Studio: international art (6.1896)

An American Sculptor

and many successes in the treatment of the applied
arts. It is a place where art is worshipped for its
own sake, and where the artist, whatever branch of
art he may follow, has to prove himself to be really
an artist before he can gain acceptance and
approval. And, most important of all, it is a kind
of planetary system revolving round a central
luminary who is himself too deeply imbued with
the instinct of artistic veneration to tolerate any
lapse from sincerity, and who has devoted his
whole life to the realising of certain lofty artistic
ideals. With such a guide for their practice, and
such a counsellor for their plans, it rests with the
Bushey students to achieve results in proportion to
the advantages they are enjoying. Hitherto, it
must be admitted, they have not been backward,
and, although twelve years can be reckoned but
a short time in which to found and solidify an
art movement which is unlike any other now
existing, there seems every probability that the
Herkomer School, using the term in the widest
sense that art history permits, will make in the
educational record of this century a mark that
future generations are not likely to overlook.

A. L. Baldry.

AN AMERICAN SCULPTOR;
FREDERICK MACMONNIES.
BY ROYAL CORTISSOZ.
Pictorial art in America traces its
source to the last century. It began practically
with Gilbert Stuart, who emulated the traditions of
the earlier English school of portraiture. Since
his time American painting has had an unbroken
development. Plastic art in America, on the other
hand, seems a matter of yesterday, a growth whose
roots are scarcely fixed at all in the past. It is
true that there was sculpture sent home by Ameri-
cans resident in Florence and Rome fifty years ago,
even farther back than that. Story, Ball, Mfts
Hosmer and several others are names which still
have some meaning for students of American art.
But they are the names of sculptors who endea-
voured in vain to revive a semblance of the antique
in their work. Winckelmann was a name to con-
jure with for those pioneers. He is seldom an
inspiration to sculptors now. If they care for
classic art they go direct to its original types. The
pseudo-classic school has disappeared. Not from
its ashes but from the soil there has sprung a new
kind of plastic art in America, a kind extremely
personal, extremely independent of foreign schools

in its temper, yet nourished by contact with the
best work of old and modern Europe, and expres-
sive of an eclectic impulse which in its most
catholic moments has adhered to a sound standard
of technical excellence. It has proved very indi-
vidual in style, so individual that except for certain
hints of Greek influence in Mr. Olin Warner's
austerely beautiful work, except for suggestions of
primitive Italy in the delicately picturesque art of
Mr. St. Gaudens, you would hesitate about attempt-
ing any classification whatever of the few men who
have come to the front in the last ten or fifteen
years. But since they must, I suppose, be de-
scribed as a school for lack of space in which to

SIR HARRY VANE " BY FREDERICK MACMONNIES

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