DOI chapter:
Chapter I Mrs. Patience Wright speaks the Prologue
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.65493#0041
AMERICAN SCULPTURE
III
Returning to the Quaker lady who
speaks our prologue, and conning once
more the tale of her works in all their
brisk naivete, the sympathetic student
will easily evoke the difficult conditions
under which sculpture first reared its
head in our country. Sculpture,
though an art manifestly answering
one of the earliest religious needs of
primitive man, (and indeed the very
first of all the arts to fall under the
ban of the censor) is an art much hin-
dered and abridged during large pioneer
movements. Thus the Mayflower,
that greatly accommodating vessel,
may have brought over Elder Brew-
ster’s chest or some fair Priscilla’s
spinning-wheel, but we may be sure
that never a statue came out of her
hold. Neither architecture nor paint-
ing suffered quite as much as sculp-
ture in that historic sea-change of the
SPEAKS THE PROLOGUE
III
Returning to the Quaker lady who
speaks our prologue, and conning once
more the tale of her works in all their
brisk naivete, the sympathetic student
will easily evoke the difficult conditions
under which sculpture first reared its
head in our country. Sculpture,
though an art manifestly answering
one of the earliest religious needs of
primitive man, (and indeed the very
first of all the arts to fall under the
ban of the censor) is an art much hin-
dered and abridged during large pioneer
movements. Thus the Mayflower,
that greatly accommodating vessel,
may have brought over Elder Brew-
ster’s chest or some fair Priscilla’s
spinning-wheel, but we may be sure
that never a statue came out of her
hold. Neither architecture nor paint-
ing suffered quite as much as sculp-
ture in that historic sea-change of the
SPEAKS THE PROLOGUE