DOI issue:
The international Studio (August, 1908)
DOI article:Mechlin, Leila: The National Sculpture Society's exhibition at Baltimore, 2, Imaginative work
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.28255#0384
National Sculpture Society
THREE FIGURES FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
realize the decorative value of sculpture when given
appropriate outdoor setting, and gradually, as the
nation grows wise, our parks and public places will
be thus beautified.
This new movement was amply illustrated in
the exhibition which the National Sculpture Society
set forth, and, what is more, distinctly encouraged
both by purchase and praise. But who could have
failed to recognize the artistic worth of Mr. Fred-
erick MacMonnies’s bewitching Young Pan, of
Mr. J. Scott Hartley’s mischievous little centaur,
Nature’s Sundial, or of Miss Janet Scudder’s
merry Fog Fountain and no less gleeful clock?
Certainly not one with seeing eyes in whom the joy
of youth was still alive. Nor could appreciation
justly be withheld from two works by Gail Sher-
man Corbett, a Boy for Fountain and Boy for Sun-
dial, so spontaneous were they in conception and
so cleverly rendered. There was witchery, too, as
BY BELA L. PRATT
well as art, in Anna Coleman Ladd’s Little Pan,
which, while less virile and original than her
strongly modeled Young America—a stalwart
youth upholding at arms’ reach an eagle—was de-
lightfully appealing; and there was poignant charm
in Attilio Piccirilli’s graceful Faun, Ephraim Key-
ser’s Duet, Karl Bitter’s Goose Boy and F. N. L.
Tonetti’s Boy and Swan.
That American sculptors have not been entirely
absorbed in themes either grave or mirth provok-
ing, that having discovered the Indian and cow-
boy they have not ceased exploration, and that
learning to play they have not become trivial, was
demonstrated in the works of numerous sculptors,
but especially in those of Abastenia St. Leger
Eberle and Bessie Potter Vonnoh, both of whom
have made distinct contribution to the field of
American sculpture, the former by her interpreta-
tions of East Side types and the latter by her beau-
XLVI
THREE FIGURES FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
realize the decorative value of sculpture when given
appropriate outdoor setting, and gradually, as the
nation grows wise, our parks and public places will
be thus beautified.
This new movement was amply illustrated in
the exhibition which the National Sculpture Society
set forth, and, what is more, distinctly encouraged
both by purchase and praise. But who could have
failed to recognize the artistic worth of Mr. Fred-
erick MacMonnies’s bewitching Young Pan, of
Mr. J. Scott Hartley’s mischievous little centaur,
Nature’s Sundial, or of Miss Janet Scudder’s
merry Fog Fountain and no less gleeful clock?
Certainly not one with seeing eyes in whom the joy
of youth was still alive. Nor could appreciation
justly be withheld from two works by Gail Sher-
man Corbett, a Boy for Fountain and Boy for Sun-
dial, so spontaneous were they in conception and
so cleverly rendered. There was witchery, too, as
BY BELA L. PRATT
well as art, in Anna Coleman Ladd’s Little Pan,
which, while less virile and original than her
strongly modeled Young America—a stalwart
youth upholding at arms’ reach an eagle—was de-
lightfully appealing; and there was poignant charm
in Attilio Piccirilli’s graceful Faun, Ephraim Key-
ser’s Duet, Karl Bitter’s Goose Boy and F. N. L.
Tonetti’s Boy and Swan.
That American sculptors have not been entirely
absorbed in themes either grave or mirth provok-
ing, that having discovered the Indian and cow-
boy they have not ceased exploration, and that
learning to play they have not become trivial, was
demonstrated in the works of numerous sculptors,
but especially in those of Abastenia St. Leger
Eberle and Bessie Potter Vonnoh, both of whom
have made distinct contribution to the field of
American sculpture, the former by her interpreta-
tions of East Side types and the latter by her beau-
XLVI