Part 4 (1/2)

After Goujon, Clodion is the great name in French sculpture, until we coned to the nineteenth century

There were throughout the eighteenth century honorable artists, sculptors of distinction beyond contest But sculpture is such an abstract art itself that the sculpture which partook of the artificiality of the eighteenth century has less interest for us, less that is concrete and appealing than even the painting of the epoch It derived its canons and its practice frorace and less dilettante extravagance than his Italian exemplar had more force and solidity With less cleverness, less charm--for Bernini, spite of the disesteeelo and his apparent unconsciousness of the attitude such juxtaposition should have ireat deal of charm and is extraordinarily clever--he is , erated, and his pupil, Coustou, who cohteenth century, contributed nothing to French sculptural tradition

But Clodion is a distinct break He is as different from Coysevox and Coustou as Watteau is from Lebrun He is the essence of e mean by Louis Quinze His work is clever beyond characterization It has in perfection what sculptors , a certain _insouciance_, a brave carelessness for sculpturesque traditions, a free play of fancy, both in the conception and execution of his subjects Like the Louis Quinze painters, he has his thoughtless, irresponsible, involuntary side, and like them--like the best of theood as he could be He see his ideal as at pleasing, and pleasing people of too frivolous an appreciation to call forth what is best in hiether to terra-cotta, which is equivalent to saying that the exquisite and not the ihly classic, so far as the avoidance of everything naturalistic is concerned, he is yet as little severe and correct as the painters of his day He spent nine years in Roree of the antique, it was the statuettes and figurines, the gay and social, the elegant and decorative side of antique sculpture that exclusively he delighted in His work is Tanagra Gallicized It is not the group of ”The Deluge,” or the ”Entry of the French into Munich,” or ”Hercules in Repose,” for which he was esteemed by contemporaries or is prized by posterity He is adhtful decoration of which he was so prodigal It is not in his co what is usually meant by sculptural effect, but in his vases, clocks, pendants, volutes, little reliefs of ny breakers and amid hospitable foam, his toilettes of Venus, his facade ornamentations, his applied sculpture, in a word, that his true talent lies After him it is natural that we should have a reversion to quasi-severity and imitation of the antique--just as David succeeded to the Louis Quinze pictorial riot--and that the French conteh enthusiastic illustrators of Winckelmann's theories, should be Pradier and Etex and the so-called Greek school Pradier's Greek inspiration has soh his figures were siely treated He had a keen sense for the fe Weibliche_--and expressed it plastically with a zest approaching gusto Yet his statues are women rather than statues, and, more than that, are handsome rather than beautiful Etex, it is to be feared, will be chiefly remembered as the unfortunately successful rival of Rude in the Arc de Trio in each case more or less relation with, but really wholly outside of and superior to all ”schools” whatever--except the school of nature, which permits as reatest of French sculptors since the Renaissance and down to the present day: Houdon, David d'Angers, Rude, Carpeaux, and Barye Houdon is one of the finest exarace He will be known chiefly as a portraitist, but such a masterpiece as his ”Diana” sho adinative theme and treatment Classic, and even conventionally classic as it is, both in subject and in the way the subject is handled--co,” which is sined andas if Houdon had been stimulated by the a with truth and grace a time-honored and traditional sculptural motive Its treatment is beautifully educated and its effect refined, chaste, and elevated in an extraordinary degree No master ever steered so near the reef of ”clock-tops,” one ure is light as air and wholly effortless at the sauished success in circureat difficulty of sculpture--which is to rob ht and buoyant, just as the difficulty of the painter is to give weight and substance to his fictions But Houdon's adton, Franklin, and Mirabeau, his unequalled statue of Voltaire in the _foyer_ of the Francais and his San Bruno in Santa Maria degli Angeli at Rome are the works on which his fa to their th with style, rest securely

To see the work of David d'Angers, one ers itself and to Pere-Lachaise The Louvre is la truly representative of this most eminent of all portraitists in sculpture, I think, not excepting even Houdon, if one may reckon the mass as well as the excellence of his remarkable production and the way in which it witnesses that portraiture is just what he was born to do The ”Philopoee and simple But it is the competent work of a member of a school and leaves one a little cold Its acade onefind in the severity of its treatment and the way in which a classic enuinely instead of perfunctorily It gives no intiallery of medallions accentuated by an occasional bust and statue, of David's celebrated contemporaries and quasi-contemporaries in every field of distinction

It is impossible to overestimate the interest and value, the truth and the art of these Whether the subject be intractable or not seems to have made no difference to David He invariably produced a work of art at the same time that he expressed the character of itsfidelity His portraits,of the cameo-cutter's art about them They are modelled not carved The outline is no more important than it is in nature, so far as it is employed to the end of identification It is used decoratively There are surprising effects of fore-shortening, exhibiting superb, and as it were unconscious ease in handling relief--thatno law (at least no law that it is worth the sculptor's while to try to discover) of correspondence to reality Forms and masses have a definition and a firmness wholly remarkable in their independence of the usual low relief's reliance on pictorial and purely linear design They do not blend picturesquely with the background, and do not depend on their suggestiveness for their character They are always realized, executed--sculpture in a hose suggestiveness, quite as potent as that of feebler executants, begins only when actual representation has been triumphantly achieved instead of ienius one's first thought is of its robustness, its originality Everything he did is stamped with the impress of his personality At the same time it is equally evident that Rude's own temperament took its color from the transitional epoch in which he lived, and of which he was _par excellence_ the sculptor He was the true inheritor of his Burgundian traditions His strongest side was that which allies him with his artistic ancestor, Claux sluters But he lived in an era of general culture and aestheticism, and all his naturalistic tendencies were complicated with theory He accepted the antique not merely as a stimulus, but as a model He was not only a sculptor but a teacher, and the formulation of his didacticism complicated considerably the free exercise of his expression At the last, as is perhaps natural, he reverted to precedent and forle of Jupiter” and his ”L'Amour Dominateur du Monde,” is more at variance than anywhere else with his native instinct, which was, to cite the admirable phrase of M de Fourcaud, _exterioriser nos idees et nos ahout his life he halted a little between two opinions--the current ad for nature unsystematized and unsophisticated His ”Jeanne d'Arc” is an instance In spite of the violation of tradition, which at the tiht to be, it seems to-day to our eyes to err on the side of the conventional It is surely intellectual, classic, even factitious in conception as well as in execution In some of its accessories it is even modish It illustrates nota subject which Rude always shared with the great classicists of his art, but also the arbitrariness of treat it, he was in a very intimate sense an eclectic ina completea model, as he used to tell his students, but in complicated compositions this was impossible, and he had small talent for artificial composition

Furthermore, he often distrusted--quite without reason, but after the fatal manner of the rustic--his own intuitions But one enius and accoenius and accouished as to make one wish they were more nearly perfect than they are It is really idle to wish that Rude had neglected the philosophy of his art, hich he was sosculptural subjects in the manner of a nineteenth century successor of sluters and Anthoniet He reater sculptor than he was, but he is sufficiently great as he is If his ”Mercury” is an essay in conventional sculpture, his ”Petit Pecheur” is frank and free sculptural handling of natural ure of Cavaignac in the cee at Beaune, of Marshal Bertrand, and of Ney, are all cast in the heroic mould, full of character, and in no wise dependent on speculative theory Few sculptors have displayed anything like his variety and range, which extends, for example, from the ”Baptism of Christ” to a statue of ”Louis XIII enfant,” and includes portraits, groups, compositions in relief, and heroic statues In all his successful work one cannot fail to note the force and fire of the man's personality, and perhaps what one thinks of chiefly in connection with him is the misfortune which e to the vacillation of M Thiers of having but one instead of four groups by him on the piers of the Arc de Triomphe de l'etoile Carpeaux used to say that he never passed the ”Chant du Depart” without taking off his hat One can understand his feeling No one can have any appreciation of what sculpture is without perceiving that thisthe masterpieces of sculpture of all time It is, in the first place, the incarnation of an abstraction, the spirit of patriotishest pitch of warlike intensity and self-sacrifice, and in the second this abstract motive is expressed in the most elaborate and comprehensive coleness of effect which must be the despair of any but a master in sculpture

VI

Carpeaux perhaps never did anything that quite equals the masterpiece of his master Rude But the essential quality of the ”Chant du Depart” he assimilated so absolutely and so naturally that he made it in a way his own He carried it farther, indeed If he never rose to the grandeur of this superb group, and he certainly did not, he nevertheless showed in every one of his works that he was possessed by its inspiration even more completely than was Rude himself His passion was the representation of life, the vital and vivifying force in its utmost exuberance, and in its every variety, so far as his experience could enable him to render it He was infatuated with y, of the quick translation of thought and eures are, beyond all others, so thoroughly alive as to seem conscious of the fact and joy of pure existence They are aniht ofthe functions hich nature endows thehtful grace and winningness of which few sculptors have the secret, and which suggest more than any one else Clodion's decorative loveliness An even greater char and bewitching fascination, a ness plays about Carpeaux's ”Flora,” I think, than is characteristic even of Clodion's figures and reliefs

Carpeaux is at all events nearer to us, and if he has not the classic detachment of Clodion he substitutes for it a quality of closer attachment and more intimate appeal He is at his best perhaps in the ”Danse” of the Nouvel Opera facade, wherein his elfin-like grace and exuberant vitality aniroup carefully, and even classically co skill and restraint as well as ives itself too free a rein in the group of the Luxe Gardens, in which he has been accused by his own ad expressiveness at the expense of saner andGardens without ”The Four Quarters of the World supporting the Earth” Parisian censure of his exuberance is very apt to display a conventional standard of criticise

Barye's place in the history of art is reat artists He was certainly one of the greatest of sculptors, and he had either the good luck or the mischance to do his work in a field almost wholly unexploited before him He has in his way no rivals, and in his way he is so admirable that the scope of his work does not even hint at his exclusion froreatest of his predecessors A perception of the truth of this apparent paradox is the nearest one may come, I think, to the secret of his excellence No h, that is, with enough elevation, enough spiritual distinction, enough transmutation of the elenificance--you succeed And this is not the sense in which estion of Mrs Browning's lines:

”Better far Pursue a frivolous trade by seriouscould bethan to fancy Barye a kind of modern Cellini Less than any sculptor of modern times is he a decorative artist The sreat part due to his lack of opportunity to produce larger ones Nowadays one does what one can, even the greatest artists; and Barye had no Lorenzo de'Medici for a patron, but, instead, a frowning Institute, which confined him to such work as, in the main, he did He did it _con amore_ it need not be added, and thus lifted it at once out of the custoory of such work His bronzes were never _articles de Paris_, and their excellence transcends the function of teaching our sculptors and anified a province as roups are not essentially ”clock-tops,” and the work of perhaps the greatest artist, in the line from Jean Goujon to Carpeaux can hardly be used to point the ood Cellini's ”Perseus”

is really ure

Why is he so obviously great as well as so obviously extraordinary? one constantly asks himself in the presence of his bronzes Perhaps because he expresses with such concreteness, such definiteness and vigor a motive so purely an abstraction The illustration in intith, passion, seems to have been his airoups he attains it superbly--not giving the beholder a sy upon association or convention, but exhibiting its very essence with a coy to which antique art alone, one may almost say, has furnished a parallel

For this, fauna served hih, could he have studied man with the facility which the Jardin des Plantes afforded hiht have used the ure more frequently than he did When he did, he was hardly less successful; and the four splendid groups that decorate the Pavillons Denon and Richelieu of the Louvre are in the very front rank of the heroic sculpture of the modern world

V

ACADEMIC SCULPTURE

I

Fro could be more interhostile than his sculpture and that of the professors at the ecole des Beaux-Arts And in considering the French sculpture of the present day we reat naers, Rude, Carpeaux, and Barye--and apart from the new movement represented by Rodin and Dalou, it is represented by the Institute, and that the Institute has reverted to the Italian inspiration The influence of Canova and the exa Indeed, Greek sculpture has perished so coend With the modern French school, the academic school, it is quite supplanted by the sculpture of the Renaissance And this is not unreasonable The Renaissance sculpture is modern; its masters did finely and perfectly what since their time has been done imperfectly, but essentially its artistic spirit is the modern artistic spirit, full of personality, full of expression, careless of the type Nowadays we patronize a little the ideal You ent critics in Paris--who in Paris is not an intelligent critic?--speak disparagingly of the Greek want of expression; of the lack of passion, of vivid interest, of significance in a word, in Greek sculpture of the Periclean epoch The conception of absolute beauty having been discovered to be an abstraction, the tradition of the purely ideal has gone with it The caryatids of the Erechtheum, the horsemen of the Parthenon frieze, the reliefs of the Nike Apteros balustrade are admired certainly; but they are hardly syate them to the limbo of subjects for aesthetic lectures And yet no one can have carefully examined the brilliant productions ofstruck by this apparent paradox: that, whereas all its canons are drawn from a study of the Renaissance, its chief characteristic is, at bottom, a lack of expression, a carefulness for the type The explanation is this: in the course of tis even,” the individuality, the romanticism of the Renaissance has itself become the type, is now itself become ”classical,” and the modern attitude toward it, however sympathetic compared with the ree factitious and artificial And in art everything depends upon the attitude oftruly Raphaelesque, and Pradier fro really classical If, therefore, it can justly be said of modern French sculpture that its sympathy for the Renaissance sculpture obscures its vision of the ideal, it is clearly to be charged with the sanificance hich its thick-and-thin partisans reproach the antique The circumstance that, like the Renaissance sculpture, it deals far ely in pictorial expression than the antique does, is, if it deals in them after the Renaissance fashi+on and not after a fashi+on of its own, quite beside the essential fact There is really nothing in common between an academic French sculptor of the present day and an Italian sculptor of the fifteenth century, except the possession of what is called the modern spirit But the areat in their way, and so far as our interest in them is concerned, as the difference between their inspiration and the mediaeval or the antique inspiration

II

Chapu, who died a year or two ago, is perhaps the only eminent sculptor of the time whose inspiration is clearly the antique, and when I add that his work appears to inal, it will be immediately perceived that I share imperfectly the French objection to the antique Indeed, nowadays to have the antique inspiration is to be original _ex vi ter is farther removed from conteral sense The pre-eminent fact of Greek sculpture, for example, is, from one point of view, the directness hich it concerns itself with the ideal--the slight temporary or personal element hich it is alloyed When one calls an artist or a work Greek, this is what is really meant; it is the sense in which Raphael is Greek Chapu is Greek in this way, and thus individualized a a different inspiration fro for his interest on no convention fixed or fleeting and on no indirect support of accentuated personal characteristics Perhaps the antiquary of a thousand years frouish so clearly the work of certain sculptors who see in common will betray only their common inspiration, will be even less at a loss than ourselves to find traces of a coin in such apparently different works as Chapu's ”Mercury” and his ”Jeunesse” of the Regnault monument He will by no means confound these with the classical productions of M Millet or M Cavelier, we may be sure And this, I repeat, because their purely Greek spirit, the subordination in their conception and execution of the personal element, the direct way in which the sculptor looks at the ideal, the type, not only distinguish theely personal expressions, but give them an eminent individuality as well Like the Greek sculpture, they are plainly the production of culture, which in restraining wilfulness, however happily inspired, and i measure and poise, nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the faculties themselves The skeptic who ue entity, ”the ideal,” and the personal idea of the artist concerned with it, can be shown this distinction better than it can be expressed in words He will appreciate it very readily, to return to Chapu, by contrasting the ”Jeanne d'Arc” at the Luxe Gallery with such different treate's picture, now in the New York Metropolitan Museum, illustrates Contrary to his aln in favor of ie's ”Jeanne d'Arc” is the creature of wilful originality, a sort of e; she is the illustration of a theory, she is this and that systematically and not spontaneously; the predominance of the painter's personality is plain in every detail of his creation Chapu's ”Maid” is the ideal, more or less perfectly expressed; she is everybody's ”Maid,” more or less adequately embodied

The statue is the antipodes of the conventional much ests no competition with that at Versailles or the many other characterless conceptions that abound It is full of expression--arrested just before it ceases to be suggestive; of individuality restrained on the hither side of peculiarity The ”Maid” is hearing her ”voices” as distinctly as Bastien-Lepage's figure is, but the fact is not forced upon the sense, but is rather disclosed to thesculpture No one could, of course, ht possibly bethe conditions favorable, in the case of Chapu's ”Mercury;” but it presents, nevertheless, an excellent illustration of anaturally and freely in the antique spirit It is as affecting, as full of direct appeal, as a modern work essays to be; but its appeal is to the sense of beauty, to the iht in virtue of its art and not of its reality No, individuality is no more inconsistent with the antique spirit than it is with eccentricity, with the extravagances of personal expression Is there rotesque than in the ”Faun” of the Capitol? For sculpture especially, art is eenius,” and it is only after the sculptor's genius has submitted to the discipline of culture that it evinces an individuality which really counts, which is really thrown out in relief on the background of crude personality And if there be no question of perfection, but only of the artist's attitude, one has but to ask hi of the epithet Shakespearian to be assured of the harmony between individuality and the most impersonal practice

Nevertheless, this attitude and this perfection, characteristic as they are of Chapu's work, have their peril When the quickening impulse, of whose expression they are after all but conditions, fails, they suddenly appear so nificant ould otherwise have seereat distinction--even in the execution of so perfunctory a task as a coure of ”Mechanical Art” in the Tribunal de Coreat Triennial Exposition of 1883 Chapu was si illustration of the necessity of constant renewal of inspiration, of the constant danger of lapse into the perfunctory and the hackneyed, which threatens an artist of precisely Chapu's qualities Another of equal eminence escapes this peril; there is not the same interdependence of form and ”content” to be disturbed by failure in the latter; or, better still, the uished as to require i excellence of intention In fact, it is because of the exceptional position that he occupies in deriving fro the academic devotion to Renaissance roeneral movement of academic French sculpture, that in any consideration of this sculpture Chapu's work makes a more vivid impression than that of his contemporaries, and thus naturally takes a foremost place

III

M Paul Dubois, for exareatest possible contrast to Chapu; but he will never, we nificant His ill always express himself, and his is a personality of very positive idiosyncrasy M Dubois, indeed, is probably the strongest of the Acaderoup of French sculptors of the day The tomb of General Lamoriciere at Nantes has remained until recently one of the very finest achieve reat deal to say--lories of the Italian Renaissance, which lead us out of et the French, permit one to appreciate Indeed, the sculpture of M Dubois seems positively to have but one defect, a defect which from one point of view is certainly a quality, the defect of impeccability It is at any rate impeccable; to seek in it a ble, is to lose one's pains As workmanshi+p, and workmanshi+p of the subtler kind, in which every detail of surface and structure is perceived to have been intelligently felt (though rarely enthusiastically rendered), it is not merely satisfactory, but visibly and beautifully perfect But in the category in which M Dubois is to be placed that is very little; it is always delightful, but it is not especially complimentary to M Dubois, to occupy one's self with it On the other hand, by impeccability is certainly not herewhat one has to express--the impeccability of Canova and his successors, for example The difficulty is with M