PENETRATING the American temperament is a strong vein of boyishness, alertness, elasticity of mind, a happy disregard of difficulty and a buoyant hopefulness; a predisposition to humour and a refusal, except in really serious matters, to take life seriously; a national grace of gaiety. It is this phase of Americanism that is reflected in the sculpture of Frederick Macmonnies.

He is himself a remarkable example of maturity in youth. To-day, in this year 1903, he is but forty, yet in variety and quality the work accomplished has been prodigious, and he has long since reached a notable eminence both at home and in Paris. The latter has been pretty constantly his place of sojourn since 1884, and he has proved himself fully in touch with its spirit, at least with that exhalation of elegant materialism which hovers over its deeper qualities. For, except in the statues of Nathan Hale and James S. T. Stranahan, and possibly in his “Shakespeare” of the Congressional Library, Macmonnies has shown himself more alive to the external charm of form than to its expression of underlying qualities of deeper significance.

At the age of seventeen he had the good fortune to be received into the studio of Saint-Gaudens as an apprentice-pupil, where he worked for some four years, meanwhile attending the life classes at the Academy of Design and the Art Students’ League. Even in those days he developed an extraordinary manual skill, and his drawings also are remembered by his fellow-students as being quite unusually graceful and true. He had, moreover, the privilege of working under the master, at the time of his greatest productivity, when his studio was the resort of the best architects, sculptors and painters; so that he grew up under the most favoured conditions, corresponding in kind to those experienced by apprentices of the fifteenth century in the bottegas of the Florentine masters.

Accordingly, when Macmonnies went to Europe, in 1884, his experience and knowledge were far beyond what students of his age usually possess. However, the first visit to Paris was abruptly terminated by the cholera, before which he retreated to Munich, and for some months studied painting. Then followed a tour on foot over the Alps, when a summons from Saint-Gaudens recalled him home. For a year he assisted the master and then returned to Paris, this time entering the École des Beaux Arts and studying under FalguiÈre; with such success that he twice won the Prix d’Atelier, which ranks next to the Prix de Rome and is the highest prize open to foreigners. Then, taking a studio of his own, he executed his first statue, a “Diana,” which gained an Honourable Mention at the Salon. A commission for three angels in bronze for the Church of St. Paul in New York was followed in 1889 and 1890 by orders for the Hale and Stranahan statues, for the latter of which he received a Second Medal at the Salon, the only instance of an American sculptor being thus honoured. After executing two small fountain designs, for which he modelled a “Pan of Rohallion” and a “Faun with Heron,” he found himself confronted with the big problem of the Columbia fountain, the most important sculptural group at the Chicago Exposition. Since then, in addition to many statuettes, medallions, busts and low-relief portraits he has accomplished such notable works as the “Bacchante,” the statue of Sir Harry Vane, the “Shakespeare,” pediments for the Bowery Savings Bank and spandrils for the Washington Arch in New York, a quadriga for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn and horse groups for the entrance to Prospect Park, a “Victory” for the battle monument at West Point and colossal groups for the Indiana State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial at Indianapolis. The mere enumeration of this incomplete list of works, representing a period that scarcely exceeds ten years, testifies to the artist’s energy and inventiveness. That such an exuberance of output should affect the quality of his work was almost inevitable. The precise way in which it seems to have done so is interesting, in relation not only to Macmonnies’s career, but to the art generally. It has, indeed, a reference to the artist’s manner of using his model, to the degree in which his imagination maintains a control over or succumbs to the facts of the living subject.

It is true the model will frequently suggest an idea to the artist. Some arrest of action, momentary gesture, or the movement of relaxation, as the figure, tired with posing, extends itself, will supply the artist’s eye, ever on the alert for impressions, with the hint of a motive which his imagination will develop into a serious and beautiful work. He will use the model to build up the structural fabric of his ideas, and, if need be, to elaborate the facts, but unless he

can modify the facts of the figure by elimination or accentuation and invest his rendering of them with that intangible something which does not exist in the model, but in the impression which the latter has made upon his imagination, the result will scarcely fail to bear the earmark of being a copy. Doubtless the artist will lessen the probability of this, indeed, may entirely remove it, by his absorption in the technical subtleties of obtaining an illusion of actual facts out of his inert material; but this, after all, is one of the active forms of his artistic imagination. If he exercises it with enthusiasm he is still maintaining his ascendency over the objectivity of the model. This is the kind of realism in which the Japanese carver indulges on his sword hilt. The facts are for him merely an excuse for revelling in the enjoyment of his skill—the closer his rendering of them the greater his triumph over the medium—and we ourselves in examining his work lose cognisance of the facts in our wonder at the skill of craftsmanship.

This is a very different kind of realism from that exhibited in the statue which crowned the principal entrance of the recent Paris Exposition. The figure presumably was to symbolise modern Paris. Perhaps it was in a spirit of mischief, certainly without much sense of humour and with no imagination, that the sculptor sought his model in a well-known magazin des modes, selecting the most famous of the young ladies, on whose beautiful figure the mantles and cloaks are set, that the patronesses of the establishment may see by a supreme effort of the imagination how they will set upon themselves. He represented her in a costume À la mode. The statue stood against the sky, a monument of commonplace, trivial and ridiculous.

But, without going to any such lengths in demeaning his imagination, the artist may still allow it to become hypnotised by his model. I was very much struck by the remark of a painter, whose nudes are exquisitely pure and poetical in type, that it was his habit as soon as he had secured the facts of the figure to discontinue the model, since he found that otherwise he was apt to become possessed by it. And is it not a fact that in very many statues and pictures one detects the evidence of this possession? Is it absent in Macmonnies’s later work?

The earlier is alive with spontaneous, creative energy, which shows itself most characteristically in works like the “Cupid on Ball,” “Boy with Heron,” and the “Diana.” The last has been criticised for being “nervous and strained” in manner. Not quite justly, perhaps, since the long, lean limbs are precisely those of one accustomed to swift movement; the movement in this case is free and elastic, and the whole gesture of the body expressive of keen and practiced energy; no antique type, it is true, but its modern antithesis, the girl whose graceful lines have been strung and whose grace of action liberated by physical activities. The figure has the buoyancy and poise of mass and charm of living lines which distinguish the work of Macmonnies as much as the actual beauty of modelling. These traits reappear in a most fascinating way in the artless grace of the “Cupid,” bounding along with head and shoulders thrown back, as he discharges an arrow behind him. The action of the body is quick with naturalness, and yet the disposition of every part, even to such a detail as the fingers, reveals the shrewd arrangement of a choicely refined taste—an instinctive taste, operating almost unconsciously, with a frank, boyish impulsiveness, high spirited and not without a spice of mischievous humour. For note the redoubtable struggle between the “Boy with Heron”; the youngster planted firmly and putting forth his strength so stubbornly, the bird thrashing the air with its wings and writhing its body angrily. How will it end? Is it only a tumble of sport, or will the young creature of the earth not let go until the creature of the air is subdued, perhaps maimed, killed? Or, again, in the “Pan of Rohallion” the boy stands upon a ball supported by miniature dolphins, which spout their streams of water and look up as if listening, while he blows the two reeds that issue at a broad angle from his impish mouth, leaning back to inflate his chest until his body describes an arc. It is the attitude of a saucy child that has taken the measure of its little self from the affectionate indulgence that surrounds it; again, not an antique type, nor rustically impish like a Puck, but with the engaging elegance and self-conscious roguery of a certain kind of modern urchin.

Yes, modernity is the key to which all Macmonnies’s work is pitched; an echo not of the modern mind, but of the modern temperament. So we may be disposed to prefer the earlier ones, while his temperament was still fresh and frank and exuberant with the insouciance of youth. Later on the exuberance is at once more conscious and less spontaneous. In the “Diana” there was an abounding healthfulness of liberated energy; in the “Bacchante” a suggestion of energy, reËnforced with champagne. Truly, this is not an inapt suggestion for a bacchante to make; but we are a long way from the anthropomorphic tendency of the antique mind which personified the power of wine in its social and beneficent aspects, and saw in Bacchus the god of civilisation and in his devotees the frenzy of divine inspiration. Moreover, there is no suggestion of this in the statue. The figure is of modern type, rendered with undisguised naturalness. After being declined by the trustees of the Boston Public Library, it is now in the Metropolitan Museum, where among the variety of impressions it loses its startling emphasis and takes its place naturally as one of the cleverest pieces of modern sculpture. For of its exceeding cleverness there can be no doubt. The action is such as no model could maintain in its vivacity for more than a moment; the artist has seized it in all its flow and suppleness of movement and held it in his imagination to the finish. It is a statue which we can almost accept as an example of the predominance of technique over the facts of the living model, except for a certain look-at-me-ishness which seems to result from the artist’s consciousness that his problem was a daring exhibition of skill. There is just a little too much protestation of skill in the whole conception, just as there is too much protestation of hilarity in the girl’s face. Her gaiety is hysterical, the composition lacking in artistic sanity.

Both the Nathan Hale and the Stranahan statues were completed when the artist was only twenty-eight years of age. The former, since no portrait of Hale exists, is an effort of imagination, the latter of observation and by far the finer work. For, while Macmonnies is gifted with a very delightful imaginativeness, he has not so far shown himself possessed of the deeper qualities of imagination. The Hale scarcely rises above a graceful and touching sentimentality; there is a point-device nicety in the carriage of the figure; it stands well upon its feet, but with an air of debonair primness and too conscious rectitude. The point of view is a little immature. In the Stranahan, however, the frankness of youth has helped the artist. He had seen many a sculptor go down before the difficulty of a figure in modern civilian garb, but he had also seen his master, Saint-Gaudens, triumph over it in his “Lincoln.” So, as a boy to prove he is not afraid, grasps the nettle tightly and is not stung, Macmonnies grasped his problem and succeeded. He contrives no ingenious arrangement nor extenuates any detail of the costume, but actually makes it interesting by the charming handling of the masses and textures. With equal directness he has represented the character of the figure: stable, composed, yet animated, while to the observation of the head he has brought a sympathetic and reverent study, which results in a singular nobility and sweetness of expression. The statue, in fact, has a very considerable measure of monumental dignity, is full of vitality and touched all over with fineness of human and artistic feeling.

Full of vitality also, and of artistic feeling is the “Sir Harry Vane” in the Boston Library. The costume, a beaver with rolled brim and plume, doublet and cloak, and breeches tucked into riding-boots, offered opportunities of picturesqueness of which Macmonnies has taken full advantage. The gesture, too, as the figure stands firmly with one leg advanced, drawing on a glove, is manly and of winning courtliness. Indeed, the elegance may be felt to be in excess; the conception of the personality being scarcely more than that of a fine gentleman engaged in the unimportant occupation of putting on his gloves. The costume also plays a conspicuous share in the statue of “Shakespeare” at Washington. The doublet, trunks and surcoat are stiff with embroidery, most cunningly modelled, and the set of the silk hose upon the strong, shapely legs is admirable. The head, too, is admirably constructed, the bony portions having been copied from the bust in Stratford-on-Avon Church and the features from the Droeshout portrait, commended by Jonson for its fidelity. Thus the external facts have been very conscientiously compiled, and edited with much mastery of craftsmanship; but the soul of the facts, the inspired poet inside them, is scarcely suggested. The statue illustrates again that Macmonnies does not display imagination; that he only approximates to it with a certain charm of imaginativeness, finding fittest expression in subjects of a decorative character, of which the very beautiful central doors of the Library of Congress remain the most successful example.

For the larger compositions, while full of exuberant invention and charm of detail, lack unity and dignity of ensemble. The best of them was probably the short-lived fountain for the Court of Honour at Chicago. Its central feature, the “Ship of the Republic,” presented a handsome silhouette, whereas the quadriga on the Brooklyn Arch, when viewed from the back, does not. Considering also the necessary haste involved in the preparation of the fountain, it was a fairly maintained composition, reasonably balanced and homogeneous. In spirit, however, it represented the verve and gaiety which the Parisian seeks in exposition sculpture, and scarcely conformed to the graver, more monumental character of the architectural scheme at Chicago; while the naturalistic rendering of a Parisian model to symbolise the Republic, presented a curious and not uninstructive contrast to French’s “Republic” at the other end of the basin.

For in this figure Macmonnies revealed perhaps for the first time, certainly in most marked manner, his tendency to lose himself in the natural facts of the model. Some extenuation might be found in the haste with which the work was bound to be completed; and a similar insufficiency of time—as commissions piled upon him in unexampled profusion—may account for his subsequent addiction to bare naturalism. Yet it scarcely excuses it, and still less that the naturalism should take a grosser form, until in the colossal groups at Indianapolis it reached a degree of coarseness in the female figures which is very far indeed from the exquisite feeling of the artist’s early work.

In the freshness of his youth he reflected the national grace of gaiety. God forbid that the grossness of type and orgy of action displayed in these latter groups should be indicative of anything American!