Studio: international art (48.1910)

Prince Paul Troubetzkoi

[^of imagination, when in fact
the whole sensibility of the man
takes its place and his every
thought becomes an act of im-
agination and an idealisation.

If I were to be asked to
establish a kind of hierarchy in
Troubetzkoi's works, I should
not place in the first rank
either his nude studies or his
large compositions, such as
the Dante monument, or that
to Alexander III., or to the
runner Clement. The sculptor
has not yet attained that vir-
tuosity, that cunning of hand
in the modelling of the nude,
which the stern discipline to
which he submits himself is
bound ultimately to give him,
and his monuments are a little
heavy and lack spirituality. It
is those figures of little girls
and of animals which are his
masterpieces.

giovanni segantini by prince paul troubetzkoi

art, though this was not the
outcome of a deliberate effort
of will. He believed himself
to be copying the subject,
while in reality he instinc-
tively transfigured it.

And still he remains the
reverse of a theorist, and while
experience and reflection may
have taught him the reason of
this indispensable transfigura-
tion, the manifold aspects of
real life do not move him less,
but if anything more, than
they did before, and he still
says freely, " I do but copy
what I see in Nature."
Happily, even the smallest of
his statues are a refutation of
this, and prove that he has
transformed, vivified and re-
created all that he has desired
to copy. It forms a sound
basis for the sculptor's art, a
temperament such as this,
which seems to be denuded count leo' tolstoi by prince paul troubetzkoi

273