The history of sculpture after the first quarter of the 19th century is a record of the effort of sculptors to escape the arid tyranny of Neo-Classicism. The romantic spirit, which took pos session of literature, painting, and architecture, did not prevail in sculpture until, near the end of the century, Rodin led a final and successful assault against the academic entrenchments. The definite inherited subject-matter of sculpture proved less tractable to the excessive individualism, itself a facet of romanticism, which invaded the other arts. In the meantime, sculptors tried, not with out success, to widen the range of classic sculpture by endowing it with movement, subjectivity, decorative charm, costume, and, at times, with truth. The era is one of experiment and research; we are no doubt too near to it to appraise it judiciously or to interpret adequately its deeper significance.
Francois Rude (1784-1855), in his thrilling Marseillaise, on the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, illustrates the way in which romance sometimes took possession of the classic figures, compelling them to attitudes of passionate movement. His Neapolitan Fisher Boy in the Louvre, a genre subject, and his Marshal Ney, who waves his drawn sword above the flowers of the Place de l'Observatoire, Paris, are other examples in which classic beauty, clothed in modern costume, assumes a modern posture. David d'Angers (1788-1856), whose skill and mastery of classic form is well exemplified by the fine Piilopoemen, in the Louvre, brought "local color" into classic art in his costumed figures of his con temporaries. Antoine Louis Barye (1796-1875), the most original and virile sculptor of his time, escaped altogether the classic forms by devoting himself to animal sculpture, giving to the forms of tigers, elephants and bears an intensity of life and a conciseness and breadth that recalls Egyptian examples. Jean Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) attempted to develop the Neo Classic in the direction of the Baroque; he re-established in his Dance, on the facade of the Opera House, Paris, a sensitive, gra cious and rhythmic pictorialism that resembles the work of Clodion.
In Germany, Daniel Christian Rauch (1777-1857), a pupil of Schadow, carried on, with touches of naturalism, the Neo-Classic tradition; his Joseph Maximilien, in Vienna, is a characteristic work. Reinhold Begas (1831-1911), a master of the feminine
nude, found, like Carpeaux, inspiration in the Baroque ; and the Baroque, in its lighter and joyous mood, was also exquisitely inter preted by Viktor Tilgner (1844-1896), whose Monument to Mozart, Vienna, has caught delightfully the spirit of the master that it commemorates. Adolf von Hildebrand (1847-1921), who was one of the great masters of our time, returned to the classic nude, freeing it both from movement and from subjectivity. In his Masculine Nude, in the National Gallery of Berlin, he recap tured admirably the simplicity and repose of the Greeks without enslaving himself to their conventions.
In Italy Neo-Classicism had but a feeble life after Canova, giving way after a brief period to that literal and sugary style from which Italy has been only recently redeemed by the impressionism of Medardo Rosso and his school. In England, Alfred Stevens (1817-1875) escaped almost altogether the Neo-Classic influence; his Caryatides are the work of a virile and original artist whose genius, unhappily, found but few opportunities for its expression. Sir William Ham° Thornycroft (1850-1925) ennobled his classic nudes with lovely and natural sentiment.
In the United States, John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910 was the first important sculptor to temper the classic tradition with some effort towards national feeling. His style is dry and sometimes uninspired, but always robust and unaffected. Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) attained in his best work a charming equilibrium between poetic grace and an austere idealism. His Monument to the Wife of Henry Adams, in Washington and his Lincoln, in Lincoln Park, Chicago, nobly continue the classic tradition of France. Daniel Chester French (1850-1931) was a superb technician who endowed American themes with nobility and power. His Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor, in Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, is one of the loveliest pictorial reliefs of our time.