DOI Heft:
No. 260 (November 1914)
DOI Artikel:McAllister, Isabel G.: A rising British sculptor: Charles Sargeant Jagger
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21211#0092
Charles Sargeant J agger, Sculptor
writing at the time on modern sculpture I ex- industrial centre, Sheffield, and though such an
pressed the conviction that Jagger was destined to environment would seem to be at variance with
occupy a high place amongst sculptors at no very the artistic temperament, yet the revivifying effect
distant date. This prediction is now being of a city's ever-changing influences has the same
verified in a series of poetical themes, showing an value to the sculptor as to the dramatist in
individual and vigorous personality. kindling the vital spark.
Mr. Jagger is modest in the hour of his success, His first introduction to plastic art was an
and though he can discourse eloquently on the incident of his childhood which stands out in his
Greek sculptures, art in the abstract, and such memory very clearly. Wandering with his father
eminent masters as Rodin and Gilbert, for whom on Whitby Sands one day they came across a man
he has an unbounded admiration, he is very averse modelling a sphinx in the clay indigenous to the
to talking of his own achievements, for he never locality, and as they watched the process the idea
experiences any glow of satisfaction from his own arose in the boy's mind that he must be a sculptor,
efforts. But the "divine discontent" is the and he distinctly remembers the thrill of happiness
heritage of the true striver after perfection, the which accompanied a decision from which he
reason doubtless being that the artist's vision grows never once wavered. Later on he must have
larger as he advances in power, consequently it encountered the toil inseparable from the sculptor's
leaves him always the same distance from his great life with its many difficulties and hours of dis-
ideals as on the first day that he started to tread couragement, for "art is not a pleasure trip : it is
the thorny path of art. a battle and a mill that grinds." Yet he never
It has been said that all art is the outcome of regretted his early choice of a profession, and as
its own environment, and in a sense this applies to events have turned out he has no reason to do so
individuals as well as nations. It is always in- now.
teresting to trace the early influences which shape His school-days were an ordeal to him, and he
the career of the artist. A native of Yorkshire, can sympathise with the poet Keats, who never
Mr. Jagger spent his earliest years in the busy knew his lessons, and was always at the bottom of
DESIGN FOR A TOMB (ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART DIPLOMA WORK)
BY CHARLES SARGEANT JAGGER
87
writing at the time on modern sculpture I ex- industrial centre, Sheffield, and though such an
pressed the conviction that Jagger was destined to environment would seem to be at variance with
occupy a high place amongst sculptors at no very the artistic temperament, yet the revivifying effect
distant date. This prediction is now being of a city's ever-changing influences has the same
verified in a series of poetical themes, showing an value to the sculptor as to the dramatist in
individual and vigorous personality. kindling the vital spark.
Mr. Jagger is modest in the hour of his success, His first introduction to plastic art was an
and though he can discourse eloquently on the incident of his childhood which stands out in his
Greek sculptures, art in the abstract, and such memory very clearly. Wandering with his father
eminent masters as Rodin and Gilbert, for whom on Whitby Sands one day they came across a man
he has an unbounded admiration, he is very averse modelling a sphinx in the clay indigenous to the
to talking of his own achievements, for he never locality, and as they watched the process the idea
experiences any glow of satisfaction from his own arose in the boy's mind that he must be a sculptor,
efforts. But the "divine discontent" is the and he distinctly remembers the thrill of happiness
heritage of the true striver after perfection, the which accompanied a decision from which he
reason doubtless being that the artist's vision grows never once wavered. Later on he must have
larger as he advances in power, consequently it encountered the toil inseparable from the sculptor's
leaves him always the same distance from his great life with its many difficulties and hours of dis-
ideals as on the first day that he started to tread couragement, for "art is not a pleasure trip : it is
the thorny path of art. a battle and a mill that grinds." Yet he never
It has been said that all art is the outcome of regretted his early choice of a profession, and as
its own environment, and in a sense this applies to events have turned out he has no reason to do so
individuals as well as nations. It is always in- now.
teresting to trace the early influences which shape His school-days were an ordeal to him, and he
the career of the artist. A native of Yorkshire, can sympathise with the poet Keats, who never
Mr. Jagger spent his earliest years in the busy knew his lessons, and was always at the bottom of
DESIGN FOR A TOMB (ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART DIPLOMA WORK)
BY CHARLES SARGEANT JAGGER
87