International studio (30.1906/1907(1907))

Henri Teixeira de Matt os

brought with him from Rome a nude plaster cast
which he called The Slave Girl, and this, after
being further wrought upon, he sent to the
Amsterdam Exhibition of 1886. The work made
a considerable stir, largely due to the charge
against it that the life-sized nude had been cast
from the life. The sculptor, in the midst of the
fierce controversy, received a commission to trans-
late it into marble, with the result that the charge,
so far from damaging him, was at once withdrawn,
and only called attention to his skill.
It was to the next exhibition at Amsterdam,
held every three years, that, in his thirty-third year,
Teixeira de Mattos sent in plaster his Negro attacked
by a Panther. An art committee decided to present
this group in marble to the Dutch Zoological Society
upon its fiftieth anniversary, and the artist was forth-
with given a year and a half
to complete the work. He
ordered a huge block of
marble from Italy, and had
started upon it, when the
president of the committee
died. The sculptor became
alarmed about his commis-
sion, and, to his consterna-
tion, on his asking for a
written contract from the
committee, they affected,
one and all, to know ab-
solutely nothing about the
matter! The huge block
of marble was in his studio,
and he realised that its cost
must fall upon him, and
without the slightest chance
of finding a purchaser in
Holland when the design
was completed. However
he had put his hand to
the making of it, and he
doggedly finished it. The
group at once increased his
reputation, and passed to a
London collector. This is
the chief work of his transi-
tion period.
It was in his next work
that he took his first de-
liberate step towards the
position which he holds in
the Dutch art of sculpture
to day — the portrayal of
wild animals. In the Two

Kings, a fight between a lion and an eagle, he
struck his individual note. He betook himself to
the Zoo in Amsterdam, and gave himself eagerly to
the study of wild beasts; and, with the exception
of carrying out commissions for portrait-busts, he
devoted himself to modelling from wild animals.
Disappointed in not securing the order for a
public monument for which his talents particularly
fitted him, he came, at thirty-six, to London, and
settled here for seven years. But though he
worked hard, and advanced his art in great strides
from his incessant studies at the Zoo, which in
London as in Amsterdam he made his second
studio, he failed to capture the English public;
and, his best works being rejected time after time
by the Royal Academy, he went back to Holland
in his forty-fourth year, and settled at the Hague.


“BETRAYED

BY HENRI TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
49