Part 5 (1/2)

Still the fantastic has not n to the French genius, which never tolerates it after it has ceased to be novel, that it probably never will It is a great tribute to French ”catholicity of eness of temper” that Carpeaux's ”La Danse” remains in its position on the facade of the Grand Opera French senti it was doubtless accurately expressed by the fanatic who tried to ink it indelibly after it was first exposed

This vandal was right from his point of view--the point of view of style Al the hundreds which without and within decorate M Garnier's edifice, it is thus a distinct jar in the general harmony; it distinctly ht, which is fundaine the devotion to style of a _milieu_ in which a person ould throw ink on a confessedly fine work of art is actuated by an iruous is almost a French passion, and, like all qualities, it has its defect, the defect of tolerating the conventional It is through this tolerance, for example, that one of the freest of French critics of art, a true Voltairian, Stendhal, was led actually to find Guido's ideal of beauty higher than Raphael's, and to randeur of Tintoretto Critical opinion in France has not changed radically since Stendhal's day

VI

The French sculptor inality itself, his audience will measure the result by conventions

It is this fact undoubtedly that is largely responsible for the over-carefulness for style already remarked Hence the work of M

Aime-Millet and of Professors Guillaume and Cavelier, and the fact that they are professors Hence also the election of M Falguiere to succeed to the chair of the Beaux-Arts left vacant by the death of Jouffroy soo All of these have done adroup at the Luxeh to atone for a mass of productions of which the ”Castalian Fount” of a recent Salon is the cold and correct representative Cavalier's ”Gluck,” destined for the Opera, is spirited, even if a trifle galvanic Millet's ”Apollo,” which crowns theits author's other works as a uiere's admirers, and they are nuuiere's range has always been a wide one, and everything he has done has undoubtedly ious enco it in any other way than by energy, variety, and hly with precision It is too plainly the work of an artist who can do one thing as well as another, and of which cleverness is, after all, the spiritual standard Bartholdi, who also should not be forgotten in any sketch of French sculpture, would, I auiere did in the colossal groups of the Trocadero and the Arc de Triomphe de l'etoile To acquit hiroups are the largest andof the Arc de Triomphe at least was a splendid opportunity Neither of them had any distinction of outline, of mass, of relation, or of idea

Both were conventional to the last degree That on the Arc had even its ludicrous details, such as occur only from artistic absent-ued and hackneyed spirit The ”Saint Vincent de Paul” of the Pantheon, which justly passes for the sculptor's _chef-d'oeuvre_ is in idea a work of large huuiere is behind no one in ability to conceive a subject of this kind with propriety, and his subject here is inspiring if ever a subject was

The ”Petit Martyr” of the Luxe has a real charm, but it too is content with too little, as one finds out in seeing it often; and it is in no sense a large work, scarcely larger than the tireso Boy” of the same museu Indeed, so slight is the spiritual hold that M

Falguiere has on one, that it really seems as if he were at his best in such a frankly carnal production as his since variously ” of the Triennial Exposition of 1883 The idea is nothing or next to nothing, but the surface _faire_ is superb

M Barrias, M Delaplanche, and M Le Feuvre have each of theh the work of neither is as important in mass and variety M Delaplanche is always satisfactory, and beyond this there is sonity even in the absence of quick interest His proportions are sireeable ease of his coree for any lack of synificance: witness his excellent ”Maternal Instruction,” of the little park in front of Sainte Clothilde M Le Feuvre's qualities are very nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quite hostile in his case to simplicity In his very frank appeal to one's susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations, which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends The result is a mannerisreeable As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders on sentiures become limp, and the startled-fawn eyes of histhan lackadaisical But his being himself too conscious of it should not obscure the fact that he has a way of his own M Barrias is an artist of considerably greater powers than either M Le Feuvre or M

Delaplanche; but one has a vague perception that his powers are limited, and that to desire in his case what one so sincerely wishes in the case of M Dubois, nao,” would be unwise

Happily, when he is at his best there is no temptation to form such a wish The ”Premieres Funerailles” is a superb work--”the chef-d'oeuvre of our modern sculpture,” a French critic enthusiastically terh spiritual distinction--not quite enough of either elegance or elevation--topraise

But it may be justly termed, I think, the most completely representative of the ious difficulties of elaborate composition ”in the round”--difficulties to which M Barrias succumbed in the ”Spartacus” of the Tuileries Gardens--and its success in subordinating the details of a group to the end of enforcing a singlethe while their individual interest, are co superior in this respect has been done since John of Bologna's ”Rape of the Sabines”

VII

M Emmanuel Fremiet occupies a place by himself There have been but two enius for representing anireat pupil, Cain The tigress in the Central Park, perhaps the best bronze there (the co), and the best also of the several variations of the theme of which, at one time, the sculptor apparently could not tire, familiarizes Americans with the talent of Cain In this association Rouillard, whose horse in the Trocadero Gardens is an aniht to beelephant of Freenre_ exists and has excellences and defects of its ohile in more purely artistic worth it is quite eclipsed by its rival Still if _fauna_ is interesting in and of itself, which no one who knows Barye's ould controvert, it is stillis done with it In his ambitious and colossal work at the Trocadero, M Fremiet does in fact use his _fauna_ freely as artistic ical interest that appears paramount The same is true of the elephant near by, in which it seenedly attacked the difficult proble embodied aardness decorative Still more conspicuous, of course, is the artistic interest, the fancy, the hu satyr feeding honey to a brace of bear's cubs, because he here concerns hienius freer play And everyone will remember the sensation caused by his i off a Wo entirely, and, wholly forgetful of his studies at the Jardin des Plantes, devotes himself to purelythis I do not at all mean to insist on the superiority of monumental sculpture to the sculpture of _fauna_; it is superior, and Barye himself cannot make one content with the exclusive consecration of ad distinctly unintellectual passions M Fremiet, in ecstasy over his picturesque anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, would scout this; but it is nevertheless true that in such works as the ”age de la pierre,”

which, if it may be called a monumental clock-top, is nevertheless certainly le of the restored Chateau de Pierrefonds; his ”Jeanne d'Arc” (the later statue is not, I think, essentially different froes, in the new Hotel de Ville of Paris, not only is his subject a subject of loftier andinterest than his elephants and deer and bears, but his own genius finds a enial medium of expression In other words, any one who has seen his ”Torch-bearer” or his ”Louis d'Orleans”his time at the Jardin des Plantes In nity that borders closely upon the grand style itself The ”Jeanne d'Arc” is indeed criticised for lack of style The horse is fine, as alith M Fremiet; the action of both horse and rider is noble, and the hoeneity of the two, so to speak, is admirably achieved But the character of the Maid is not perfectly satisfactory to _a priori_ critics, to critics who have more or less hard and fast notions about the immiscibility of the heroic and the familiar The ”Jeanne d'Arc” is of course a heroic statue, illustrating one of the ends; and it is unquestionably familiar and, if one chooses, defiantly unpretentious Perhaps the Maid as M Freend-producing deeds Certainly she is the Maid neither of Chapu, nor of Bastien-Lepage, nor of the current convention She is, rather, pretty, synonne_; but M Freracious one, and even the critic addicted to forhly in love with it; beside this s count very little But the other torks just mentioned are open to no objection of this kind or of any other, and in the category to which they belong they are splendid works Since Donatello and Verrocchio nothing of the kind has been done which surpasses them; and it is only M Fremiet's penchant for anihter fancy in coree his fine talent for illustrating the grand style with natural ease and large simplicity

VIII

I have alreadythose who have ”arrived” of the school of acadeh it would be easy to extend the list with Antonin Carles, whose ”Jeunesse” of the World's Fair of 1889 is a very graceful embodiment of adolescence; Suchetet, whose ”Byblis” of the same exhibition caused his early death to be deplored; Adrien Gaudez, Etcheto, Idrac, and, of course, many others of distinction There is no looseness in characterizing this as a ”school;” it has its own qualities and its corresponding defects It stands by itself--apart from the Greek sculpture and from its inspiration, the Renaissance, and from the more recent traditions of Houdon, or of Rude and Carpeaux It is a thoroughly legiti at the present time, at once splendid and simple The moment of triuerous one A slack-water period of intellectual slothfulness nearly always ensues

Ideas which have previously been struggling to get a hearing have become accepted ideas that have almost the force of axioms; no one thinks of their justification, of their basis in real truth and fact; they take their place in the great category of conventions The er the exhilaration of discovery, the stimulus of fresh perception; the sense beco with the sauided by the same principles, its production becomes inevitably hackneyed, artificial, lifeless; the _Zeit-Geist_, the Time-Spirit, is really a kind of Sisyphus, and the essence of life is movement This law of perpetual renewal, of the periodical quickening of the human spirit, explains the barrenness of the inheritance of the greatest inality is a necessary element of perfection; why Phidias, Praxiteles, Donatello, Michael Angelo (not to go outside of our subject), had no successors Once a thing is done it is done for all time, and the study of perfection itself avails only as a stimulus to perfection in other coreater the necessity for an absolute break with it in order to secure anything like an equivalent in living force; in _its_ direction at least everything vital has been done So its lack of original force, its over-carefulness for style, its inevitable sensitiveness to the criticism that is based on convention, make the weak side of the French academic sculpture of the present day, fine and triu are not a little conventional, and have the academic rather than a spontaneous inspiration, has, however, lately been distinctly felt as a misfortune and a liinning of a new movement out of which, whatever ood can couste Rodin and Jules Dalou

VI

THE NEW MOVEMENT IN SCULPTURE

I

Side by side with the academic current in French art has moved of recent years a naturalist and roorous though occasionally exaggerated In any of the great departments of activity nationally pursued--as art has been pursued in France since Francis I--there are always these rival currents, of which now one and now the other constantly affects the ebb and flow of the tide of thought and feeling The classic and romantic duel of 1830, the rise of the naturalist opposition to Hugo and romanticism in our own day, are familiar instances of this phenoainst David and Ingres are equally well known in the field of painting Of recent years the foundation of the periodical _L'Art_ and its rivalry with the conservative _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ mark with the same definiteness, and an articulate precision, the same conflict between truth, as new eyes see it, and tradition Never, perhaps, since the early Renaissance, however, has nature asserted her supremacy over convention in such unmistakable, such insistent, and, oneat the present moment Sculpture, in virtue of the defiant palpability of its material, is the most impalpable of the plastic arts, and therefore it feels less quickly than the rest, perhaps, the i canons Natural iest But convention once its conqueror, the return to nature is hereto the ih natural standardsthem to so specialized an expression Its variation depends therefore more completely on the individual artist himself Niccol Pisano, for example, died when Giotto o years old, but, at the other end of the historic line of modern art, it has taken years since Delacroix to furnish recognition for Auguste Rodin The stronghold of the Institute had been mined randto the relative and in fact polemic position which these two artists occupy, the movement which they represent, and of which as yet they themselves form a chief part, a little obscures their respective personalities, which are nevertheless, in sculpture, by far the most positive and puissant of the present epoch M Rodin's work, especially, is so novel that one's first impression in its presence is of its implied criticism of the Institute One thinks first of its attitude, its point of view, its end, aim, and means, and of the utter contrast of these with those of the accepted contemporary masters in his art--of Dubois and Chapu, Mercie and Saint-Marceaux One judges generally, and instinctively avoids personal and direct iht is not, Are the ”Saint Jean” and the ”Bourgeois de Calais” successful works of art? But, _Can_ they be successful if the accepted masterpieces of modern sculpture are not to be set down as insipid? One is a little bewildered It is easy to see and to estis of M Dubois's delightful and impressive reraceful compositions

They are of their tiuished eneral inspiration Their spiritual characteristics are traditional and universal, and technically, without perhaps often passing beyond it, they exhaust cleverness You may enjoy or resent their classic and exemplary excellences, as you feel your taste to have suffered from the lack or the superabundance of academic influences; I cannot fancy an American insensitive to their charm But it is plain that their perfection is a very different thing from the characteristics of a strenuous artistic personality seeking expression

If these latter when encountered are seen to be evidently of an extreh order, contemporary criticis with the endeavor to appreciate, instead of ree of its own familiarity with them the test of their merit

French aesthetic authority, which did this in the instances of Barye, of Delacroix, of Millet, of Manet, of Puvis de Chavannes, did it also for many years in the instance of M Rodin It owes its defeat in the contest with him--for like the recalcitrants in the other contests, M

Rodin has definitively triumphed--to the unwise atteh to sculptors, but wholly inapplicable to hi to define in his as the enius Taken by themselves and considered as characteristics of the Institute sculptors, the obvious traits of this work ed eccentric and e academic disposition of line and mass to true structural expression! One would simply feel the loss of his accustomed style and harh the immediate force of his oerful te and traditions is absurd The question in his case is sireat artistic personality, an extraordinary and powerful temperament, or whether he is ainst the measure and taste of the Institute But this is really no longer a question, however it o; and when his Dante portal for the new Palais des Arts Decoratifs shall have been finished, and the public had an opportunity to see what the sculptor's friend and only serious rival, M Dalou, calls ”one of thepieces of sculpture of the nineteenth century,” it will be recognized that M Rodin, so far froht the canon itself to judgment

How and why, people will perceive in proportion to their receptivity