DOI issue:
No. 214 (December 1914)
DOI article:McAllister, I. G.: A rising British sculptor ; Charles Sargeant Jagger
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43457#0142
Charles Sargeant [agger, Sculptor
writing at the time on modern sculpture I ex-
pressed the conviction that Jagger was destined to
occupy a high place amongst sculptors at no very
distant date. This prediction is now being
verified in a series of poetical themes, showing an
individual and vigorous personality.
Mr. Jagger is modest in the hour of his success,
and though he can discourse eloquently on the
Greek sculptures, art in the abstract, and such
eminent masters as Rodin and Gilbert, for whom
he has an unbounded admiration, he is very averse
to talking of his own achievements, for he never
experiences any glow of satisfaction from his own
efforts. But the “divine discontent” is the
heritage of the true striver after perfection, the
reason doubtless being that the artist’s vision grows
larger as he advances in power, consequently it
leaves him always the same distance from his great
ideals as on the first day that he started to tread
the thorny path of art.
It has been said that all art is the outcome of
its own environment, and in a sense this applies to
individuals as well as nations. It is always in-
teresting to trace the early influences which shape
the career of the artist. A native of Yorkshire,
Mr. Jagger spent his earliest years in the busy
industrial centre, Sheffield, and though such an
environment would seem to be at variance with
the artistic temperament, yet the revivifying effect
of a city’s ever-changing influences has the same
value to the sculptor as to the dramatist in
kindling the vital spark.
His first introduction to plastic art was an
incident of his childhood which stands out in his
memory very clearly. Wandering with his father
on Whitby Sands one day they came across a man
modelling a sphinx in the clay indigenous to the
locality, and as they watched the process the idea
arose in the boy’s mind that he must be a sculptor,
and he distinctly remembers the thrill of happiness
which accompanied a decision from which he
never once wavered. Later on he must have
encountered the toil inseparable from the sculptor’s
life with its many difficulties and hours of dis-
couragement, for “art is not a pleasure trip : it is
a battle and a mill that grinds.” Yet he never
regretted his early choice of a profession, and as
events have turned out he has no reason to do so
now.
His school-days were an ordeal to him, and he
can sympathise with the poet Keats, who never
knew his lessons, and was always at the bottom of
BY CHARLES SARGEANT JAGGER
8?
DESIGN FOR A TOMB (ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART DIPLOMA WORK)
writing at the time on modern sculpture I ex-
pressed the conviction that Jagger was destined to
occupy a high place amongst sculptors at no very
distant date. This prediction is now being
verified in a series of poetical themes, showing an
individual and vigorous personality.
Mr. Jagger is modest in the hour of his success,
and though he can discourse eloquently on the
Greek sculptures, art in the abstract, and such
eminent masters as Rodin and Gilbert, for whom
he has an unbounded admiration, he is very averse
to talking of his own achievements, for he never
experiences any glow of satisfaction from his own
efforts. But the “divine discontent” is the
heritage of the true striver after perfection, the
reason doubtless being that the artist’s vision grows
larger as he advances in power, consequently it
leaves him always the same distance from his great
ideals as on the first day that he started to tread
the thorny path of art.
It has been said that all art is the outcome of
its own environment, and in a sense this applies to
individuals as well as nations. It is always in-
teresting to trace the early influences which shape
the career of the artist. A native of Yorkshire,
Mr. Jagger spent his earliest years in the busy
industrial centre, Sheffield, and though such an
environment would seem to be at variance with
the artistic temperament, yet the revivifying effect
of a city’s ever-changing influences has the same
value to the sculptor as to the dramatist in
kindling the vital spark.
His first introduction to plastic art was an
incident of his childhood which stands out in his
memory very clearly. Wandering with his father
on Whitby Sands one day they came across a man
modelling a sphinx in the clay indigenous to the
locality, and as they watched the process the idea
arose in the boy’s mind that he must be a sculptor,
and he distinctly remembers the thrill of happiness
which accompanied a decision from which he
never once wavered. Later on he must have
encountered the toil inseparable from the sculptor’s
life with its many difficulties and hours of dis-
couragement, for “art is not a pleasure trip : it is
a battle and a mill that grinds.” Yet he never
regretted his early choice of a profession, and as
events have turned out he has no reason to do so
now.
His school-days were an ordeal to him, and he
can sympathise with the poet Keats, who never
knew his lessons, and was always at the bottom of
BY CHARLES SARGEANT JAGGER
8?
DESIGN FOR A TOMB (ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART DIPLOMA WORK)