John Ellingwood Donnell Trask

“ Power rewards sincerity and from sincerity he has never swerved.
A century ago, in the bright youth of our national life, our growing merchant fleet bore proudly around the world the carven figure-heads of Rush, first of American sculptors. Today we do reverence to St. Gaudens, who, in his Sherman, his Shaw Memorial, his Lincoln and his Farragut has placed the enduring stamp of Art upon the heroes of the nation's second birth.
Rush began and St. Gaudens ended the first century and the first cycle of sculpture in America. Each was an artist. ”

“ CHARLES GRAFLY
The sculptor's power of expression continues through many plastic forms and though more trammeled by the limitations of low-relief he has produced at least one such work, the Scheel Memorial, which has enduring qualities and which, even without them, would still arrest attention by its decorative adornment. "A Head," in marble carved in such high relief as to be almost in the round, sways one by its beauty and reasserts his control of the cutting-tool. ”

“ Our burial places abound in mortuary horrors which, with clumsy fingers, point in the assumed direction of immortality, inspiring hope in a future life by the thought that it, at worst, cannot contain ugliness to equal their own. ”

“ Grafly's works have, to an unusual degree, that evasive and indescribable quality which we call distinction. Yet his constant effort for the seductive effect of style leads to no hollowness, but rather to a deep sincerity of sentiment.
The two-figure bronze group, "A Symbol of Life," is no mere academic study of the nude. Filled with that grace which is an integral part of power it is a strongly emotional presentation of the instinctive forward sweep of man. ”

“ Our battle-fields are planted with the sculptors' concessions to the critical ability of patriots, whose youth was filled with strife, and manhood with memories of strife, to the exclusion of all thought of beauty. ”

“ It is precisely this habit of going to the very bottom of things, of knowing and valuing the genesis of form which makes possible the surface qualities in his work which excite the admiration of the lay audience and the wonder of his professional brothers. ”

“ Grafly returned to the Pennsylvania Academy as instructor in sculpture, a position which he still holds. His continuous teaching has made impress for good upon the rising generation of native sculptors and has served to preserve in his own work a bright hopefulness which comes always from association with youth and the beginnings of things. ”

“ Just as the Lyrics of Shakespeare or of Heine have qualities which make them independent of linguistic knowledge so the Hermes of Praxiteles or the Samothiscian Victory appeal to every seeing man, however ignorant he be of their technical excellences or of their more subtle shades of meaning. ”