International studio (16.1902)

The Cult of the Statuette


middle life. The former stood in a class almost
apart from everyone else in his admirably composed
and still more admirably modelled reliefs, and it
is a further loss to art if, as we understand, the
duplication of such examples as Hncas and Homer


“CHILDHOOD” BY W. GOSCOMBE JOHN, A.R.A.
280

is restricted by the owners of the copyright. Fortu-
nately this is not the case with the panel of Psyche,
so well adapted for overmantel decoration. The
bust of Mr. Bates’s Rhodope, modelltd from his
wife, was perhaps the most refined piece of work
in the collection. Onslow Ford was, as his Folly
and the unfinished and ominously conceived Fate
show, a born creator of statuettes. The same may
be said of Hamo Thornycroft, although his Bather,
Mower, and Teucer, are but reductions of larger
works. It is to be regretted that Professor Legros
did not model in its entirety his large framed
creation of budding womanhood; a torso with
truncated head and limbs can surely only be
acceptable when it becomes so by accident.
J. M. Swan’s loose-skinned feline animals are
already known and cherished by connoisseurs : he
more than any other English sculptor resembles
his French confreres in aiming at an excellency of
surface colour in addition to that of modelling.
The patina of his exhibits were only equalled in
the exhibition by that upon the LIEtifant au
Poisson of Denys Puech, and the larger Folly, by
Onslow Ford, lent by Mrs. Macquoid.
Amongst the exhibits of the French exhibitors
must be noted Charpentier’s Fuite de Pheure,
Henri Pernot’s delightful little La Sensitive, Fix
Masseau’s Loulotte, Levasseur’s Pro Patria, and
E. Dagonet’s Paradis Perdu.