Studio: international art (65.1915)

The Edmund Davis Collection

BRONZE STATUETTE. BY CHARLES RICKETTS

work eventually carried out by Epstein. We prefer
this statuette to several others by the sculptor-
painter which the collection contains. The in-
fluences reflected in it are not difficult to trace, but
in the upper portion there is inspiration of a lofty
order that seems to kindle life in the whole work.
Other parts of the statuette reveal a want of regard
for that exquisiteness which pertains to the art of
the statuette, and the felt absence of which in Mr.
Ricketts’s works alienates from him many who
would otherwise be the first to acknowledge how
much he is doing to free the statuette as a form of
art from its present-day tradition of triviality.

For the lighter kind of sculpture Dalou’s
statuette A Lady Reading is one of the finest
examples we could name. Not yet carried to
completion in the drapery, the pose of the figure is
so complete that the whole statuette is full of
expression and charm.
i4

But we are on more serious ground before Alfred
Stevens’s Truth plucking out the tongue of Calumny.
The idea of truth here is that which prevails in the
Anglo-Saxon mind, best expressed in the writings
of Emerson—that truth is something that need not
be contended for, the one thing that will assert
itself, and as inevitably as water finds its level,
independently of our exertions. It represents what
is, and nothing that can be said to give the
view that things are otherwise can make them
otherwise. It is this idea that prevails in Stevens’s
group, a replica of that which forms, as is well
known, the base of the memorial to the Duke of
Wellington at St. Paul’s. A copy of the com-
panion group for the base of this monument and
two statuettes modelled in connection with the
same theme are also in the collection.

Stevens was by instinct, as well as by training,

TERRA-COTTA FIGURE (ANCIENT GREEK)