CHAPTER II.

SCULPTURE IN THE SOUTH.

HE contributing causes back of all conditions are never without interest, and to judge the latter without reference to the former is as unjust as to separate a man from his age in estimating his character, or to measure action without regard to time or circumstance. That the American people were long indifferent to their lack of an art consciousness, and longer still in giving expression to artistic impulse in creative work is not denied by their most prejudiced defenders, but the barrenness of the first two centuries of the new world's life in all matters pertaining to art is not without explanation; was indeed but a well-nigh inevitable result of situation and environment.

Men who must fight for existence, for food and shelter, for governmental experiments and for principles as unyielding as death have little time or desire for the consideration of those things that belong to a different phase of civilization; and even after the establishment of that for which the struggle was made, commercial supremacy and industrial opportunity must be attended to before wealth and understanding can prepare the way for the awakening and development of the art spirit. The American colonies were at first too close to elemental needs to give great thought to those things that make for culture and the beauty of living; and later, in the adjustment to new conditions, the solving of untried problems and the facing of unexpected situations in the expansion of Democracy's experiment, there was

demanded all the skill and ability and concentration that the new country could command, and not until education had become the possession of many, rather than of the few, was it to be expected that the realization of other needs should be generally understood.

The Awakening of the Artistic Temperament.

Science and literature, music and painting, are ever first to make their appeal, ever quickest to awaken response, while that form of art termed sculpture is generally slowest in development, with only here and there men who are masters in it. America had no sculptural heritage or tradition. Notwithstanding the various races which make what are called Americans, the latter are essentially English, and at the time of the settlement of this country British sculpture practically did not exist at all. England's recognition of foreign artists and sculptors, however, had long been liberal, and to this is due, perhaps, the fact that the Virginian colonies, almost entirely English and largely made up of Cavaliers whose leaders were men of education and refinement as well as adventure, were the first to give evidence of familiarity with and love of the plastic art; and to Virginia is attributed the earliest patronage of sculpture in America. Here was no puritan hatred of graven image or symbol, which were thought to be either a form of idolatrous representation or shocking shamelessness, nor was there here the prejudice of ignorance which prevented the purchase of the sculptor's work, and here the first commission for a marble statue was given, a statue to Lord Botetourt, which is standing to-day in front of William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1771 the General Assembly of

Virginia voted a large sum of money to erect a marble statue to Lord Botetourt, the lamented governor of the colony, which statue was made in London in 1773, by Richard Hayward, and in doing this the first art movement of the country was started the first example of the sculptor's skill brought to the new world was this public expression of love and gratitude to an honored character from an appreciative people.

On Dec. 17, 1781, Virginia again voted a commission for a work of art, this time a bust of Lafayette, to be made by the great French sculptor, Houdon, which bust is still in the rotunda of the state capitol in Richmond, and in the centre of this same rotunda is what Gilbert Stuart declared was the most perfect representation of Washington that exists, one of the few art treasures of the country which is not the work of modern times.

Soon after the declaration of peace, following the close of the War of the Revolution, the General Assembly of Virginia decreed that a statue of Washington should be made, and that Houdon should be employed to make it, and in the selection of Houdon for this work the Virginians early gave evidence of a discriminating knowledge of the sculptors of their day, and an appreciation of sculptural art that could only come from a cultured familiarity with the same.

In order that his work should be as perfect as possible, Houdon sailed for America in 1785, where at Mount Vernon he took a cast of Washington's face, head and upper part of his body, with minute measurements of his person, and in nothing that the great sculptor has done, perhaps, does there lie a larger hope of immortality for himself than in the execution of this statue, ordered in the twelfth year of a yet struggling commonwealth. Through the years

that followed, though the South, like other sections of the country, produced no native sculptor of note, the artistic temperament of the people frequently revealed itself in their homes, and in many of the latter were specimens of sculptural art brought over from Europe, either as personal purchases or commissions to others. At Montpelier, the beautiful home of President Madison, one of its twentytwo rooms was set apart for statuary, the collection of which was Madison's supreme delight, and at the time of the South's greatest prosperity many of the large estates boasted of marble reliefs and busts, and in their gardens were pieces of statuary brought from Italy and France.

With this atmosphere as a possession there seems, on the surface, but little pardon for the South's slowness in giving to the country any sculptors worthy of the name; but when it is remembered that the history of American sculpture barely includes a hundred years, that until the first large Exposition (the Centennial of 1876) there had been no vital artistic awakening of the people as a whole, that the South, an agricultural section without large centres to furnish the stimulus of contact and association, or the establishment of museums and art galleries and art schools to serve as inspiration for artistic expression, it is not greatly to be wondered at that she took no leading part in the pioneer art work of the country.

Up to the middle of the Nineteenth century but few American sculptors had become men of note in their profession, but to one of that few Virginia was prompt in attesting her pride, and in 1849 she commissioned Thomas Crawford, a native of New York but at that time a resident of Rome, to make the Washington monument for the capitol square in Richmond, at a cost of $260,000.