International studio (82.1925)

mceRnACionAL

MRS. FRANK DUVENECK In the Metropolitan Museum oj Art BY FRANK DUVENECK

sculptors whose work is reproduced with this
article, regarding it he enquired first, and with no
uncertain surprise, "where did you hear about it?"
And that particular work is in one of the most
widely known American cathedrals.

The striking group of contemporary tomb
figures to which this article is devoted are little
known outside of professional circles in America.
They represent a tradition born of the French
Gothic, in the fourteenth century and which has
been carried down unbrokenly to our own day
and our own country. There is something in-
finitely touching in the realization that after
Gothic art began to show evident signs of ex-
haustion at the beginning of the fourteenth cen-
tury it had its final upflickering flame in the
creation of these memorial statues for tombs. And
when, as in my contemporary instances, they
preserve that original form of recumbent figures

portraying dead persons lying in peaceful attitudes
they never fail to awaken a feeling of grave
admiration. Lorado Taft, in his work on American
sculpture, recalls that when Frank Duveneck's
memorial figure of his wife was first shown in this
country, "so exquisite is its sentiment, so worthy
its execution that even the plaster cast, when
shown in an exhibition of the National Sculpture
Society at New York, in 1898, seemed to convert
its surroundings into a memorial chapel."

What the original Gothic memorial figures
actually were is shown in our reproduction of such
a work of sculpture from France in the middle of
the fourteenth century which occupies a place in
the centre of the floor of the little Gothic museum
called "The Cloisters," created by George Grey
Barnard and now an annex of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. It represents a knight in the
armor of about 1350, lying at full length with his

DR. MORGAN DIX In Trinity Church, New York BY ISIDORE KONTI

twenty -jour

OCTOBER I925