Adams, Adeline: The spirit of American sculpture (New York: Nat. Sculpture Soc., 1923)

THE SPIRIT OF

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now toward Houdon, the powerful
French realist, and again toward Can-
ova, the distinguished Italian idealist.
Through Jefferson’s hands, our Ameri-
can sculpture first received those rich
streams of influence, realism and ideal-
ism, both so necessary in any living
national art. For realism and idealism,
however often misnamed or over-
praised or discredited, each after the
other, will continue to shape the ar-
tist’s interpretation of his vision of
life. Today, when in our literature
books as fundamentally unlike as
Maria Chapdelaine and Babbitt run
their race side by side as popular fav-
orites, we cannot doubt the hold of
either classicism or naturalism on our
lives and times. Gilbert Murray, in his
notes on the Hippolytus, writes that its
matchless closing scene “proves the ul-
timate falseness of the distinction be-
tween classical and romantic. The
highest poetry has the beauty of both.”

MRS. PATIENCE WRIGHT