USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 46
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A less gifted contemporary of Horatio Greenough and a fellow student at Rome, Hiram Powers (born 1805), had better fortune, for his "Greek
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Slave" achieved a fame greater than its considerable merit deserved. His sole contribution to Boston, the idealized figure of Daniel Webster in the grounds of the State House, is a work of less than inediocrity, defective alike in design and anatomical precision.
One may not omit record at this period of Henry Kirke Brown, a man of wholly native training, who was born in 1814, in Leyden, Massachusetts, and educated in his art at Boston. Like Powers, of an eccentric sort of ability, his general accomplishment was unimportant, but his single work of note, the equestrian figure of Washington in Union square, New York, erected in 1856, achieved a place as one of the most distinguished of American memorials.
The influence of great wars upon national art has always been profound and the deeds of heroism which ennobled the long and poignant drama of our Civil War brought to the art of America a new inspiration and the perception of a definite mission. To the sculptor came the immediate task of commemo- rating the important figures in the struggle, a challenge which taught him that a Greek epic was essentially no more inspiring than a Yankee one. If the American student had still to resort to the foreign atelier, he brought to it now a more conscious independence of his environment. This spirit was already finely exemplified by Thomas Ball (born 1819), whose earlier professional interest was concerned with Federal personalities, but who lived to devote a ripe maturity to the motives of the Civil War. Ball, who is one of the most important figures in American art, was a native of Boston, which is fortunate in the possession of several of his mnost admirable works. His celebrated equestrian figure of Washington, for which he had been commissioned before the war, stood completed in the Boston Public Garden in 1864. This work remains the most vivid and monumentally decorative object in the city and is worthy to be regarded as one of the outstanding national accomplishments. Lorado Taft, a penetrating critic, in his excellent "History of American Sculpture," qualifies a very respectful tribute to it by the opinion that the figure of Washington is less dignified in design than the earlier one by Brown in Union square. "It has more of the air of the everyday man, the leader looking around himn sharply as he rides." Unquestionably the impression on the spectator is of the alert commander rather than the solemn and idealistic symbol of the national patriotismn.
A later work, the Emancipation Group in Park square, is a replica of that erected in Washington in 1875. In effect this memorial was for long virtually obscured to the Boston public by reason of an architectural background of distracting and raucous commercialism, until it was recently revealed by the quieter foil of the new Motor Mart. As a study of Lincoln it is interesting to contrast Ball's normalized conception of the Emancipator with the zestful realism which his lank and picturesque homeliness has provoked from certain latter-day sculptors. In the relation between the dominant portrait and the kneeling slave, the design is well composed and rendered with commendable simplicity, while the human element in the theme clearly engaged the intense feeling of the artist. Like some other civic sculptures which embody the symbolic element with portraiture, this has suffered in popular appreciation through the exercise of a peculiarly potent but ignorant wit.
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Ball made two other contributions to the Boston scene in the standing figures of Josiah Quincy in the yard of City Hall and the Charles Sumner in the Public Garden. The statue of Quincy is excellent in scale, has a pose of notable dignity, and the conventional dress is artistically qualified by the expedient of the cloak, an accessory of costume which has tolerable authority. The somewhat uninteresting treatment of the surfaces implies an inexperience in respect of the agreeable possibilities of bronze as they have been exemplified in modern statuary, but the austerities of technique are not without their value in assisting the effect of monumental impressiveness. Sumner is less satisfactory by reason of its rather dull design, and particularly of its bald and uncompromising planes.
The Washington Memorial at Methuen, Massachusetts, was the crowning work of Ball's career, the commission coming to him as he reached seventy. The complete artistry of this design demonstrates that he had only then reached the height of his power. That he was capable of successfully dealing with the ecclesiastical tradition is evident in his admirable "St. John, the Evangelist," at Forest Hills Cemetery and the Chickering monument at Mount Auburn.
A contemporary of Ball, William Wetmore Story, though a brilliant and delightful figure in the artistic and literary history of Boston, was born at Salem and, for the greater part of his life, was a resident of Rome, where his opulent scholarship found agreeable exercise in the company of many of his distinguished countrymen. Trained as a sculptor, his interest inclined him to the literary motive, but he made a few essays in portraiture, of which Boston possesses two, the picturesque and somewhat dramatic figure of General Prescott in the grounds of Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, and the luckless effigy of Edward Everett recently consigned to the square of that name in Dorchester, whose merits were fairly provocative of the withering satire of Wendell Phillips.
To this period in Boston belongs the curious talent of Dr. William Rimmer (born 1816), an exiled Englishman who gained a wide reputation as a teacher of artistic anatomy, an instruction which he imparted wholly by means of an extraordinarily facile draftsmanship. Despite his sophistication, however, his creative efforts in sculpture were curiously inept and, in the granite figure of Alexander Hamilton on Commonwealth avenue, erected in 1864, he rather successfully conceals his bias as an anatomist. The ungraciousness of his difficult material seems to have discouraged and perplexed Rimmer so that the work has the crudeness of an unfinished study. More significant essays are in the possession of the Boston Museumn.
Forsaking a career in middle life as a successful Boston merchant, Thomas Gould (born 1808) gave himself to the study of sculpture with the ardor of a poetic nature. Influenced doubtless by his friendship with the elder Booth, inany of his works were inspired by the Shakespearean dramas. His best- known figure, "West Wind," executed in 1869, was a product of his sojourn in Florence and is now in the Mercantile Library of St. Louis. The work is strongly suggestive of Canova but the composition, particularly as to the design of the drapery, is singularly unworthy of the inspiration.
It was significant of the developing native taste that it was France rather than Italy that prevailed with Richard Saltonstall Greenough, the younger
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brother of Horatio, who was the first American student to be drawn to Paris. The more conspicuous of his works are the familiar Benjamin Franklin in the forecourt of Boston City Hall and the Governor Winthrop, which stood for many years in Scollay square and is now in the grounds of the First Church on Marlborough street. The figure of Franklin, clothed in the costume he wore at the Court of France, is reasonably interesting as portraiture but dis- tinctly lacking the ampleness and breadth of design which are so notably present in the figure of Josiah Quincy in its neighborhood. Two of the four bas-reliefs of the plinth were contributed by Ball. The Winthrop is chicfly interesting as a piece of sartorial history. The figure of the Governor is adequate, but the head, as it emerges from the distracting and ugly ruff, is weak and uncon- vincing. The "Boy and Eagle" in the Boston Athenaeum and the "Carthaginian Girl" in the Museum of Fine Arts are two of his minor works.
The first woman sculptor, Harriet Hosmer, may almost be claimed by Boston, having been born in Watertown in 1830. A Roman student and an artist of considerable power, her work was rather too exclusively under classical influence. Her better known works were a "Beatrice Cenci" in the Mercan- tile Library, St. Louis, a graceful recumbent figure reminiscent of Canova, and the "Zenobia," Queen of Palmyra, now in the Metropolitan Museum, a superb design which suffers much from a too architectonic treatment.
An carlier contemporary of Miss Hosmer, but one whosc interest in sculpture developed late, was Anne Whitney, a vivid personage in the cultural history of Boston. Her better known works are the statue of Samuel Adams, a replica of her work in the Capitol at Washington, and the familiar cffigy of Leif Ericsson on Commonwealth avenue, whose curving prettiness is more sug- gestive of a figure in opera than of a stern and rugged navigator.
The new national consciousness which had been gradually developing since the Civil War was manifested in the sculpture of the Centennial Exposi- tion by its marked independence of Roman influences. The rationality of the French schools from this time became the most powerful influence on the American student. Throughout a long and rich accomplishment, John Q. A. Ward of Ohio much enhanced his influence on American art by his independ- ence of both these schools. But one, and that an inadequate and uncharacter- istic example of his works, is to be found in Boston in the Ether Monument in the Public Garden, where the sculptural elements are unfortunately involved in an architectural composition of petty and unimpressive scale.
Of the group of sculptors identified with the erection of the memorials of the Civil War, the most accomplished, Martin Milmore, was born in Ireland in 1844 and came to Boston with his family at the age of seven. Associated in his early years with his brother as a carver in wood, he later entered the studio of Thomas Ball. At twenty he was commissioned to execute the three granite figures of Ceres, Flora and Pomona, which formed impressive decorative acces- sorics of the façade of old Horticultural Hall on Tremont street. His out- standing work, however, is the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Boston Common, whose quality is enormously superior to the contemporaneous work in this kind. The general design is impressive, but the alternating association of allegorical figures in classic drapery with warriors in contemporary uniform
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is not entirely happy, however admirable the individual elements. Milmore executed several other war memorials of lesser consequence in New England, one of which is in Winthrop square, Charlestown. The picturesque figure of General Glover, a rich and flamboyantly decorative adjunct of Commonwealth avenue, is an example which gives interesting evidence of his versatility.
The dominion of the classic was now rapidly weakening even in Rome itself, and a number of the brilliant men of this time, including Pierce F. Connelly, Moses Ezekiel and Olin Warner, were bringing their art into more logical rela- tion to the national life. It is true there was still a certain dependence for technique on the European schools of Rome, Paris or Berlin, but the mind of the American sculptor was effectively liberated. Of the men who were leading American art to higher levels Warner (born 1844) is of special interest in a Boston chronicle through the circumstance that the city contains two public works by his hand, the William Lloyd Garrison on Commonwealth avenue and the General Devens in the State House grounds. The figure of Garrison is an admirably simple composition, the seated figure giving an instant and satisfying impression of repose but revealing at the same time in the expres- sion of the fine head a personality alert and purposeful. Lorado Taft has pronounced this work to be technically one of the greatest statues in America. The Devens is considerably less important, though the upstanding figure of the General is superb in scale and rendered with great authority.
The time was now ripe for the advent of the man whose genius was to put a felicitous and convincing stamp upon American sculpture. Augustus Saint Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1848, but in infancy was brought to America where, at thirteen, he was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter in New York. From this early experience, lasting six years, he doubtless derived that sense of delicate refinement which was later never absent from the larger enterprises associated with his name. Accomplished artist at nineteen, he went to Paris, where he remained three years, and to Rome for a similar period, ever a student of independence who sought only the things which would enrich his own spirit. He had a rigid honesty of mind which was not to be seduced by the suave superficiality of the pseudo-classicism which had wrought such mischief with many American students in Italy. Unerringly he realized what was enduring and true in Italian art and absorbed its message with enthusiasm. Even in his earliest work, it was perceived how rich was his endowment by nature and training for the commanding position in his profession which by universal sanction he attained in his maturity. A nature of singular symmetry, he had the faculty of making everything he did seem almost inevitably right. Of those who went forth in quest of it, he alone may be said to have found the real secret of the antique. Only he discovered its relevance to modern art. It is the good fortune of Boston to possess perhaps the highest product of his genius in the memorial to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. This work, enframed in a beautiful architectural setting designed by Stanford White, takes the form of a massive bronze panel on which is depicted the young Colonel on horseback leading his colored troops to battle. The superb equestrian figure, which is the dominating element of the composition, is modeled in very high relief, a shrewd concession to its northern lighting which permits, at the same time,
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the graduated perspective of the columns of advancing soldiery. Floating overhead, the inspiration of the scene, is a delicately relieved figure in classical draperies, an accessory of the composition which Saint Gaudens loved to employ in enhancement of his realism, since we witness it also in the General Sherman of New York and the Phillips Brooks of Copley square. Many eloquent tributes have been evoked by the remarkable sense of movement in this mili- tary drama, the fatefulness of purpose in the marching men and the contrasting racial genius of the figures.
In the memorial to Phillips Brooks, the renowned Episcopal bishop of Boston, a work of his late and suffering years, Saint Gaudens was not so for- tunate. Set within a marble canopy, of an architecture too feminine for the rugged walls of Trinity Church, which forms its backgound, is the robed figure of Brooks standing at a lectern in the familiar act of preaching to his people. The man is fired by his sacred message, as is revealed by the eloquent and dramatic gesture. In this respect, there is a suspicion of flamboyancy in the vitality of it, as if designed to force the contrast with the archaic figure of Christ who stands behind, his outstretched fingers gently resting upon the shoulders of the preacher. A large cross is placed behind the group, forming a conspicuous and distracting detail of a composition which is too involved to be pronounced successful. It is difficult to resist the feeling that the artistic intention would have been more simply satisfied by the expedient of placing a diminished figure of Christ upon the cross, in accordance with our older tradition.
Another work by Saint Gaudens is the set of three sculptured panels over the entrance to the Public Library, one of which is used as the Library seal. The lions couchant, on the interior staircase, are the work of his brother, Louis.
Although not of Boston, Daniel Chester French (born 1850)* has made larger contribution than any of his contemporaries to the streets and parks of the city, and no living sculptor is more affectionately esteemed in this com- munity by reason of his modest, sensitive and generous qualities. Unmoved by a definite artistic impulse till his nineteenth year, he may be said to be wholly self-trained save for the instruction of Doctor Rimmer and a year in Florence spent in the studio of Thomas Ball. Vitally American of his generation, he unites a rugged independence with a rarely tender and poetic fancy, so that his creative work has that same air of rightness and familiarity so notable in Saint Gaudens. This was early exemplified, in the memorial to Martin Milmore in Mount Auburn Cemetery, by his lovely bas-relief, "Death Arresting the Hand of the Sculptor." To the American public, weary of the vapid austerities of the graveyard, the unimagined dignity with which sentiment could enter into sepulchral art came as a revelation. Other interesting essays in this kind are the White Memorial in Forest Hills Cemetery, and the decorative figures on the Clarke Monument in the same neighborhood.
The monument to a poet must have made the same challenge to the sym- pathy and imagination of French as did that of his fellow-sculptor. At any rate, the memorial to John Boyle O'Reilly in the Back Bay Fens is equally a work of charm and lofty sentiment. The choice of composition is unusual and ingenious. A granite block with delicate bordering of Celtic design separates
*EDITORIAL NOTE .- Daniel C. French died October 7, 1931, after Mr. Maginnis had written his article.
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the scheme into two definite elements. The double background is occupied on the north side by the bust of the poet, admirable in its implication of courage and romance; on the south by a group of seated figures symbolizing the passionate genius of his career. Erin is represented in the act of twining a wreath of laurel, supported on either hand by Patriotism and Poetry; the one a virile youth in the dress of an aneient Irish warrior, the other a winged figure whose left hand holds a lyre, while with the right he tenders a leaf for the chaplet. The arrange- ment of such a group presented difficulty but no suggestion of this appears. The highly individualized units merge into a most satisfying whole. But the triumph of the work resides in the atmosphere which the sculptor has contrived of tender wistful sentiment, of quiet gentleness and dignity.
Other loeal works of characteristic quality by French are the famous John Harvard at Cambridge, a product of his early youth, the figure of Governor Wolcott in the State House, the Parkman bas-relief at Jamaica Pond, the lovely winged figure of the White Memorial in the Public Garden, the monument to Wendell Phillips on the opposite side of the Garden, the bronze doors of the Public Library and the equestrian figure of General Hooker erected at the head of Park street, done in collaboration with one of his former pupils, E. C. Potter, whose contribution was the somewhat nervous and spirited horse.
An amusing episode in the artistie history of Boston developed out of the proffer by the architect, the late Mr. MeKim, of the now famous "Bacchante" to the trustecs of the Boston Public Library as the central decoration of a fountain in the courtyard. The outraged excitement with which this gesture was received by the public was reminiscent of certain earlier demonstrations. It was provoked for the most part by the sheer nudity of the figure but, in part, at least, and with better show of reason, by a sense of the levity of such a presence in so grave a setting. The incident has been given a certain literary perma- nenee in Robert Grant's novel of Boston life, "The Chippendales." Upon its expulsion from Boston, it was given eager hospitality by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where it beeame merely a very tame exhibit, and a replica was given the sanctuary of the Art Museum in Boston. The controversial work was from the design of Frederick MacMonnies (born 1863), one of the most accomplished and serious artists of his generation. Of direct Scottish descent, MacMonnies had in a marked degree the Gallic temperament. His carly studies, which were made under Saint Gaudens, whom he greatly admired, prepared him well in the fundamentals for the Parisian ateliers, where he was instantly acclaimed for the brilliancy of his technique and the vivacity of his imagination. His professional life was prolific, but only one of his works, and that not one of the most considerable, has won enduring place in Boston, the Sir Harry Vane in the vestibule of the Public Library, a clever composition, whose charm is unfortunately too independent of its motive. Viewed as a responsible portrait of the historic governor, it has a rather daring suggestion of flippancy in its engagement with so trivial a concern as the buttoning of a glove. Its integrity as a human document, however, is doubtless of less coneern to the modern citizens of Boston than their possession of an arresting piece of sculpture which, as a mere object, is outstanding in the ingratiation of its design and its fluent and distinguished craftsmanship.
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Boston possesses only a single example, - the small marble relief, "Adam and Eve," in the Art Museum, - of that remarkably virile and imaginative artist, George Grey Barnard (born 1863). Except for fugitive hints of the individuality of his genius as revealed in a temporary exhibition held in the old Art Museumn after its abandonment, and in "The Hewer," a plaster cast of which, for a time, was exhibited in Copley square, Boston is generally un- familiar with his distinguished contribution to American sculpture. Only the Warren statue represents Paul W. Bartlett (born 1865), son of the well-known Boston art critic, Truman Bartlett, although his dimensions as a sculptor are implied by the circumstance that so proud a place as the Place du Carrousel in Paris was assigned to his admirable equestrian figure of General Lafayette. Indeed, the reproach is by no means undeserved that Boston has been timid and unenterprising in its artistic patronage so as to appear particularly in- hospitable to the claims of the brilliant younger men. In the matter of public sculpture, the Municipal Art Commission is officially limited to the negative function of accepting or rejecting what may be submitted to it, to the exclusion of such initiative as might make it a constructive and stimulating influence. The establishment of this body was the result of a public protest against the growing tolerance by the city of unworthy standards in the design of civic memorials, such as finally proved too aggravating in the case of the original statue of Colonel Cass in the Public Garden. The immediate effect of the reform was the engagement of Richard Brooks to create a new figure of the Colonel. Brooks, who was born in Braintree in 1865, by a mounting ambition and hard work, emerged from an early identification with purely commercial sculpture to the serious study of art in Paris. The figure of Cass is one of the most convincing and technically satisfying of the portrait memorials of Boston, notable for its repose and its suggestion of latent force, especially impressive in its composition from a front view. Brooks later modeled a series of excellent inedallions of the mayors of Boston, and a bust of Governor Russell was one of his early essays in responsible portraiture.
In the near neighborhood of the Cass statue, associated with a rather tasteless architectural enframement, is the figure of William Ellery Channing, by Herbert Adams (born 1858), a native of Vermont, likewise a Paris student, who was particularly successful with bust portraits. Channing is well-con- ceived and the voluminous drapery, which is ingeniously arranged to give opportunity for the display of a large and sketchy technique, is clearly calculated to contrast with the refinement of the strong and well-characterized head.
Although a native of Connecticut, Bela Pratt (born 1867) spent most of his very active life in Boston. Some early experience under Saint Gaudens preceded a Parisian education, which was interrupted by the promise of a share in the opportunities of the Chicago World's Fair. These found him, however, as yet too inexperienced and his contribution was disappointing. Associated later as a teacher of modeling with the Museum of Fine Arts School, he executed a large number of commissions, including the design of the decorative figures of Science and Art in front of the Library, a task in which, it must be acknowledged, he failed to sustain the lofty tradition of the building. It was part of the original architectural intention that the two great inasonry blocks
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