DOI issue:
No. 77 (July, 1903)
DOI article:American studio-talk
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26229#0090
^Y772A?T<f<372 -57222/227 7722^
D
ANIEL CHESTER FRENCH,
SCULPTOR.
The statue of AA/% A/ir/FT*, recently
executed for Columbia University, is a very char-
acteristic example of the art of Daniei Chester
French.
Among his earlier works is a bust of Emerson,
a truly admirable rendering oj the mingled nobility
and sweetness of the well-known face, of the human
kindliness which warmed the pure and abstract
elevation of his mind. It reminds us that in his
youth French enjoyed acquaintance with the philos-
opher of Concord, and came under the influence
of other famous spirits who formed the little group
of high thinkers and plain livers, with whom it was
also an axiom of more than incidental importance
that Americans should shake their minds free of the
European point of view, and develop a culture for
themselves out of the genius of their own conditions.
French, himself of New England stock, born at
Exeter, N. H., in r8go, came under these influences
at the impressionable age of eighteen, when he
began to model under the instruction of a member
of the Alcott family, the head of which, Amos
Bronson, had been one of the leading writers in
" The Dial," the literary organ of the new philos-
ophy. Moreover, his own nature, one may sus-
pect, furnished congenial soil for the germination of
the seeds which it received during this .time, since
the fruit of his maturity savors unmistakably of these
conditions. And this, notwithstanding that he
spent many subsequent years in Florence, when his
master was Thomas Ball, a blithe, sweet nature,
gentle, refined, and full of Here, again,
was a continuance of, at least, the gracious influ-
ences which had surrounded French's growth from
the beginning, and it was in the light of these that
he sucked in nourishment from the environment of
Florence. To judge by the tenor of his after-work,
the treasures of the city did not affect him very
directly; here and there we may find a hint of as-
similated style, notably in the angels for the Clark
monument in the Forest Hills Cemetery ; but for the
most part, apparently, the impressions of these days
served to give artistic endorsement to the gracious
elevation of the earlier literary ones. Even the
work upon which he engaged himself at that time,
a <?/* A/AjW'Wq was a following of the
Canova tradition, still lingering in Italy, rather than
of the beckonings of the older art, and chiefly char-
acteristic of himself by reason of the calm, passion-
less purity of the emotion involved.
The degree and quality of emotion which enters
into an artist's work must constitute one of the
most important elements in his art, and will even
affect that other essential element—the character
of his technique. How his work will affect our-
selves will largely depend upon the extent to which
we respond either by nature or by a habit of culti-
vation to the particular kind of emotion which he
portrays. On the other hand, a great number of
people seem unable to appreciate the emotional
quality in a work of art and look only for the intel-
lectual, while more than a few artists display little
or nothing of the latter quality and exaggerate the
sensuous. Especially are they apt to limit the range
of the emotions to one kind, that of love, and to
regard it exclusively in its sexual manifestation. In
this way the word passion, with its deep significance
of anemotion so strong as to bring suffering, has
been belittled. Some art is the product of this
nobler kind of passion, a good deal is only a tire-
some reiteration of the baser kind : and, again, there
is art which emanates from a tranquillity of spirit
undisturbed by either kind of passion. It is in this
last category that French's art belongs.
My own appreciation of it recalls the memory of
a certain mountain pool. I had made an early start
on a summer's day, rising in the cheerless glimmer
before the dawn and spending some two hours as
one of many sleepy passengers in a stuffy train.
Alighting at a drowsy little town where small farm-
ers congregate to pursue their petty barterings, I
began the ascent by a bridle path, steep, stony, and
dusty, winding frequently as it steadily mounted.
By noon I had reached an elevation midway be-
tween the last belt of trees and the snow-line, and
could look down upon the cloud-mists that clung
like patches of wool to the forest, and farther down
to the green bowl of the valley, with its flashes of
river and thin spirals of gray smoke. Above me
was a more venturesome climb, to have accom-
plished which would have entailed stouter endur-
ance and more painful effort, crowned, it may be,
with a keener, fiercer exaltation. But, as it was, I
felt exalted. The spacious prospect, the crystalline
purity of the air, a labor that had fully taxed my
natural strength, combined to produce a condition
of most perfect spiritual exhilaration, stealing over
me so unconsciously as at last to be realized with
surprise. The memory of it represents to me the
clearest comprehension of passionless emotion and
of the mental atmosphere in which a work of art,
that has not been conceived in the throes of passion,
may spring forth and be matured.
cxxxiii
D
ANIEL CHESTER FRENCH,
SCULPTOR.
The statue of AA/% A/ir/FT*, recently
executed for Columbia University, is a very char-
acteristic example of the art of Daniei Chester
French.
Among his earlier works is a bust of Emerson,
a truly admirable rendering oj the mingled nobility
and sweetness of the well-known face, of the human
kindliness which warmed the pure and abstract
elevation of his mind. It reminds us that in his
youth French enjoyed acquaintance with the philos-
opher of Concord, and came under the influence
of other famous spirits who formed the little group
of high thinkers and plain livers, with whom it was
also an axiom of more than incidental importance
that Americans should shake their minds free of the
European point of view, and develop a culture for
themselves out of the genius of their own conditions.
French, himself of New England stock, born at
Exeter, N. H., in r8go, came under these influences
at the impressionable age of eighteen, when he
began to model under the instruction of a member
of the Alcott family, the head of which, Amos
Bronson, had been one of the leading writers in
" The Dial," the literary organ of the new philos-
ophy. Moreover, his own nature, one may sus-
pect, furnished congenial soil for the germination of
the seeds which it received during this .time, since
the fruit of his maturity savors unmistakably of these
conditions. And this, notwithstanding that he
spent many subsequent years in Florence, when his
master was Thomas Ball, a blithe, sweet nature,
gentle, refined, and full of Here, again,
was a continuance of, at least, the gracious influ-
ences which had surrounded French's growth from
the beginning, and it was in the light of these that
he sucked in nourishment from the environment of
Florence. To judge by the tenor of his after-work,
the treasures of the city did not affect him very
directly; here and there we may find a hint of as-
similated style, notably in the angels for the Clark
monument in the Forest Hills Cemetery ; but for the
most part, apparently, the impressions of these days
served to give artistic endorsement to the gracious
elevation of the earlier literary ones. Even the
work upon which he engaged himself at that time,
a <?/* A/AjW'Wq was a following of the
Canova tradition, still lingering in Italy, rather than
of the beckonings of the older art, and chiefly char-
acteristic of himself by reason of the calm, passion-
less purity of the emotion involved.
The degree and quality of emotion which enters
into an artist's work must constitute one of the
most important elements in his art, and will even
affect that other essential element—the character
of his technique. How his work will affect our-
selves will largely depend upon the extent to which
we respond either by nature or by a habit of culti-
vation to the particular kind of emotion which he
portrays. On the other hand, a great number of
people seem unable to appreciate the emotional
quality in a work of art and look only for the intel-
lectual, while more than a few artists display little
or nothing of the latter quality and exaggerate the
sensuous. Especially are they apt to limit the range
of the emotions to one kind, that of love, and to
regard it exclusively in its sexual manifestation. In
this way the word passion, with its deep significance
of anemotion so strong as to bring suffering, has
been belittled. Some art is the product of this
nobler kind of passion, a good deal is only a tire-
some reiteration of the baser kind : and, again, there
is art which emanates from a tranquillity of spirit
undisturbed by either kind of passion. It is in this
last category that French's art belongs.
My own appreciation of it recalls the memory of
a certain mountain pool. I had made an early start
on a summer's day, rising in the cheerless glimmer
before the dawn and spending some two hours as
one of many sleepy passengers in a stuffy train.
Alighting at a drowsy little town where small farm-
ers congregate to pursue their petty barterings, I
began the ascent by a bridle path, steep, stony, and
dusty, winding frequently as it steadily mounted.
By noon I had reached an elevation midway be-
tween the last belt of trees and the snow-line, and
could look down upon the cloud-mists that clung
like patches of wool to the forest, and farther down
to the green bowl of the valley, with its flashes of
river and thin spirals of gray smoke. Above me
was a more venturesome climb, to have accom-
plished which would have entailed stouter endur-
ance and more painful effort, crowned, it may be,
with a keener, fiercer exaltation. But, as it was, I
felt exalted. The spacious prospect, the crystalline
purity of the air, a labor that had fully taxed my
natural strength, combined to produce a condition
of most perfect spiritual exhilaration, stealing over
me so unconsciously as at last to be realized with
surprise. The memory of it represents to me the
clearest comprehension of passionless emotion and
of the mental atmosphere in which a work of art,
that has not been conceived in the throes of passion,
may spring forth and be matured.
cxxxiii