Studio: international art (40.1907)

American Sculpture of To-day

modern sculptor. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw
rode forth at the head of his black regiment in
May of 1863. The story runs that when, after the
battle, they sought his body from the enemy they
were told that he was buried “ with his niggers.”
In this monument, which I have just visited at
Boston, there is a wonderful sense of what has
been called “fateful forward movement.” In that
long line of bayonets carried at the slope, in the
set faces and swinging march of the men, in the
mounted leader who rides out to his fate within
their midst, all goes forward, advances, moves on
even in the bronze relief—we feel there is no going
back here, though it may be death that awaits on
the other side.

The same feeling comes to us infanother way in
that noble equestrian statue,
in gilded bronze, of General
Sherman, which is at the
entrance of Central Park
from Fifth Avenue. I can
here give my readers an
excellent reproduction, so
need not to describe in
detail this fine work.

Daniel Chester French
was born in New Hamp-
shire in 1850 : working

awhile at Brooklyn with
John Quincy A. Ward, he
has told me he gained
much also while at Boston
from Dr. Rimmer’s lectures
on anatomy. H is first com-
mission of The Minute Man
was designed when he was
but twenty-three years of
age, and unveiled in 1875;
this interesting work is still
in place at Concord, Mass.

The year 1879 saw his
excellent Portrait Bust of
K. IV. Emerson—that bust
of which the sitter said,

“ The trouble is that the
more it resembles me the
worse it looks ”; but he
added later, “ That is the
face I shave.” Mr. French
has more than once spoken
to me of those delightful
hours which in his earlier
life he had spent with the
Sage of Concord, who
38

seems to have been beloved by all who knew him
in that little New England community.

A man of immense industry, and devoted with his
whole heart to his profession, Mr. French has pro-
duced a large output of portrait and monumental
work which has, as its hall-mark throughout, the
same purity and lofty dignity of conception. His
influence has thus been as great as that of St. Gau-
dens in elevating the standard of modern American
sculpture. I hope, some time later, to treat his
work in more detail in a special article, but it is of
interest to note here how he has used the portrait
bust in combination with decorative sculpture to
get an original and unconventional effect. His
admirable monument of the Irish poet, John Boyle
O’Reilly, at Boston is a successful example of this

BUST OF BISHOP HUNTINGTON

BY BELA LYON PRATT