: UhBVERSAL ART SERIES y^fk^oA^^^ r. i X, >.K.>-. <\. SCULPTURE OF TO-DAY Volume I : America Great Britain Japan a : SCULPTURE OF TO-DAY Two Volumes Volume I. America Great Britain Japan Volume II. Continent of Europe <^ WILLIAM PITT, FRANCIS DERWENT WOOD EARL OF CHATHAM Frontispiece I UNIVERSAL ' ART ' SERIES EDITED BY FREDERICK MARRIOTT SCULPTURE OF TO DAY BY KINETON PARKES VOLUME 1 : America Great Britain Japan NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 597^599 FIFTH AVENUE THE WESTMINSTER PRESS HARROW ROAD LONDON y LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS all cases the illustrations are included by the INexpress permission of each individual artist or his representative. The publishers' names and addresses when known are given, as generally it is possible to purchase photographs of the sculpture of a larger size than the reproductions here provided. ENGLAND William Pitt, Earl of Chatham : Francis Der- went Wood. Marble, National Gallery of Art, Washington^ U.S.A. Frontispiece [Photo. F. Hilaire d'Arcis, 44 Oxford Road, Kilbum, London, N.W^ A Sculptor's Studio : with Armature for equestrian statue of the Gaekwar of Baroda, Francis Derwent Wood Facing page 40 [Photo. Paul Laib, 3 Thistle Grove, London, S.W] Famine Relief : W. Hamo Thornycroft. Bronze group. Detail of Curzon Memorial, Calcutta 64 The Kiss, i : W. Hamo Thornycroft. Marble, National Gallery of British Art, London 68 The Kiss, 2 : W. Hamo Thornycroft. Marble, National Gallery of British Art, London 69 [Photo. d'Arcis] LiLiTH : Alfred Drury. Marble. Diploma Gallery Royal Academy of Arts, London 80 The Dancer, I : Francis Derwent Wood. Bronze statuette. Diploma Gallery, R.A. 88 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Dancer, 2 : Francis Derwent Wood. Bronze statuette. Diploma Gallery^ Rjl. 89 [Photo. d'Arcis.] Humanity Protecting the Small States. George J. Frampton. Granite. Detail of Nurse Catell Monument y St. Martin's Place, London 96 [Photo. W. E. Gray, 92 Queen's Road, Baystcater, London, IF.] Victory : Frederick W.Pomeroy. Marble, heroic figure, 8 feet high 100 The River unto the Sea : W. Robert Colton. Marble lOI [Photo. d'Arcis] Life's Circle : Alfred Turner 104 Nereids : Henry Poole. Stone detail, Cardiff City Hall 105 Florence Nightingale : Arthur G. Walker. Bronze, Waterloo Place, London 112 Humanity : Arthur G. Walker. Church of Humanity, Liverpool Torso : Eric Gill. Corsham Down stone 116 Mask from Life : Jacob Epstein. Bronze 117 War : Gilbert Bayes. Colossal 124 [Photo. d'Arcis] SCOTLAND Captain Cook : John Tweed. Bronze, Whitby 132 Latona : John Tweed. Marble 133 The Man-Chh-D : W. Reid Dick 136 [Photo. d'Arcis.] Silence : W. Reid Dick 137 vui LIST ILLUSTRATIONS OF PAGE Mining : Thomas J. Clapperton. Stone detail, National Welsh Museum, Cardiff 140 [Photo. d'Arcis^ The Slave : Thomas J. Clapperton. Mungo Park Memorial, Selkirk 141 WALES Water : W. Goscombe John. Stone detail, Engine Room Heroes^ Memorial, Liverpool 148 [Photo. d'Arcis:\ AUSTRALIA Diana Wounded : Bertram Mackennal. Bronze statuette, National Gallery of British Art 156 The First Breath of Spring : Harold Parker. Marble, Queenslarui National Gallery 157 CANADA North American Indian : A. Phimister Proctor. Bronze fountain figure, Saratoga. 164 The Bronco Buster : A. Phimister Proctor. Bronze, Denver 165 The Flying Sphere : R. Tait McKenzie. Bronze statuette 168 The Sprinter : R. Tait McKenzie. Bronze 169 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Abraham Lincoln : Daniel Chester French. Bronze, Washington 176 [Photo. De Witt C. Ward, 2 Washington Mews, New York.] ix f^r njxjstuxnoBiss .Vor Tmk «77 :?%! : Fi 1S7 «% JLJJ - w LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Nymph at Play : Haig Patigian. Stone swim- ming-pool figure 208 [Photo. Gabriel Moulin, 153 Kearney, San Francisco.] The Bayadere : Anthony de Francisci 209 [Photo. De Witt Ward.] The Sower : Albin Polasek. Bronze 210 The Rising Sun : Adolf A. Weinman. Bronze 211 [Photo. De Win Ward.] SOUTH AMERICA Chili Pegasus : Guillaume Cordoba. Stone relief on Palace of the Arts, Santiago 212 Architectural Figure : Guillaume Cordoba. Detail of Magallanes Monument 213 War : Rebecca Matte. Stone group for the Hague Peace Palace 216 Uruguay Jose E. Rodo : Paul Mane. Bronze bust 217 [Photo. Raoul Saisset, ly me Duperri, Paris.] XI ! CHAPTER I A WORLD WITHOUT SCULPTURE is very true that sometimes the absolute value of ITa thing is only completely realised by its loss. Sup- posing all the sculpture in the world were lost We are accustomed to having sculpture around us, and invariably we have regarded it at less than its value ; but supposing there had never been any sculpture in the world ! Civilisation would have been a more slug- gish affair, for one of the earliest agents to expedite civilisation was the primitive man who first incised a pattern on clay ; another was that primal observer of nature who carved the first bone ; who made the first ivory tusk the medium of a dawning need of human expression—that faculty which separates man from all other animals. It was not the birth of thought as we now understand thought, but it was the birth of the faculty for the expression of thought, the faculty that constructed the cradle of civilisation. A thousand years passed and painting joined its elder brother, sculpture : graphic art was added to glyptic, and the primitive artist's ideas rapidly de- veloped. He made images somewhat in the shape of himself, somewhat in the shape commanded by his imagination, the instinct of the sculptor working urgently and imperatively within him. These images became fantastically daubed as time went on, the in- stinct of the painter manifesting itself. As the sum of SCULPTURE OF TO-DAY pleasure in these creations multiplied, the desire to intensify this pleasure and to extend it as far as might be in the direction of ecstasy, led to the invention of pattern. Spot was added to spot, blotch to blotch, bar to bar, cross to cross, and primitive man became a designer. He could invent, absolutely, something he had never seen in nature. When man created the totem, carved and painted and decorated, he pointed the way to Greece as well as to Heaven and Hell. Most varieties of roses have thorns, and the artist stands for pain as well as pleasure. If, on the one hand, he becomes idolatrous at the shrine of the god of beauty, the birth-bed of his supreme ecstasy, on the other, he sacrifices himself with a whole- sale altruism in order that the world may be full of the beauty which he sees with such fervency and produces with such fecundity. Art is worship, and when primi- tive man sculpted his totem it was in order that he should worship it, and in worship develope one of the finest of the human faculties, that of awe. God created him in His own image, and that image he has bowed down to ever since, even though its form developed into the Aphrodite or the Hermes. The kind of worship changed with the kind of art which produced it. We have ceased to pray to our images, but our awe at their beauty can never grow less. Where then would the world have been without its images ? It is an idle question, but it serves to draw together the vague strands of wonderment into a cord of thought. A world without sculpture is unthinkable. Planes and plain dimensions ; spheres, circles and squares ; ovals, spheroids, volutes possibly there might — A WORLD WITHOUT SCULPTURE been : a have world of three dimensions governed by- geometry. A world without sculpture would have been a world fit for mathematicians to live in, but hardly a world fit for ordinar^^ loving human beings to live and love in. Even the world offered to us by the painter would not have compensated us for the absence of sculpture. The painter gives us pattern and design as the geo- metrician does, but he works in less dimensions length and breadth—even. He gives us colour and he gives us form and he gives us semblance, but his form is circumscribed by a Line or a shadow, his semblance by a convention. The sculptor can give us form in all dimensions ; semblance accurate enough and subject to measurement, and if he so wills—as he has so willed —colour to the life. Art is a pregnant paradox. It ebbs and flows, it grows and decays it ; leaps and it struggles. To-day it is bound in convention, to-morrow it bursts into new glorious life. One year it adorns with fripperies the salons of frivolous kings, the next it builds the solemn naves of shrines devoted to the worship of the most high God. Art languishes when it is bound, whether by convention or by domination ; it flourishes when it is free of these. It is not in the first place co-operative nor collective, it is individual, and its circumstances are most diverse. One artist must needs brood in silence, while another's inspiration comes from contact with the world and men. One lives in princely fashion and visits princes, another's model-throne by day is his couch by night. He lives, feeds, breathes and has his being only as part of his art. SCULPTURE OF TO-DAY Benvenuto Cellini was at home either in his casting- shop, eating his meals there with his apprentices and their girls, or at the table of the King. Michelangelo worked for the Pope, but would rather have worked for himself in solitude. Turner turned from what were to many the delights of London, scorning the honours that might have been his, and hid himself by the river- side in Chelsea. Blake was content to dwell with his devoted wife in poverty and hard work, because only under those circumstances was he able to see the revel- ations which were to him the whole of art and life.