marble image of his baby daughter placed within a captivating shrine
of blue and gold. Portraits in the round, carried out in a polychrome
ensemble of beautifully cut marble combined with other materials, such
as wood, gold, and semi-precious stones, offer a fascinating field for
the American sculptor willing to devote to such experiments the time
and thought they demand. The pure white marble bust looks ill at ease
in the warm precincts of the modern home; it is a thing of the past. We
can but wonder that our elders bore it so long, even when it was in a
measure suppressed by placing it looking streetward, between the parted
lace curtains.
[Illustration: MARBLE PORTRAIT OF BABY
BY PAUL MANSHIP]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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