International studio (57.1915/1916)

Bela Lyon Pratt: An Appreciation

NATHAN HALE, YALE COLLEGE BY BELA L. PRATT


Bela lyon pratt
AN APPRECIATION
BY LORINDA MUNSON BRYANT

When the little Connecticut boy,
Bela Lyon Pratt, with his playmate from school
and a lunch-basket, sat by the stream among the
hills and fashioned frogs and snakes from the
soft mud, he was laying the foundation for the
honour that was his in a special room at thePanama-
Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco,
1915. So real were those crude animals to the
two boys that it would have been no surprise to
them as they clapped their hands in glee had the
frogs jumped into the water or the snakes glided
away. The golden legend is reality to the child

of creative mind and his faith so inspires his com-
panions that they believe he holds the very
secret of life itself. This early faith in his own
creative power never lost its hold on the young
sculptor. At sixteen he was admitted to the
Yale School of Fine Arts and when at twenty he
became the student of Augustus St.-Gaudens
in the Art Student League of New York City, a
goal was reached that gave a broad horizon to
his whole future.
But the young sculptor, ever seeking the in-
spiration of master minds, left the studio of St.-
Gaudens and the instruction of Edwin Elwell,
William M. Chase and Kenyon Cox, to enter the
Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, and sit at the feet
of Chapu and Falguiere. It is needless to say
that he won medals and prizes while in Paris, and
that his countrymen greeted him with com-
missions at his home-coming in 1892.
We are particularly fortunate in our apprecia-
tion of Mr. Pratt that so many of his works were
brought together at the exposition and that among
them was a bust of his mother. A very intimate
friend of the sculptor, Mr. Rutger Bleecker
Jewett—the boy who played by the brookside
with him—tells me that “like mother, like son”
was never a truer saying than in the case of this
strong, hopeful woman and her gifted son. What
a power in the world such a woman exerts. She
is no soap-box orator, but a woman whose calm
dignity has progressively claimed her rights and
will continue to claim them through her unborn
sisters long after the women who are forcing their
rights are forgotten. Men and women need more
mothers of this type. Eighty-two! Who could
think of measuring this woman’s power by years?
Her power is measured in human genius.
In the face and form of the young patriot,
Nathan Hale, which stands in front of Connecticut
Hall, where Hale roomed when at Yale, he has
crystallised the tragedy of a life. Was ever the
pathos of the inexorable bitterness of war more
vividly pictured than in this youth just at his
majority? Also note the splendid statue of Ed-
ward Everett Hale in the Public Gardens, Boston;
no man ever stood for deeper love of humanity.
And again the equestrian statue of Lord Amherst at
Amherst College. These statues not only show
the appreciation of the American people for the
sculptor, but they illustrate the artist’s grasp of
the elements in mankind that make for true
success.

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