SCULPTURE IN AMERICA.
Of sculpture by American artists there has been an abundance, but it has been almost entirely produced within the last fifty years, and the quantity has been far in excess of the quality. Previous to this century what few attempts were made in this department were confined chiefly to the carving of figure-heads for ships and the simple but not inartistic decorations of wood over the doors and on the mantel-pieces of some of the fine mansions of our older towns.
Iiarlr American most noted attempt at sculpture executed in the United States previous to !Soo was a statue of an Indian sachem made of hollow copper by Deacon Drownc of Boston. It was intended for a vane over the province-house, and was in every way so novel that the colonists were almost struck dumb with stupefaction at so amazing a display of genius. Somewhat later, Patience Wright of Bordentown, New Jersey, displayed considerable cleverness in model ling miniature wax heads in relief; Washington and Franklin were among the celebrities who patronized this humble follower of the plastic arts in America. William Rush of Philadelphia at the same period acquired some repute for the unusual cleverness displayed in his figure-heads for ships, and also in a number of portrait-busts in wood. But so little evidence was there for a long time of a talent or demand for sculpture in the country that John Trumbull told John Frazee that " sculpture would not be wanted here for a century." First Marble was not until 1824 that the first portrait in marble was executed in the United States. It was a likeness of John Wells by John Frazee, a stone-cutter (179o-1852). Hezekiab Augur, a grocer of New Haven, born in the following year, met with such poor success in business that he took up modelling in clay; he must have been a poor salesman indeed if he thought more could be made by following sculpture in that arid period of American art. But in 1805 was born Hiram Powers, who first of Americans achieved anything like fame as a sculptor, and Horatio Greenough was born the same year. Joel T. Hart (1810-1877), Shobal L. V. Clevenger (1812-1843), Clark Mills (1815 1S83), and Thomas Crawford (1814-1857) followed in rapid succession—all artists of note in our early sculpture, although widely varying in merit.
Thus we see that without any apparent previous preparation a strong impulse toward plastic art, and the men to direct and give it expression, sprang up simultaneously in the land. When one considers the disad vantages under which they labored, and that, so far as can be known, they were not even aided by any heredity of genius in this direction, criticism is tempered by surprise that they achieved the results they did, and that at least two of them succeeded in winning a European renown.
Hiram Powers (1805-1873) must always be assigned a commanding position in our art as a pioneer. Like many of our sculptors, a turn for mechanics was combined in him with a talent for art, and enabled him to facilitate art-expression by valuable inventions. Palmer and several other American sculptors have aided sculpture by similar means. In 1837, Powers decided to visit Italy, and his life was thereafter passed in that country. His example led the way for our sculptors for many years to establish their studios in Florence and Rome, near the quarries which supplied the material for their works, and where they could employ assistants for moderate wages. It is partly to this cause that we must attribute the essential weakness of the American school of sculpture until quite recently. If our sculptors had possessed the genius of a Thor waldsen or a Stevens, they might have risen superior to the pernicious influences of the Italian sculpture of the present century. As it is, they yielded to the false pseudo-classic style of Canova, and later to the sensa tional melodramatic style of recent Italian sculptors, such as Giovanni Dupre" (1817-1882). Very few of them, therefore, have produced anything national or original or approaching greatness, but several have suggested power had they been trained in a more correct school. Powers estab lished his fame by his statue called The Greek (pl. 47, fig. 1). It was received with enthusiasm as a genuine creation of genius. A more clear and mature perception of the principles and requirements of plastic art enables us to place a more just estimate on that work, and to relegate it with much regret to a secondary rank, it being a refined, but artificial, conventional, and soulless composition, indicating talent, but not a spark of sacred fire.