John H. Middleton, Marion H. A. Spielmann, Paul G. Konody and Léonce Bénédite

“ But the bust of “Clytie” is surpassed in bigness and classic purity of style and feeling by nothing ever produced in England; it is a complete and noble thing. There is no sculptor who has come nearer to obtaining the grandeur of form which is so wonderful in the Greek masterélpieces. Simple in line, immense in character, full and rich in mo elling, Watts’s work is instinct with vigour, breadth and movement. It sets the true standard, and is a constant and a noble warning to sculptors of the younger school not, to be led away by the dainty and fanciful, however alluring. ”

“ Alike in ideal work, in monumental sculpture and in portraiture, his art is marked by refined taste and scholarship and a noble sense of beauty. It is strong, yet without undue display of power. In him we have to appreciate an unaffected sympathy with grandeur and style, and in all, a big, broad rendering of the human form, with something of the movement of the Greek sculptors and not a little of their repose, yet individual and unmistakably belonging to the British order of mind. ”

“ To these names must be added those of Degeorge, who, with Chapu, gave so powerful an impetus to the art of the medallist; of Gautherin, Hiolle, Thomas, Crauck, Lafrance, Maniglier and Moreau-Vauthier—one of the men who, with Gérome (the painter) and Frémiet, revived the taste for coloured sculpture, a style first attempted long before by Simart; besides many more. These artists created a supremely healthy and vital school of sculpture, dignified and elegant, learned and varied, fresh and charming, and, above all, as single-hearted and as well trained as in any period of history. ”

“ But it must always suggest the man with the anvil, shears, and pincers, rather than the man with the clay and the chisel. It is mainly to Alfred Gilbert that is due the delightful revival of metal-work in its finest form wedded to sculpture, with the introduction of marbles, gems, and so forth, felicitous and elegant in invention and ornament, and so excellent in design and taste that in his hands, at least, it is subservient to the monumental character of his sculpture. ”

“ Michelangelo especially did the whole of the carving with his own hands, and when beginning on a block of marble attacked it with such vigorous strokes of the hammer that large pieces of marble flew about in every direction. But skill as a carver, though very desirable, is not absolutely necessary for a sculptor. If he casts in bronze by the cire perdue process he may produce the most perfect plastic works without touching anything harder than the modelling-wax. The sculptor in marble, however, must be able to carve a hard substance if he is to be master of his art. ”

“ The group was hailed as a masterpiece by one who was thought to be not yet even a student in sculpture, and it was declared by the most exacting critics to be worthy to rank with the best examples of all but the finest periods. Yet it is somewhat lacking in expression—in that kind of humanity which every really great masterpiece of art should exhibit; and connoisseurs applauded the technique, the surface qualities and the like, when they should have been caught by the sentiment. ”

“ As a rule, however, the sculptor’s scarpellino, though he may and often does attain the highest skill as a Carver and can copy almost anything with wonderful fidelity, seldom develops into an original artist. The popular admiration for pieces of clever trickery in sculpture, such as the carving of the open meshes of a, fisherman’s net, or a chain with each link free and movable, or a veil over and half revealing the features of the face, would perhaps be diminished if it were known that such work as this is invariably done, not by the sculptor, but by the scarpellino. ”

“ Irresistible in the hands of a great artist like Alfred Gilbert, such work, at all times attractive, is the goldsmith’s and iron smith’s business rather than the sculptor’s; and although it has coloured the work of some of the younger sculptors of the day, it is not likely to obtain any very wide hold, or to exercise permanent influence for evil. The variety and independence of the British School are such that it is impossible to define any particular tendency in its practice other than towards an ever increasing rise in the level of technical excellence and the power of design. ”

“ During the last quarter of the century a great change came over British sculpture—a change so revolutionary that it gave a new direction to the aims and ambitions of the artist, and raised the British school to a level wholly unexpected. It cannot be pretended that the school yet equals either in technical accomplishment, in richness or elasticity of imagination, or in creative freedom, the schools of France and Belgium, for these have been built up upon the example of national works of many generations of sculptors during several centuries. ”

“ There is a vivid sense of style in Mr Thomas’s work, and sometimes a search for beauty in subjects which to the common eye may suggest the ugly. But Mr Thomas must be recognized as an artist of great power and originality and to the last degree conscientious. Sculptural subtleties he loves, and he works in a low key, quiet and unobtrusive, and severe though he is, he is a poet in sentiment with extreme refinement of taste. His reliefs are fine in rhythm, and by their accentuated definition, allied with delicacy, extremely telling. ”

“ Michelangelo and the Italian Renaissance, he was entirely personal. He was no copyist, although he had the Italian traditions at his fingers’ ends, and his feeling for architecture helped him to treat sculpture with fine decorative effect. Yet even Stevens and his brilliant example were powerless to weaken the passion for the Greek and Roman tradition that had engrossed English sculptors—with their cold imitations and lifeless art, pursued in the name of their fetish, “the Antique.” ”

“ Although the difference between fully developed Gothic sculpture and Romanesque sculpture is almost as clearly marked as the difference between Gothic and Romanesque architecture— indeed, the evolution of the two arts proceeded in parallel stages—the change from the earlier to the later style is so gradual and almost imperceptible, that it is all but impossible to follow it step by step, and to illustrate it by examples. What distinguishes the Gothic from the Romanesque in sculpture is the striving to achieve individual in the place of typical expression. ”

“ It must be remembered that the whole history of French sculpture, as far back as the 17th century, is connected with the invasion of Italian influence in the 16th century, which remained paramount over French art for more than three hundred years. Statue-making, until then an art of expression-national, popular, human and Christian—lost its primitive character under the dilettante refinement of an aristocratic society closely gathered round a king who made art subservient to his splendour or his pleasure ”

“ The bronze statue of “The Dancer” (1904) is a work not less subtle, in which the learnedness of the sculptor is evident to every discerning eye, and “War,” a colossal female bust, reveals a power, amounting almost to ferocity, not disclosed in the other works. Among Mackennal’s other important statuary are the War Memorial at Islington and statues of Queen Victoria for India, Australia, and Blackburn; in all of these the sculpture is marked by good style, with movement, vigour, grace and nervousness of treatment. ”

“ Large in its masses, graceful in its lines, the person of the queen enveloped by all the symbolical figures and fanciful ornaments with which the artist has chosen to enrich it, the monument marks the highest level in this class to which any sculptor and metal-worker has reached for generations. ”

“ It was natural that love of splendour and sumptuousness in the Eastern capital found expression in colour and richness of material rather than in monumental impressiveness. The school of sculpture which arose at Byzantium in the 5th or 6th century was therefore essentially decorative, and not monumental; and the skill of the sculptors was most successfully applied to work in metals and ivory, and the carving of foliage on capitals and bands of ornament, possessed of the very highest decorative power and executed with unrivalled spirit and vigour. ”

“ Here it suffices to say that sculpture never became as completely subservient to architecture, as it did in the north, and that with Giovanni Pisano the almost classic repose and dignity of his father Niccola’s style gave way—probably owing to northern influences—to an increased sense of life and freedom and dramatic expression. Niccola stands at the close of the Romanesque, and Giovanni on the threshold of the Gothic period. During the 13th century Rome and the central provinces of Italy produced very few sculptors of ability, almost the only men of note being the Cosmati. ”

“ The questions which turn on the status of the working man had become the programme of every party, even of the most conservative. Art being the mirror of society, the novel, the drama and painting devoted themselves to the glorification of a new factor in modern life, namely, Labour. Sculpture now, in rivalry with painting, through which Millet had immortalized the peasant, and Courbet the working man, also sought inspiration from such themes ”

“ The sculptor-decorators make a group of workers of striking fancy and ability. Lynn Jenkins, whose frieze in bronze, ivory and mother-of-pearl at Lloyd’s Registry is a remarkable achievement, is one of the leaders. He has latterly devoted himself to pure sculpture, such as the life-size bronze figure on a sarcophagus, “Destiny” (1909 and 1910) and bust portraits remarkable for exquisite feeling and delicacy of carving. Walter Crane designed for Manchester a mace that is remarkable for beauty of conception and felicity of symbolism. ”

“ In this respect the early medieval sculptor inherited one of the great merits of the Greeks of the best period: his figures or reliefs form an essential part of the design of the building to which they are affixed, and are treated in a subordinate manner to their architectural surroundings-very different from most of the sculpture on modern buildings, which frequently looks as if it had been stuck up as an afterthought, and frequently by its violent and incongruous lines is rather an impertinent excrescence than an ornament. ”

“ The high degree of refinement, the charm of modelling, grace of line and composition, sweetness of feeling, which are the note of his work, are in a great measure a set-off against occasional weakness of design and character, and lack of monumental effect. ”

“ The last figure has a peculiarity which is not uncommon in the older bronze reliefs of Germany: the body is treated as a relief, while the head sticks out and is quite detached from the ground in a very awkward way. One of the finest plastic works of this century is the choir screen of Hildesheim cathedral, executed in hard stucco, one rich with gold and colours; on its lower part is a series of large reliefs of saints modelled with almost classical breadth and nobility, with drapery of especial excellence. ”

“ This head heralded the noble work by which the memory of Lord Leighton is to be kept green in the aisle of St Paul’s cathedral. In proportion and in harmony of design and of line, alike in conception and in reticence, it is the sculptural expression of a well-ordered mind and taste. The effigy shows Leighton asleep, while figures personifying his arts, painting and sculpture, guard his sarcophagus at head and foot. There is a note of triumph in the great design for the “Queen Victoria Memorial,” which provides London with it s most elaborate sculptural effort, rising 10 ft. ”

“ Invention, originality, and inspiration are manifest in every part, and every detail is worked out with infinite care, and birth is given to a score of dainty conceits, not all of them, perhaps, entirely defensible from the purely sculptural point of view. In a measure it suggests goldsmithry, to which the genius of Gilbert has so often yielded, as in the exquisite epergne presented to Queen Victoria on her jubilee in 1887, typifying Britannia’s realm and sea power in endless poetic and dainty suggestions of beautiful devices. ”

“ Enthusiastic literary men, and the critics of the day who upheld Rodin in his struggles, more from an instinct of pugnacity and a love of paradox than from conviction and real comprehension of his prodigious and fertile genius, have tended to give him a poetic and prophetic aspect, and make him appear as a sort of Dante in sculpture. ”

“ Indeed, at the beginning of the 19th century, when the teaching of David was paramount in spite of Gros, who, then in the master's studio, was unconsciously sowing the seed of romanticism in painting, a robust individuality was developing among French sculptors-a spirit somewhat rugged, independent, and partly trained, beyond the academic pale, prepared to carry on the tradition of Puget, and quite simply, without any revolutionary airs of innovation, to shake off torpid conventionality. ”

“ The beauty of his chisel work can be seen to perfection in the exquisite bust of Mrs Wertheimer in the Tate Gallery; the marble seems to turn to flesh under his chisel and to palpitate with life: it is, perhaps, too much like flesh. ”

“ If the brilliancy of the school was not so conspicuous and its works gave rise to little discussion or speculation, it is not the less certain that at the beginning of the 20th century the younger generation offered the encouraging prospect of a compact group of sculptors who would probably leave works of permanent merit. Yet sculpture too had gone through a crisis, and been deeply stirred by the currents which so violently agitated all modern thought. ”

“ The end of the 13th century was in fact the culminating period of English art, and at this time a very high degree of excellence was reached by purely national means, quite equalling and even surpassing the general average of art on the Continent, except perhaps in France. Even Niccola Pisano could not have surpassed the beauty and technical excellence of the two bronze effigies in Westminster Abbey modelled and cast by William Torell, a goldsmith and citizen of London, shortly before the year 1300. ”