International studio (56.1915)

Edward Berge, Sculptor

ticular gratitude of the instruction given him by
Verlet at Julian’s, and of the knowledge he
gained at Rodin’s school, where he came into
contact with the great master himself.
His first salon pictures—the year was 1901—
were the exquisite Muse Finding the Head of
Orpheus and The Scalp, casts that brought him
immediate recognition.
The Scalp, which is now in bronze, is a powerful
bit of realism. The subject is an Indian who,
transported with gruesome joy, stands in triumph
over the body of his enemy that rolls beneath his
feet.
The figure is built up in a powerful manner,
the modelling so broad, so bold, bespeaking that
almost fierce exultation that fires an artist, when,
at the moment of inspiration, the full realization
of his subject blazes upon him and he springs
forward to put his thought into instant execution.
At such moments one’s powers of expression
find outlet with marvellous facility and it is just
this ease that, in Mr. Berge’s Indian piece, makes
the upward swing of the lithe, muscular body,
held, as it is, in a superbly balanced pose, so
effective, so potent as a description of passionate
action. Histrionically, this is one of the sculptor’s
strongest performances.
An example of commissioned work that il-
lustrates the full maturity of his powers in
portraiture is the statue of Col. George Armistead,
erected at Fort McHenry last fall. It is a noble,
dignified monument and one that has uncommon
vitality and impressiveness as a study of char-
acter. The figure is heroic in size and is of bronze.
It surmounts a granite pedestal on a hill com-
manding a wide sweep of the Patapsco River,
presenting from any angle a sharp, clean-cut
silhouette of great elegance and grace.
Mr. Berge’s work is essentially and uncom-
promisingly direct and unaffected, based, one
would say, upon views of life that are above
everything else healthful and sane. Not once in
the whole range of his production has he dis-
played the slightest tendency toward eccentricity
or sensationalism. In fact, the impulse in the
other direction seems to influence him so strongly
that his effort to avoid even the suggestion of
such things, or of being lured into the pitfalls of
sentimentalism or insincerity, appear almost
aggressive.
He evidently has no use for “coloratura”
sculpture, and scorning bravura, his processes
LX

of elimination are so sharply defined, where
ornamentation is concerned, that his work un-
doubtedly is less general in its appeal to the
unthinking public than if he made more conces-
sions to decoration.


WILL-O’-THE-WISP BY EDWARD BERGE
BRONZE FOUNTAIN

It is not to be understood that his work is
lacking in grace and charm. It decidedly is not.
There is beauty in everything he has done, but
oftentimes it is the beauty which speaks to the
mind before the heart; the type of beauty that
is all the more enduring because its appeal to the
aesthetic consciousness is final rather than initial.
The superficial observer who finds in Brahms’
C minor symphony only coldness and intellec-
tuality, or in Rodin’s Adam nothing but a gauche,
ugly figure, would doubtless, for example, declare