DOI Heft:
No. 200 (November, 200)
DOI Artikel:Macklin, Alys Eyre: Alfred Gilbert at Bruges: by Alys Eyre Macklin
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20968#0124
A If red Gilbei't
thin the veil between his eyes and the ultimate
perfect beauty that has been the chimera of every
true artist since the world began—this keen and
exalted vision is always at war with the exaggerated
height of his ideal of what his own production should
be ; and the struggle to concentrate his imagination
and express himself in clay, is proportionately
great. The story of good work destroyed in fits
of despair when the matter eluded the aim, repeats
itself all through the history of art, but in Gilbert's
case it is a simple statement of fact to say that,
pushed by a dissatisfaction that with him at times
amounts to a malady, he continues to throw
aside and break finer work than that which
eventually leaves his studio. Yet there is no
artist quicker to see beauty in the work of others,
and those who used to be his students at the
Academy will tell of his generous praise of any-
thing that even suggested the ideal aimed at.
An almost meticulous thoroughness, curiously
at variance with the breadth of his work, is another
complexity that makes him more than many
artists his own sickness and pain. There is
nothing too small to have infinite pains and un-
limited time lavished on it. He will spend weeks
in perfecting some tiny goldsmith-sculptor orna-
ment that is to have an unimportant place on a
slightly larger piece of work. Upstairs, in a little
room converted into a sort of chapel, there are
still five of the twelve saints which are to figure on
the superb tomb by which he immortalised the
Duke of Clarence—little statuettes reminiscent of
the "garden of sculpture" of the Fawcett Memorial
in Westminster Abbey. To you they seem flawless
gems of art, as, indeed, did the elaborate tentative
studies for them, which, by-the-way, were sold
privately to provide a better means of expres-
sion, and were very wrongly exhibited without
his permission. They have not yet, however,
attained the desired perfection, and from time
to time days are spent in designing new and
re-arranging the separate metal parts that will
complete them. It is just the same with larger
work. The Viclory, already mentioned, for in-
stance, would, in the case of most sculptors, have
been enlarged by mechanical processes from a
careful sketch model. That is not Gilbert's way.
Mounted on a scaffolding, he adds or takes away
102
thin the veil between his eyes and the ultimate
perfect beauty that has been the chimera of every
true artist since the world began—this keen and
exalted vision is always at war with the exaggerated
height of his ideal of what his own production should
be ; and the struggle to concentrate his imagination
and express himself in clay, is proportionately
great. The story of good work destroyed in fits
of despair when the matter eluded the aim, repeats
itself all through the history of art, but in Gilbert's
case it is a simple statement of fact to say that,
pushed by a dissatisfaction that with him at times
amounts to a malady, he continues to throw
aside and break finer work than that which
eventually leaves his studio. Yet there is no
artist quicker to see beauty in the work of others,
and those who used to be his students at the
Academy will tell of his generous praise of any-
thing that even suggested the ideal aimed at.
An almost meticulous thoroughness, curiously
at variance with the breadth of his work, is another
complexity that makes him more than many
artists his own sickness and pain. There is
nothing too small to have infinite pains and un-
limited time lavished on it. He will spend weeks
in perfecting some tiny goldsmith-sculptor orna-
ment that is to have an unimportant place on a
slightly larger piece of work. Upstairs, in a little
room converted into a sort of chapel, there are
still five of the twelve saints which are to figure on
the superb tomb by which he immortalised the
Duke of Clarence—little statuettes reminiscent of
the "garden of sculpture" of the Fawcett Memorial
in Westminster Abbey. To you they seem flawless
gems of art, as, indeed, did the elaborate tentative
studies for them, which, by-the-way, were sold
privately to provide a better means of expres-
sion, and were very wrongly exhibited without
his permission. They have not yet, however,
attained the desired perfection, and from time
to time days are spent in designing new and
re-arranging the separate metal parts that will
complete them. It is just the same with larger
work. The Viclory, already mentioned, for in-
stance, would, in the case of most sculptors, have
been enlarged by mechanical processes from a
careful sketch model. That is not Gilbert's way.
Mounted on a scaffolding, he adds or takes away
102