International studio (27.1905/1906(1906))

Mrs. Cadwalader Guild

mopolitan city, such as New York, where of neces-
sity there would be a much greater audience.

M

RS. CADWALADER GUILD’S RE-
CENT SCULPTURE

Endymion used to be represented by
the early sculptors in sleep. Like our
own Rip Van Winkle, it was for bis sleep, and quite
unlike Rip, for his beauty, that he was celebrated.
One legend teils that Selene, the moon, sent him
sleep that she might, unknown to him, kiss him as
he lay on the Latmian Mountains. And this form
of the mvth seems nearer its possible origin. She
bestowed the half-lost fortune upon him again and
again, and he, waking, would stray off in fruitless
search of her to return later to the favoured spot in
hope of her reappearance. Such a story the Greeks
could have found wherever the moon spread her
light on the rocks and sank from view behind them.
Another story goes that Endymion’s sleep was per-
petual and was the gift of Zeus, of whom he had
asked it in the same breath with undying youth. So
we find Endymion asleep and awake, a king in Elis
and a shepherd or a hunter in Caria. And with the
versions of the story in later poets people are usually
more familiär.
But it is neither Endymion the Elean king nor
Endymion the Latmian shepherd that Mrs. Cad-
walader Guild has done in a large marble statue
now on view in her studio in this city. The sculptor
wished to embody the search for the ideal, the spirit

SX. MONICA BY MRS. CADWALADER GUILD

possessed of the high discontent, saddened with the
quiet disappointment and yet comforted in the
unshaken faith that are natural to most artistic
experience. And when the figure had taken shape,
the happy idea occurred to her to call it after the
lucklessly happy youth of Greek tradition, with
whose mood it so well agreed. This Suggestion was
found in the lines by Louis Morris:
Fine as tliose shapely spirits, heaven descended,
Hermes or young Apollo, or whom she
The moonlit Dian on the Latmian hill,
When all the woods and all the winds were still,
Kissed with the kiss of immortality.
It may be said, given this bit of history of the
conception, that this sculpture is not strictly the
Endymion. And while this is true, in that the statue
is not the result of an attempt to portray the myth,
is not a piece of illustration in the round, it is at
least a free rendering of the Greek idea as a vehicle
for a personal mood.
The work itself is, of course, not Greek in spirit.
It is doubtful, for one thing, if a Greek would ever
have chosen the pose, which, the sculptor says, has
never been used before. As a rendering of En-
dymion, the conception is apparently not in key
with the ancient preference, since the remaining
examples show him in the characteristic pose, that
came generally to mind, as it does with our whimsi-
cal ne’er-do-well Rip, reclining in sleep. Here he
is straying along an unbeaten path, not aimlessly,
because of the restless purpose of his wanderings,
but with no aim of immediate definition. The
hands clasped with interlocked fingers behind the
head show that his walking has none of the despatch
of excitement and resolution. One does not walk
thus toward a certain destination. There is here a
token of slight weariness. He is sad and baffled,
yet there is no despair in the posture. When the
hands are carried behind the line of the centre of
gravity there results at once a Suggestion of indiffer-
ence. It is a hope deferred that has made this
Endymion a shade sick at heart. There is no
poignancy of a growing doubt. If vou were to meet
him and observe, not without good basis in fact,
that his quest was vain, he would hardly bother to
explain that he was not searching for advice. What
he desires is not at hand, does not come to him. He
believes, he knows that it exists and he must be
stirring. It is not enough for him as it was for the
prophet in the year that King Uzziah died that the
coal from the altar be laid once upon his lips. His
fixe must be continually rekindled. And yet in all
the worlcl he cannot teil where he may find the lost
Selene. He is at once unhappy and confident,


XLIV