Studio: international art (40.1907)

American Sculpture of To-day

1885 Frederick Macmonnies had already won the
concours cTatelier at the “ Beaux Arts,” and his
Diana at the Salon of 1889 gained him an honour-
able mention. His Columbian Fountain, in 1893,
brought Mr. Macmonnies fully before the American
public, and was one among the many successes
of the great Exhibition. No less admirable is
his Sir Harry Vane of the Boston Public Library ;
and it was for the central square of this library that
his Bacchante—who seems inbreathed with the
very rapture of life and movement—was originally
intended, though she has now found a home within
the Metropolitan Museum. His Shakespeare of the
Rotunda in the Washington Congressional, is a
very original and interesting portrait of the bard,
in which the archaism has a certain attraction,
though the likeness has too been carefully studied;
and in the Washington Library are his admirable
Doors of Bronze, with their finely handled figures
in low-relief of Intellechis and Humanitas.

Among the younger sculptors now working at New
York perhaps none is of more interest and promise
than Mr. Gutson Borglum ; in his work I feel more
of M. Rodin’s influence than in that of any other
American sculptor whom I know personally.
Mr. Borglum knows England well ; he worked
here for several years, and is a many-sided man,
taking an interest in painting as well as sculpture,
and being also a keen horseman. This side of his
life leads me naturally to speak of his remarkable
group of The Mares of Diomed, which has now
found a place within the Metropolitan Museum.
Five horses are here stampeding to the water : on
one of them a nude figure manages to keep his
seat, and the whole movement is headlong, vividly
transitory. Absolutely different in conception is
his Ruskin—a figure monumental in its repose.
This fine portrait study was taken in the last
year of the great critic’s life at Windermere,
and met M. Rodin’s full approval. There is
real characterisation in Mr. Borglum’s portrait
work. His John JV. Mackay promises this, and is
a really brilliant study ; and the last work of the
artist’s which I shall mention is his Centaurs, on
which he is now busied. Possibly next year’s
Salon may see this group completed.

Mr- Elwell I have mentioned in speaking of the
Custom House figures ; and personally I must own
to the great attraction to myself of the work of Mr.
Frederick Ruckstuhl. He first attracted my notice
in his beautiful marble figure of Eveni?ig in the
Metropolitan; in its masterly treatment of the nude
this upright figure compares in modern American
work with George Grey Barnard’s seated Maiden-

hood, or Stewardson’s Bather in the same museum,
though it is heavier and more massive—one might
almost say more German—in type. Mr Ruckstuhl
was for many years a leading spirit in the formation
of the National Sculpture Society, of which he
was the secretary, and which has done valuable
work in bringing the claims of this art before the
American public.

Philadelphia contains the somewhat mystically
inclined sculptor, Charles Grafly, who was born
there in 1862. Like Stewardson, he went through
the Pennsylvania Academy and the “ Beaux-Arts,”
and is now (since 1896) a resident of the Quaker
city, where he holds the position of Professor of
Sculpture in her Academy of Fine Arts. A strong
leaning to symbolism manifests itself in all his
mature work. His Truth, emergent from her
shell, of the St. Louis Exposition, his Symbol of
Life, two nude figures, male and female, modelled

BUST OF GEORGE HARDING BY CHARLES GRAFLY

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