International studio (59.1916)

The Sculpture of Daniel Chester French

being a stony soil to the sculptor’s art, it yet pos-
sesses qualities to which the highest in that art may
best appeal; it is the public which would choose the
music of Handel or Elgar before that of Strauss
or Offenbach, which will in plastic art prefer the
deeper mood to that which is ephemeral. That is
the public which the art of
Daniel Chester French
has claimed, has held
for its own in his ideal
figures and, in another
way, in his portrait work;
and it is of supreme
importance to this
wonderful nascent art
of North America that
he has been able to
do so.
And with this Mourn¬
ing Victory — erected
(1910) in Sleepy Hollow
to three victims of the
Civil War—we are on
the threshold of these
later years of creative
art which are the special
theme of this notice.
The General Oglethorpe
— a tribute to the
memory of one of the
old Colonial Governors
of Georgia—belongs to
the same year ; and to
the two years following
two beautiful ideal
figures which are repro¬
duced here — Memory
(1911), a monument to
Moorhall Field in
Graceland Cemetery,
Chicago, and the winged
angel of the Kinsley
Memorial (1912) in
Woodland Cemetery at
New York.
There followed the
Abraham Lincoln,
unveiled in Lincoln City,
Nebraska, in September
of 1912. Saint Gaudens, too, had presented
Lincoln in his Chicago figure, being helped there
in the setting by that brilliant architect Mr.
Stanford White. It would be invidious to challenge
comparison, but Mr. French gives us the very man

in the tense energy of a figure which, with bowed
head and clasped hands, is yet alive with purpose,
the purpose to save his country.
In the pedestal and setting of this figure Mr.
French was assisted by the architect Henry Bacon,
as in his figures of General Draper {Milford, Mass.,
1912), of Earl Dodge,
Emerson, and the Trask,
Stuyvesant, and Long-
fellow Memorials.
Earl Dodge, whose
figure is reproduced
under the title of The
Princeton Student, was a
very prominent member
of his class at Princeton,
and chiefly responsible
for the organisation of
the College Young
Men’s Christian Union.
I understand that this
organisation has been
copied in other colleges
with most beneficial
results, one of the chief
ideas being for the
members of the senior
classes to fraternise with
the younger men.
The Rutherford Stuy-
vesant Memorial, in
Tennessee marble, pre-
sides over the grave of
Rutherford Stuyvesant
in the cemetery at
Alamuchy, New Jersey,
where the great Stuyves-
ant estate is located;
and the Trask Memorial
is at Saratoga, on the
site of the old Congress
Hotel. Mr. French has
said to me “ This was a
wonderful opportunity,
because they gave us
this entirely unimproved
plot of ground and
permitted Mr. Bacon,
the architect, and Mr.
Charles W. Leavitt, the landscape gardener, and
myself, to treat it as we saw fit. I flatter
myself that the result is a sufficient indication
of this way of doing things. I do not know
whether you know Mrs. Spencer Trask’s writings,
23


“THE PRINCETON STUDENT”
(EARL DODGE MEMORIAL, PRINCETON, I913)
DANIEL C. FRENCH, SCULPTOR