American Men of Mind Part 9

It was so in this case. Mr. Longworth wrote to Brattleboro, making some inquiries as to the essential truth of the story, and having satisfied himself on that point, offered to help the boy to get an artistic education. The offer was accepted, and young Meade was placed in Brown's studio, going afterwards to Italy. While there, he heard of the a.s.sa.s.sination of President Lincoln, and prepared an elaborate design in plaster for a national monument to the martyred President's memory. As soon as this was completed, he started for home with it, arriving at precisely the right moment. The rage for monument building was sweeping up and down the land. Councils, legislatures, all sorts of public and private bodies, were making appropriations to commemorate some particular hero of the Civil War, which was just ended; Meade's design appealed to the popular imagination, and the commission was awarded him.

The monument, which was destined to cost a quarter of a million dollars, was by far the most important that had ever been erected in this country, and the inexperienced young sculptor sailed back to Italy to begin work. Not until 1874 was it sufficiently completed to dedicate, and the last group of statuary was not put in place until ten years later. All this time, the sculptor had spent quietly in his studio at Florence, quite apart from the world of progress or of new ideas in art, and long before his work was finished, public taste had outgrown it and found it uninspired and commonplace.

Much more important to American art is the work of Olin Levi Warner, the son of an itinerant Methodist preacher, whose wanderings prevented the boy getting any regular schooling. During his childhood, he had shown considerable talent for carving statuettes in chalk, and he finally decided to immortalize his father by carving a portrait bust of him. For a stone, he "set" a barrel of plaster in one solid ma.s.s and then, breaking off the staves, began hacking away at it with such poor implements as he could command. It was a well-nigh endless task, but "it's dogged that does it," and the boy worked doggedly away until the bust was completed. It was considered such a success that young Warner, convinced of his vocation, set to work to earn enough money to go abroad. For six years he worked as a telegrapher, and it was not until 1869, when he was twenty-five years old, that he had saved the money needed.

Three years later he returned to New York, and opened a studio, but met with a reception so dismal and indifferent that, after a four years'

desperate struggle, he was forced to abandon the fight and return to his father's farm. Anxious for any employment, he applied to Henry Plant, President of the Southern Express Company, for work. Mr. Plant was interested, and instead of offering him a job as messenger or teamster, gave him a commission for two portrait busts.

It was the turning point in Warner's career, for the busts he produced were of a craftsmans.h.i.+p so delicate and beautiful that they at once established his position among his fellow-sculptors, though years elapsed before he received any wide public recognition. The truth is that he was too great and sincere an artist to cater to a public taste which he had himself outgrown; so that, until quite recently, he has remained a sculptor's sculptor. His untimely death, in 1896, from the effects of a fall while riding in Central Park, brought forth a notable tribute from his fellow-craftsmen, and students of sculpture have come to recognize in him one of the most delicate and truly inspired artists in our history.

But the most powerful influence in the recent development of American sculpture has been that great artist, Augustus Saint Gaudens. Born in 1848, at Dublin, Ireland, of a French father and an Irish mother, he was brought to this country while still an infant. Perhaps this mixed ancestry explains to some degree Saint Gaudens's peculiar genius. At the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter in New York City, and worked for six years at this employment, which demands the utmost keenness of vision, delicacy of touch, and refinement of manner. His evenings he spent in studying drawing, first at Cooper Union and then, outgrowing that, at the National Academy of Design. So it happened that, at the age of twenty, when most men were just beginning their special studies, Saint Gaudens was thoroughly grounded in drawing and an expert in low relief.

Another thing he had learned; and let us pause here to lay stress upon it, for it is the thing which must be learned before any great life-work can be done. He had learned the value of systematic industry, of putting in so many hours every day at faithful work. The weak artist, whether in stone or paint or ink, always contends that he must wait for inspiration, and so excuses long periods of unproductive idleness, during which he grows weaker and weaker for lack of exercise. The great artist compels inspiration by whipping himself to his work and setting grimly about it, knowing that the "inspiration," so-called, will come.

For inspiration is only seeing a thing clearly, and the one way to see it clearly is to keep the eyes and mind fixed upon it.

At the age of twenty, then, Saint Gaudens was not only a trained artist, but an industrious one. Three years in the inspiring atmosphere of Paris, and three years in Italy, followed; and finally, in 1874, he landed again at New York with such an equipment as few sculptors ever had. And seven years later he proved his mastery when his statue of Admiral Farragut was unveiled in Union Square, New York. That superb work of art made its author a national figure, and Saint Gaudens took definitely that place at the head of American sculpture which was his until his death.

Six years later Saint Gaudens's "Lincoln" was unveiled in Lincoln Park, Chicago, and was at once recognized as the greatest portrait statue in the United States. It has remained so--a masterpiece of exalted conception and dignified execution. Other statues followed, each memorable in its way; but Saint Gaudens proved himself not only the greatest but the most versatile of our sculptors by his work in other fields--by portraits in high and low relief, by ideal figures, and notably by the memorial to Robert Gould Shaw, a work distinctively American and without a counterpart in the annals of art. It is the spiritual quality of Saint Gaudens's work which sets it apart upon a lofty pinnacle--the largeness of the man behind it, the artist mind and the poet heart.

Saint Gaudens's death in 1907 deprived American art of one of its most commanding figures, but there are other American sculptors alive to-day whose work is noteworthy in a high degree. One of these is Daniel Chester French. Born of a substantial New England family, and showing no especial artistic talent in youth, one day, in his nineteenth year, he surprised his family by showing them the grotesque figure of a frog in clothes which he had carved from a turnip. Modelling tools were secured for him, and he went to work. The schooling which prepared him for his remarkable career was of the slightest. He studied for a month with J.

Q. A. Ward, and for the rest, worked out his own salvation as best he could.

His first important commission came to him at the age of twenty-three--the figure of the "Minute Man" for the battle monument at Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts. It was unveiled on April 19, 1875, and attracted wide attention. For here was a work of strength and originality produced by a young man without schooling or experience--produced, too, without a model, or, at least, from nothing but a large cast of the "Apollo Belvidere," which was the only model the sculptor had. But there was no hint of that famous figure under the clothes of the "Minute Man." It had been entirely concealed by the personality and vigor he had impressed upon his work.

After that Mr. French spent a year in Florence, but he returned to America at the end of that period to remain. He has grown steadily in power and certainty of touch, rising perhaps to his greatest height in his famous group, "The Angel of Death and the Young Sculptor," intended as a memorial to Martin Milmore, but touching the universal heart by its deep appeal, conveyed with a sure and admirable artistry. Mr. French's great distinction is to have created good sculpture which has touched the public heart, and to have done this with no concession to public taste.

Another sculptor who has gained a wide appreciation is Frederick MacMonnies, who for sheer audacity and dexterity of manipulation is almost without a rival. He was born in Brooklyn in 1863, his father a Scotchman who had come to New York at the age of eighteen, and his mother a niece of Benjamin West. The boy's talent revealed itself early, and was developed in the face of many difficulties. Obliged to leave school while still a child and to earn his living as a clerk in a jewelry store, he still found time to study drawing, and at the age of sixteen had the good fortune to attract the attention of Saint Gaudens, who received him as an apprentice in his studio.

No better fate could have befallen the lad, and the five years spent with Saint Gaudens gave him the best of all training in the fundamentals of his art. Some years in Paris followed, where he replenished his slender purse with such work as he could find to do, until, in 1889, his "Diana" emerged from his studio, radiant and superb. A year later came his statue of "Nathan Hale," and there was never any lack of commissions after that. "Nathan Hale" stands in City Hall Park, New York City, the very embodiment of that devoted young patriot. The artist has shown him at the supreme moment when, facing the scaffold, he uttered the memorable words which still thrill the American heart, and expression and sentiment were never more perfectly in accord. He struck the same high note with his famous fountain at Chicago Exposition, where hundreds of thousands of people suddenly discovered in this young man a national possession to be proud of.

A year later his name was again in every mouth, when the Boston Public Library refused a place to perhaps his greatest work, the dancing "Bacchante," which has since found refuge in the Metropolitan Museum at New York--a composition so original and daring that it astonishes while it delights.

Like MacMonnies, George Gray Barnard began life as a jeweller's apprentice, became an expert engraver and letterer, and finally, urged by a ceaseless longing, deserted that lucrative profession for the extremely uncertain one of sculpture. A year and a half of study in Chicago brought him an order for a portrait bust of a little girl, and with the $350 he received for this, he set off for Paris. That meagre sum supported him for three years and a half--with what privation and self-denial may be imagined; but he never complained. He lived, indeed, the life of a recluse, shutting himself up in his studio with his work, emerging only at night to walk the streets of Paris, lost in dreams of ambition. That from this period of ordeal came some of the deep emotion which marks his work cannot be doubted.

This quality, which sets Barnard apart, is well ill.u.s.trated in his famous group, "The Two Natures," suggested by a line of Victor Hugo, "I feel two natures struggling within me." Two male figures are shown, heroic in size and powerfully modelled, a victor half erect bending over a prostrate foe.

Besides these men, who are, in a way, the giants of the American sculptors of to-day, there are, especially in New York, many others whose work is graceful and distinctive. Paul Wayland Bartlett, Herbert Adams, Charles Niehaus, John J. Boyle, Frank Elwell, Frederick Ruckstuhl, to mention only a few of them, are all men of originality and power, whose work is a pleasure and an inspiration, and to whose hands the future of American sculpture may safely be confided.

SUMMARY

GREENOUGH, HORATIO. Born at Boston, September 6, 1805; graduated at Harvard, 1825; went to Italy, 1825, and made his home there, with the exception of short visits to America and France; died at Somerville, Ma.s.sachusetts, December 18, 1852.

POWERS, HIRAM. Born at Woodstock, Vermont, July 29, 1805; modelled wax figures at Cincinnati, Ohio, for seven years; went to Was.h.i.+ngton, 1835, and to Florence, 1837; died there, June 27, 1873.

CRAWFORD, THOMAS. Born at New York City, March 22, 1814; went to Italy, 1834, and took up residence at Rome for the remainder of his life; afflicted with sudden blindness in 1856, and died at London, October 16, 1857.

BROWN, HENRY KIRKE. Born at Leyden, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 24, 1814; studied in Italy, 1842-46; opened Brooklyn studio, 1850; died at Newburgh, New York, July 10, 1886.

MILLS, CLARKE. Born in Onondaga County, New York, December 1, 1815; died at Was.h.i.+ngton, January 12, 1883.

PALMER, ERASTUS DOW. Born at Pompey, Onondaga County, New York, April 2, 1817; opened studio in Albany, 1849; in Paris, 1873-74; died at Albany, New York, March 9, 1904.

BALL, THOMAS. Born at Charlestown, Ma.s.sachusetts, June 3, 1819; practised painting, 1840-52; adopted sculpture, 1851; resided in Florence, Italy, 1865-97; opened New York studio, 1898.

STORY, WILLIAM WETMORE. Born at Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 19, 1819; graduated at Harvard, 1838; admitted to the bar, 1840; published a volume of poems, 1847; went to Italy, 1848, and lived at Florence until his death, October 5, 1895.

ROGERS, RANDOLPH. Born at Waterloo, New York, July 6, 1825; removed to Italy, 1855; died at Rome, January 15, 1892.

RINEHART, WILLIAM HENRY. Born in Maryland, September 13, 1825; removed to Rome, 1858, and died there, October 28, 1874.

ROGERS, JOHN. Born at Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, October 30, 1829; visited Europe, 1858-59; died, July 27, 1904.

HOSMER, HARRIET G. Born at Watertown, Ma.s.sachusetts, October 9, 1830; studied in Rome, 1852-60; opened Boston studio, 1861; died at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, February 21, 1908.

WARD, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Born at Urbana, Ohio, June 29, 1830; studied under H. K. Brown, 1850-57; studio in New York City since 1861.

MEADE, LARKIN GOLDSMITH. Born at Chesterfield, New Hamps.h.i.+re, January 3, 1835; studied under Brown and in Florence; artist at the front for _Harper's Weekly_ during Civil War; afterwards returned to Florence and made his home there.

WARNER, OLIN LEVI. Born at Suffield, Connecticut, April 9, 1844; studied in Paris, 1869-72; opened New York studio, 1873; died there, August 14, 1896.

SAINT GAUDENS, AUGUSTUS. Born at Dublin, Ireland, March 1, 1848; came to America in infancy; learned trade of cameo cutter; studied at Paris, 1867-70; Rome, 1870-72; opened New York studio, 1872; died at Corinth, N. H., August 3, 1907.

FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER. Born at Exeter, New Hamps.h.i.+re, April 20, 1850; studied in Boston and Florence; studio in Was.h.i.+ngton, 1876-78; in Boston, 1878-87; in New York since 1887.

MACMONNIES, FREDERICK. Born at Brooklyn, New York, September 20, 1863; studied under Saint Gaudens, 1880-84; also at Paris, and has spent many of the succeeding years in France.

BARNARD, GEORGE GRAY. Born at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, May 24, 1863; studied at Paris, 1884-87; spent some years in New York, and then returned to France.

CHAPTER VI

THE STAGE

The golden age of American acting was not so very long ago. Most white-haired men remember it, and love to talk of the days of Booth and Forrest and Charlotte Cushman. Joseph Jefferson, the last survivor of the old regime, died just the other day, and to the very end showed the present generation the charm and humor of Bob Acres and Rip Van Winkle.

No doubt that golden age is made to appear more golden than it really was by the mists of time; but undoubtedly the old actors possessed a mellowness, a solidity, a sort of high tradition now almost unknown.

These qualities were due in part, perhaps, to the long and arduous stock company training, where, in the old days, every actor must serve his apprentices.h.i.+p, and in part to the study of the cla.s.sic drama which had so large a place in stock company repertoire.

Success was infinitely harder to win than it is to-day. There were fewer theatres, so that the great actors were forced to play together, to their mutual advantage and improvement. The multiplication of theatres at the present time, and the vast increase of the theatre-going public, has led to the "star" system--to the placing of an actor at the head of a company, as soon as he has won a certain reputation. And, since care is taken that the "star" shall outs.h.i.+ne all his a.s.sociates, it follows that he has no one to measure himself with, he is no longer on his metal, and his growth usually stops then and there.

But let us be frank about it. The att.i.tude of the public toward the theatre has changed. To-day we would not tolerate the heavy melodramas which enchained our parents and grandparents. The age of rant and fustian has pa.s.sed away, and Edwin Forrest could never gain a second fortune from such a combination of these qualities as "Metamora." We are more sophisticated; we refuse to be thrilled by Ingomar, no matter how loudly he bellows. What we ask for princ.i.p.ally is to be amused, and consequently the great effort of the theatre is to amuse us, for the theatre must cater to its public. So, if the stage to-day is not what it was fifty years ago, the fault lies princ.i.p.ally in front of the footlights and not behind them.