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 47
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with which his figures are associated should serve as plinths to accommodate two groups of sitting figures to be composed by Saint Gaudens, who died, however, before they could be carried into effect. Pratt chose to demonstrate the adequacy of single figures by the expedient of imbedding them in the blocks. A vigorous protest was made against this purpose by the Art Commission, which proved unavailing against the successful claim of the trustees that, as an organic interest of the building, the matter was beyond its jurisdiction.
Persuaded by the merits of the excellent bust of Phillips Brooks which Pratt executed for Brooks House at Harvard, some admirers of the great preacher, dissatisfied with the Saint Gaudens memorial outside Trinity, com- missioned a full figure in the hope that it might prove convincing enough to cause its substitution for the other. Pratt responded with a design of admirable monumental restraint, but the widow of Saint Gaudens, who intervened, was successful in proving that the replacement could not be legally accomplished, and the figure was removed to Phillips Brooks House, Cambridge.
Pratt's best work was his Edward Everett Hale in the Public Garden, which has suffered in public esteem by reason of the curiously low and meager plinth which, he insisted, was most logically adapted to a figure in motion. The orientation of the statue is likewise unfortunate, but this was determined by its contemplated relation to a more monumental entrance to the Garden which was never realized. The portrait itself is an admirable characterization of this picturesque and historic Boston citizen.
Cyrus E. Dallin (born 1861) comes of right by his notable faculty for inter- preting the genius of the Indian, for he was born in the West and as a youngster intimately knew the Indian in his habitat. Himself one of the finer products of the Anglo-Saxon culture, he holds a passionate conviction of the intrinsic superiority of the Indian character. The political and social subjection of this primitive figure is to him one of the cruel tragedies of history. His pre- occupation with the cherished motive, therefore, has always had in it an element of reverence which has set him apart from other men to whom the elemental American life appeals as romance and superficial picturesqueness.
Dallin's early education was had in Boston with Truman H. Bartlett, and here he has made his home since his return from Paris, where he went in 1888 to continue his studies under Chapu. There a temporary deflection of his early bias, which manifested itself in certain classical essays, was corrected by the advent of the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill, which prompted the first of his notable series of Indian compositions. This was "The Signal of Peace," now in Lincoln Park, Chicago. A more successful variant of the same motive, "The Medicine Man," was first cxhibited in the Salon in 1899. This work, generally accounted one of the outstanding achievements of American sculpture, occupies a prominent site in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. Boston, however, is secure in the belief that the best of Dallin's achievements is the equestrian figure, "Appeal to the Great Spirit" (1909), which not undeservedly stands in solitary exclusiveness on the axis of the approach to the Museum of Fine Arts. In its admirable repose, in the elevation of its theme and in the sheer beauty of its lines, it is a work on which the reputation of the sculptor might securely rest. His soul utterly withdrawn from the things of earth, the Indian
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"APPEAL TO THE GREAT SPIRIT" (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts)
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horseman, in a splendid gesture of humility, gives himself to an eestatie eom- munion with his god. Obviously familiar with sueh moments, the horse, a real animal of the plains, patiently awaits the nervous resumption of the rein.
Among others of the better known works of Dallin in the Boston neighbor- hood are the bas-relief of Julia Ward Howe in the Museum, the figure of Anne Hutchinson in the State House grounds, a vigorous piece of eharaeterization, and "The Hunter" in Arlington.
The name of Kitson is deeply impressed upon the reeords of latter-day Boston seulpture, first through the work of Samuel J., who did exeellent serviee in raising loeal standards of eeclesiastieal statuary, but whose reputation was early overshadowed by the larger talent of his younger brother and pupil, Henry Hudson. The latter, born in England in 1865, is a seulptor whose independent aeeomplishment has been unhappily limited by reason of frail health. His earliest produet of note, "The Musie of the Sea," a work of delight- ful faney, was executed in Paris in 1883. But it was the quality of "The Minute Man" at Lexington which first eentered publie interest on his work. With fine monumental technique, Kitson imparted to the figure of the young patriot an heroie air, a virile foree and pieturesqueness, which influeneed many a war memorial in the years to follow. Two other products of his middle years are the Farragut at Marine Park, South Boston, and the Patriek A. Collins memorial at Charlesgate, the one an adequate rendering of the leonine Admiral, the other a composition dominated by a rather massive bust of Collins on a granite shaft, against whose sides are set charming figures of Columbia and Erin.
To the list of H. H. Kitson belongs the rather disappointing statue of General Banks at the State House. This figure, if it. be accepted as an aceurate statement, would imply that nature limited its admirable endowment of the General to the eompass of the bust.
The memorial to Robert Burns in the Fenway furnished a happy subjeet for Kitson's eapaeity and, through the rude graee of the pedestrian figure of the ploughboy, plaid over shoulder and dog at heel, he eontrives a thoroughly eon- vincing impression of the Seottish bard.
Another talent of consequenee connoted by the name of Kitson developed from the marriage of Henry Hudson with his most aeeomplished pupil, Theo Aliee Ruggles, to whom have fallen many independent commissions, as well as a number of honors both at home and abroad. Her work not only betrays no slightest hint of femininity but reveals a breadth and power both of eoneeption and handling which have puzzled some erities. Her early work of 1902, the "Volunteer" at Newburyport, sueeessfully established her title to deal with the monumental problem; as a consequence, her life has been largely engrossed by the war memorial, through which she has achieved a high professional plaee. Of the works of her maturity, an exeellent loeal example is the statue of Kosciusko, the Polish patriot, ereeted in the Boston Publie Garden.
In respeet of seulpture as of other spiritual interests, Boston long ago relinquished to New York that easy supremacy it derives through the magnetism of its wealth, but there are left a number of challenging capacities which eould do honorable serviee to publie art that are now often condemned to private trivialities.
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SCULPTURE
Albert H. Atkins is one of the most gifted of the younger group, a man whose feeling for design, not too common a talent among seulptors, has been recognized in the architectural profession. The Coppenhagen fountain at Edward Everett square with its bronze relief, a charming bit of classicism, represents his single civic contribution. Amongst many commissions which he has executed for architects is the great bronze screen in the apse in the Cathedral of St. Paul, Minnesota (in which are recorded with technical brilliance the chief episodes in the life of the patron saint), as well as all but one of the monumental figures in the ambulatory chapels of the same building. He was also responsible for the decorative panels of the pulpit in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
In Richard Recchia, John F. Paramino and Joseph A. Coletti, the Italian tradition is interestingly represented in Boston. Recchia is a man of excellent fancy who has done beautiful and distinguished things and is gaining notably in authority.
A pupil of Saint Gaudens, Paramino has been singularly favored in having had almost exelusive opportunity to design a multitude of minor historic memo- rials erected by the city in preparation for the Boston Tereentenary. This work, which had to be performed with great expedition, was executed admirably and a number of handsome bas-reliefs are distributed at historical spots through- out the eity. Involved with this undertaking, however, was an interest which ealled for a more thoughtful study than conditions permitted, so that the monu- ment to the Founders on the Beacon street site of the Common probably does less than justice to the talent of Paramino. His relief of Lafayette on the Tremont Street Mall is an excellent example of his sensitive modeling.
Coletti, who is an instructor of his art at Harvard, brings to his work the attitude of the seholar and the romanticist. He has an excellent feeling for architectural relations, which is charmingly revealed in the imaginative Gothie figures of St. George's Chapel, Newport.
Outstanding among women sculptors are Anna Coleman Ladd, Bashka Paeff and Katharine W. Lane. Mrs. Ladd has composed a number of delightful works inspired by the garden setting, uniting a resourceful fancy with a strong intellectual gift. The versatility of Miss Paeff is indicated by her equally distinguished suecess with the animal motive and the child portrait. Her most ambitious effort, however, is represented in the Maine monument on the border between that state and New Hampshire. Recent exhibitions reveal Miss Lane's talent with animal subjects developing more and more notably in subtlety of design and sensitiveness of rendering. Her heroic-sized frieze for the Biological Building at Harvard has given her a rare opportunity.
We are accustomed to associate Anna Hyatt Huntington with the metrop- olis, where her achievement has earned her a notable place, but she is by birth of Cambridge. The equestrian statue of Joan of Arc in Riverside Drive, New York, her most important work, is a thoughtful and independent study of an inviting theme and a splendidly decorative item of that interesting thoroughfare.
A talent not yet adequately asserted is that of Philip Sears, whose active interest in seulpture is but a matter of a few years but already notably vindi- eated by his bust of Henry Cabot Lodge and by his excellent monumental bronze of the Indian youth, exhibited at the Royal Academy, and recently set up at Harvard, Massachusetts.
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Frederick W. Allen, a pupil of Bela Pratt, has done accomplished work, including, as of his early years, some of the decorative panels on the Fenway façade of the Art Museum and, more recently, the pediment of the Appellate Court in New York.
Leonard Craske, an Englishman, once associated with the drama, is the author of a number of vigorous things. His monument of the "Fisherman" at Gloucester is a virile and splendidly picturesque composition.
Bruce Saville, too, has given adequate evidence that he is to be accounted among the potentialities of the profession in Boston. Karl F. Skoog and Nanna Bryant are well advanced on the road to memorable achievement.
George Demetrios, whose Greek name should prove auspicious for a sculptor, is highly esteemed among the younger men. So is Lawrence Tenney Stevens, whose recent exhibition at the Art Club revealed a versatile and unusual talent. Though he has moved to New York, he was born in Boston and studied at the Art Museum School. John Wilson should be mentioned here and Louise Allen, who is associated with Albert Atkins.
Of our architectural sculptors, the earliest of consequence was John Evans, an Englishman, who wrought excellent decorative accessories of the designs of H. H. Richardson and other leading architects of his time. The most noted of the present generation, John Kirchmayer, whose long career as a sculptor in wood made for an inestimable contribution to the eeclesiastical architecture of America, was a native of Oberammergau but, since early youth, a resident of Cambridge. Hugh Cairns, a veteran in this field, was in early years associated with John Evans on the sculptures of the porch of Trinity Church and his accomplishment since in the Romanesque tradition is worthy of note. Others to be marked are Ernest Pellegrini, who is doing excellent modeling in the religious field, and Sidney Woollett, whose power is well attested in the noble figure of St. Patrick in the Cathedral of St. Paul, Minnesota.
It cannot be said, despite the honorable estate to which it has developed, that sculpture has become approachably the passionate coneern with us that it represents to many of the older civilizations. Whatever of emotional reaction may attend the unveiling of a new eivic figure is soon over. A brief scrutiny and the effigy becomes merely an accepted and rather neglected item of the civie scene, occasionally to emerge into a fatal notoriety as some whimsical critie detects a latent humor in it. In an earlier day the Boston memorials of certain statesmen suffered cruelly in public esteem from the vitriolie ridicule of Wendell Phillips, whose name, it is not unfair to say, imparted to this sort of criticism an unduly large implication of authority. It is not impossible that this cynical influence still exereises a cautious restraint on the communal emotions.
The traditional conservatism of Boston is to be noted in its indifference to the modernistic philosophy of contemporary Europe. No public work of art has in the least degree reacted to it, and only a very few sculptors, and these of the younger group of the eity, appear to derive stimulation from it. The influence of this movement, marked at the moment with superficial folly, is certain, however, to be as far-reaching on American sculpture as it has already been on American architecture. And, with reservations which properly respect the national individuality, it holds the capacity for large beneficence to both.
THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN BOSTON, 1880=1930
By GRANT HYDE CODE
I-1880-1890
Our study is limited to objects which are either subsidiary to architec- ture, like stained glass and all articles of household furniture, or are so closely allied to some of these household arts as to form branches of the same craft, as bookbinding is related to upholstering in leather, and jewelry is a branch of metal working, like the making of table silver.
Many events that had the greatest influence on the development of the decorative arts in Boston during the 80's are episodes in the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire. The mere quantity of building which took place meant a fresh opportunity for architects and for all those who dealt in the lesser decorative arts. But the expansion also brought about a complete change in the style of architecture and was attended by changes in taste and in the objects which minister to taste.
The 80's saw a revolution in the art of interior decorating. In Boston this movement was given a characteristic turn by the schools of art. But the influence of Boston on professional interior decorating was vastly more impor- tant. The rebuilding after the fire and the development of the Back Bay engaged the services of all the important New York decorators and placed them in contact with Boston taste and under the dominance of Van Brunt, Richardson and other Boston architects.
That the style of architecture adopted for many private residences was called Queen Anne may serve partly to explain the ornate interior trim. It was a medley of mixed paneling, pilasters, and heavily carved overmantels, suggesting the Renaissance style in England; of cornices out of scale with the usually low rooms and oppressively ornate beamed ceilings, imitated from very much larger rooms in Italian palaces.
Though inuch of the woodwork was done to order in Europe, the greater part of it was manufactured in Boston shops and testificd to the existence of wood carvers, joiners and cabinetmakers of the highest skill and of a sculptural and plastic sense, however undisciplined, that is almost wholly wanting in the taste of today.
The problem of the 80's in manufacturing was the development of material and human facilities in this country technically good enough to compete with Europe, the development of American designers and competent technicians in all the arts, and the winning of a trade war against foreign imports. Probably the most important contribution of Boston toward this development was the maintenance of the European standard, which gradually forced American manufacturers to equal and surpass European work in technical perfection and in quality of design.
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Boston's taste was in a measure Gothic, and its work partly a study along Gothic lines. The avid interest in all forms of life, the painting of native landscapes and of native flowers, the derivation of materials of design from local realities, was a distinctly Gothic tendency.
The amateur "female artist," as the curious taste of the day called her, sprang up in hundreds if not in thousands, seized needle and paint brush, and began to cover every available space with pictures of landscapes and flowers. And in the midst of this vivacious activity, the greatest amateur collector of Boston began her work, Mrs. John L. Gardner.
The tendency of the decorative arts during the 80's was neither directed by nor summarized in an expressed theory of design. Yet that work as a whole possessed a marked style and had a unified direction in practice from which the innate theory of design dominant in the period may be inferred. The salient characteristics are complex, all-over decoration, colossal scale in proportion to the space decorated, emphasis on detail at the expense of general form, a liberal use of color and brilliant surface, as great a variety of texture as of ornamental form.
Possibly the current catchwords of richness, magnificence, clegance, inter- est and sentiment explain the effect desired. It was in a large measure literary, but not wholly. The exciting effect of varied detail, rich texture, is an artistic quality distinct from the knowledge that the materials selected to form this texture open vistas of geography and history.
The effect of grandeur, interest, finish of detail, had its counterpart in the expressed theory of academic painting. Transferred to the decorative arts, this theory meant that the householder desired to create for himself a grand setting, a living picture in the historic manner, full of large forms, full of interest and importance. The passion for unsymmetrical balance, based on a vogue for the Japanese, was akin to the fondness for elegant disorder, in part a reaction against the excessive simplicity and formal balance of the classic revival. Chiefly under the influence of Louis C. Tiffany, the Moorish and Japanese obtained a fashionable place in Boston. Combined with stained glass, Eastlake Gothic and everything else that Tiffany had ever heard of, they formed in his own practice what was irreverently referred to as Tiffany's Hottentot style! The theory of "covering-up" made its appearance in a variety of forms and fell in with the taste for all-over decoration. Stained glass was advocated because it covered up disagreeable views in cities. The decorator who turned his atten- tion to the tenements of the less magnificent usually limited his advice to the selection of paint, wall paper and textiles for the purpose of covering up any architectural details which might appear.
In the early 80's the interior of the Boston residence was a collection of historical antiquities, among which pottery, porcelain, French and Italian bronzes, oriental rugs, modern carpets, fabrics, papers and upholstered and rattan furniture were the most conspicuous objects. If we must give the style a name, the "dry-goods style" of interior decorating is even more appropriate than the "collector's" or the "antiquarian." It is true that the appearance of an interior was largely determined by miscellaneous objects, but the domi- nant power in arrangement and in scheme of decoration was that glorified
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dry-goods clerk who posed as an interior decorator. It was the fashion to use as much cloth as possible and as many different patterns. Windows and doors were hung with several pairs of hangings. They were elaborately made and decorated with embroidery, appliqué work, fringes, ruffles, flounces and borders, and were often of an enormous size so that they could be draped into voluminous folds.
Most of the furniture was upholstered, seldoin two pieces with the saine material, and such articles of furniture as were not upholstered were covered and draped. There was a plethora of pillows, not only where one might expect them, on chairs and settees, but artfully arranged on the floor, which, in turn, was covered with a carpet of large pattern and with sinaller oriental rugs, overlapping in that defiance of order which was considered inforinal and elegant. Plastered walls were hung with papers and fabrics of large pattern. The divi- sion of wainscot, dado and frieze was preserved even in low rooms, and gave an opportunity for the use of a different style on each. The taste of the day saw no objection to decorating the four walls of one room in four entirely differ- ent styles, though it must be admitted that this practice was not common.
Two events combined to suppress this extraordinary style. The French dictators of fashion saw fit to decree that excessive use of textiles in interior decoration was no longer fashionable and that a revival of the styles of Louis XIV to Louis XVI should be in vogue. The other event was the revival of the pottery and porcelain industries in England and France and the establishment of them in America. As soon as contemporary potteries began to reproduce prized and collected wares, collectors stopped collecting and presented their collections to museums. The decorative tendency of the day was therefore toward an elimination of drapery and bric-a-brac, though they remained plentiful throughout the 80's.
In a setting of gilt, plush, ribbons, lace, bits of mirror and billows of fabrics, paint and needle labored together to beautify the Boston home. By and large it was the day of naturalistic ornament, whether Japanese, Gothic or contem- porary, the day of large-scale all-over decoration and of the picture in the frame .* Technical understanding came later, and with it a structural sense in ornament and a larger appreciation of the meaning of design.
II - 1890-1900
Of all the influences bearing on the development of the decorative arts in Boston during the period 1890-1900, architecture was the most powerful. Since it is axiomatic that the decorative arts, like the fine arts, are subordinate to architecture in their function, this is perhaps natural. There was, however, a failure of other agencies to exert a functional influence. The Museum of Fine Arts by policy as by name placed the decorative arts in a subordinate position. So did the art schools. So did the numerous and enthusiastic amateurs of the arts.
* AUTHOR'S NOTE .-- That is, there was an excessive enthusiasm for the use of pictures and a neglect of other elements of decoration. Consequently, walls were overcrowded with framed paintings; and other objects, some of which should never have been decorated at all, were covered either with details which looked as if they had been extracted from pietures, or with complete pietures designed as if to be framed and hung on a wall.
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Manufacturers, ingenious enough about perfecting business organization and design of machinery, considered the design of their products good enough if it was rather carelessly copied from something else, adapted to quick and easy production by machinery, and superficially altered in appearance so as to be presented with some plausibility as the latest thing. Small shops and the recently invented department stores displayed these sorry articles. The public installed them in use. Thus the decorative arts of the 90's, as judged by the furnishings of the average Boston residence, sank to a level generally lower than that of the overdecorated 80's.
Against the trend toward shoddy design and workmanship, Boston architecture opposed its influence in several ways. There was, first of all, the effect of buildings themselves on people who furnished and used them. That was a general and subtle influence on taste, which can be observed at. large better than it can be illustrated in detail. More specific than this was the actual practice of architects in designing and supervising the manufacture of objects of the subsidiary arts for use in the buildings they designed. Still more specific was the formation of the Society of Arts and Crafts under the leadership of Boston architects.
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