DOI chapter:
Chapter V The Statue of the Bust and the Ideal Figure
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.65493#0151
AMERICAN SCULPTURE
109
lieve the bleak dulness of modern
manly dress seen at full length in the
round.
Saint-Gaudens seats his Peter Cooper
king-like within a Renaissance portico,
and places a curule chair behind his
standing Lincoln. Though Lincoln is
a greatly revered subject in American
sculpture,—a subject of exceedingly
rugged force,—few sculptors are sat-
isfied to present Lincoln, plain in his
usual garb; they give the hero a
background, or a cloak, or an exedra,
or a top hat on a bench, so keenly do
they feel the lack of amplifying cir-
cumstances. Yet certainly Lincoln’s
bronze clothing offers more of interest
than that of today’s captains of des-
tiny, soldiers excepted. And how
distinctively American is the note
sounded in all our portrait statues of
Lincoln! Saint-Gaudens, French, Mac-
Neil, Weinman, Barnard, Borglum,
and O’Connor have made some of the
THE IDEAL FIGURE
109
lieve the bleak dulness of modern
manly dress seen at full length in the
round.
Saint-Gaudens seats his Peter Cooper
king-like within a Renaissance portico,
and places a curule chair behind his
standing Lincoln. Though Lincoln is
a greatly revered subject in American
sculpture,—a subject of exceedingly
rugged force,—few sculptors are sat-
isfied to present Lincoln, plain in his
usual garb; they give the hero a
background, or a cloak, or an exedra,
or a top hat on a bench, so keenly do
they feel the lack of amplifying cir-
cumstances. Yet certainly Lincoln’s
bronze clothing offers more of interest
than that of today’s captains of des-
tiny, soldiers excepted. And how
distinctively American is the note
sounded in all our portrait statues of
Lincoln! Saint-Gaudens, French, Mac-
Neil, Weinman, Barnard, Borglum,
and O’Connor have made some of the
THE IDEAL FIGURE