The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858

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"She looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her _strong toil of grace_."

Although Dr. Johnson undervalued sculpture,--partly because of an
inadequate sense of the beautiful, and partly from ignorance of its
greatest trophies, he expressed unqualified assent to its
awe-inspiring influence in "the monumental caves of death," as
described by Congreve. Sir Joshua truly declares that "all arts
address themselves to the sensibility and imagination"; and no one
thus alive to the appeal of sculpture will marvel that the
infuriated mob spared the statues of the Tuileries at the bloody
climax of the French Revolution,--that a "love of the antique" knit
in bonds of life-long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani,--
that among the most salient of childhood's memories should be
Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes,--that an imaginative girl
of exalted temperament died of love for the Apollo Belvidere,--and
that Carrara should win many a pilgrimage because its quarries have
peopled earth with grace.

To a sympathetic eye there are few more pleasing tableaux than a
gifted sculptor engaged in his work. How absorbed he is!--standing
erect by the mass of clay,--with graduated touch, moulding into
delicate undulations or expressive lines the inert mass,--now
stepping back to see the effect,--now bending forward, almost
lovingly, to add a master indentation or detach a thin layer,--and so,
hour after hour, working on, every muscle in action, each perception
active, oblivious of time, happy in the gradual approximation, under
patient and thoughtful manipulation, of what was a dense heap of
earth, to a form of vital expression or beauty. When such a man
departs from the world, after having thus labored in love and with
integrity so as to bequeathe memorable and cherished trophies of
this beautiful art,--when he dies in his prime, his character as a
man endeared by the ties of friendship, and his fame as an artist
made precious by the bond of a common nativity, we feel that the art
he loved and illustrated and the fame he won and honored demand a
coincident discussion.

Thomas Crawford was born in New York, March 22, 1813, and died in
London, October 16, 1857. His lineage, school education, and early
facilities indicate no remarkable means or motive for artistic
development; they were such as belong to the average positions of
the American citizen; although a bit of romance, which highly amused
the young sculptor, was the visit of a noble Irish lady to his studio,
who ardently demonstrated their common descent from an ancient house.
At first contented to experiment as a juvenile draughtsman, to gaze
into the windows of print-shops, to collect what he could obtain in
the shape of casts, to carve flowers, leaves, and monumental designs
in the marble-yard of Launitz,--then adventuring in wood sculptures
and portraits, until the encouragement of Thorwaldsen, the nude
models of the French Academy at Rome, and copies from the
Demosthenes and other antiques in the Vatican disciplined his eye
and touch,--thus by a healthful, rigorous process attaining the
manual skill and the mature judgment which equipped him to venture
wisely in the realm of original conception,--there was a thoroughness
and a progressive application in his whole initiatory course,
prophetic, to those versed in the history of Art, of the ultimate
and secure success so legitimately earned.

If Rome yields the choicest test, in modern times, of individual
endowment in sculpture, by virtue of her unequalled treasures and
select proficients in Art,--Munich affords the second ordeal in
Europe, because of the cultivated taste and superior foundries for
which that capital is renowned; and it is remarkable that both the
great statues there cast from Crawford's models by Mueller inspired
those impromptu festivals which give expression to German enthusiasm.
The advent of the Beethoven statue was celebrated by the adequate
performance, under the auspices of both court and artists, of that
peerless composer's grandest music. When, on the evening of his
arrival, Crawford went to see, for the first time, his Washington in
bronze, he was surprised at the dusky precincts of the vast arena;
suddenly torches flashed illumination on the magnificent horse and
rider, and simultaneously burst forth from a hundred voices a song
of triumph and jubilee: thus the delighted Germans congratulated
their gifted brother, and hailed the sublime work,--to them typical
at once of American freedom, patriotism, and genius. The king warmly
recognized the original merits and consummate effect of the work;
the artists would suffer no inferior hands to pack and despatch it to
the sea-side; peasants greeted its triumphal progress;--the people
of Richmond were emulous to share the task of conveying it from the
quay to the Capitol hill; mute admiration, followed by ecstatic
cheers, hailed its unveiling, and the most gracious native eloquence
inaugurated its erection.

Descriptions of works of Art, especially of statues, are
proverbially unsatisfactory; only a vague idea can be given in words,
to the unprofessional reader; otherwise we might dwell upon the eager,
intent attitude of Orpheus as he seems to glide by the dozing
Cerberus, shading his eyes as they peer into the mysterious
labyrinth he is about to enter in search of his ravished bride;--we
might expatiate on the graceful, dignified aspect of Beethoven, the
concentration of his thoughtful brow, and the loving serenity of his
expression,--a kind of embodied musical self-absorption, yet an
accurate portrait of the man in his inspired mood; so might he have
stood when gathering into his serene consciousness the pastoral
melodies of Nature, on a summer evening, to be incorporated into
immortal combinations of harmonious sound;--we might descant upon
the union of majesty and spirit in the figure of Washington and the
vital truth of action in the horse, the air of command and of
rectitude, the martial vigor and grace, so instantly felt by the
popular heart, and so critically praised by the adept in statuary
cognizant of the difficulties to be overcome and the impression to
be absolutely evolved from such a work, in order to make it at once
true to Nature and to character;--we might repeat the declaration,
that no figure, ancient or modern, so entirely illustrates the
classic definition of oratory, as consisting in action, as the
statue of Patrick Henry, which seems instinct with that memorable
utterance, "Give me liberty or give me death!" The inventive
felicity of the design for one of the pediments of the Capitol might
be unfolded as a vivid historic poem; and it requires no imagination
to show that Jefferson looks the author of the Declaration of
Independence. The union of original expression and skill in statuary
and of ingenious constructiveness in monumental designs, which
Crawford exhibited, may be regarded as a peculiar excellence and a
rare distinction.

Much has been said and written of the limits of sculpture; but it is
the sphere, rather than the art itself, which is thus bounded; and
one of its most glorious distinctions, like that of the human form
and face, which are its highest subject, is the vast possible
variety within what seems, at first thought, to be so narrow a field.
That the same number and kind of limbs and features should, under the
plastic touch of genius, have given birth to so many and totally
diverse forms, memorable for ages and endeared to humanity, is in
itself an infinite marvel, which vindicates, as a beautiful wonder,
the statuary's art from the more Protean rivalry of pictorial skill.
If we call to mind even a few of the sculptured creations which are
"a joy forever," even to retrospection,--haunting by their pure
individuality the temple of memory, permanently enshrined in
heartfelt admiration as illustrations of what is noble in man and
woman, significant in history, powerful in expression, or
irresistible in grace,--we feel what a world of varied interest is
hinted by the very name of Sculpture. Through it the most just and
clear idea of Grecian culture is revealed to the many. The solemn
mystery of Egyptian and the grand scale of Assyrian civilization are
best attested by the same trophies. How a Sphinx typifies the land
of the Pyramids and all its associations, mythological, scientific,
natural, and sacred,--its reverence for the dead, and its dim and
portentous traditions! and what a reflex of Nineveh's palmy days are
the winged lions exhumed by Layard! What more authentic tokens of
Mediaeval piety and patience exist than the elaborate and grotesque
carvings of Albert Duerer's day? The colossal Brahma in the temple of
Elephanta, near Bombay, is the visible acme of Asiatic superstition.
And can an illustration of the revival of Art, in the fifteenth
century, so exuberant, aspiring, and sublime, be imagined, to
surpass the Day and Night, the Moses, and other statues of Angelo?--
But such general inferences are less impressive than the personal
experience of every European traveller with the least passion for
the beautiful or reverence for genius. Is there any sphere of
observation and enjoyment to such a one, more prolific of individual
suggestions than this so-called limited art? From the soulful glow
of expression in the inspired countenance of the Apollo, to the
womanly contours, so exquisite, in the armless figure of the Venus
de Milo,--from the aerial posture of John of Bologna's Mercury, to
the inimitable and firm dignity in the attitude of Aristides in the
Museum of Naples,--from the delicate lines which teach how grace can
chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Florence, to the
embodied melancholy of Hamlet in the brooding Lorenzo of the Medici
Chapel,--from the stone despair, the frozen tears, as it were, of all
bereaved maternity, in the very bend of Niobe's body and yearning
gesture, to the _abandon_ gleaming from every muscle of the Dancing
Faun,--from the stern brow of the Knife-grinder, and the bleeding
frame of the Gladiator, whereon are written forever the inhumanities
of ancient civilization, to the triumphant beauty and firm, light,
enjoyable aspect of Dannecker's Ariadne,--from the unutterable joy
of Cupid and Psyche's embrace, to the grand authority of Moses,--how
many separate phases of human emotion "live in stone"! What greater
contrast to eye or imagination, in our knowledge of facts and in our
consciousness of sentiment, can be exemplified, than those so
distinctly, memorably, and gracefully moulded in the apostolic
figures of Thorwaldsen, the Hero and Leander of Steinhaueser, the
lovely funereal monument, inspired by gratitude, which Rauch reared
to Louise of Prussia, Chantrey's Sleeping Children, Canova's Lions
in St. Peter's, the bas-reliefs of Ghiberti on the Baptistery doors
at Florence, and Gibson's Horses of the Sun?

Have you ever strolled from the inn at Lucerne, on a pleasant
afternoon, along the Zurich road, to the old General's garden, where
stands the colossal lion designed by Thorwaldsen, to keep fresh the
brave renown of the Swiss guard who perished in defence of the royal
family of France during the massacre of the Revolution? Carved from
the massive sandstone, the majestic animal, with the fatal spear in
his side, yet loyal in his vigil over the royal shield, is a grand
image of fidelity unto death. The stillness, the isolation, the
vivid creepers festooning the rocks, the clear mirror of the basin,
into which trickle pellucid streams, reflecting the vast proportions
of the enormous lion, the veteran Swiss, who acts as _cicerone_, the
adjacent chapel with its altar-cloth wrought by one of the fair
descendants of the Bourbon king and queen for whom these victims
perished, the hour, the memories, the admixture of Nature and Art,
convey a unique impression, in absolute contrast with such white
effigies, for instance, as in the dusky precincts of Santa Croce
droop over the sepulchre of Alfieri, or with the famous bronze boar
in the Mercato Nuevo of Florence, or the ethereal loveliness of that
sweet scion of the English nobility, moulded by Chantrey in all the
soft and lithe grace of childhood, holding a contented dove to her
bosom.

Even as the subject of taste, independently of historical diversities,
sculpture presents every degree of the meretricious, the grotesque,
and the beautiful,--more emphatically, because more palpably, than
is observable in painting. The inimitable Grecian standard is an
immortal precedent; the Mediaeval carvings embody the rude Teutonic
truthfulness; where Canova provoked comparison with the antique, as
in the Perseus and Venus, his more gross ideal is painfully evident.
How artificial seems Bernini in contrast with Angelo! How minutely
expressive are the terra-cotta images of Spain! What a climax of
absurdity teases the eye in the monstrosities in stone which draw
travellers in Sicily to the eccentric nobleman's villa, near Palermo!
Who does not shrink from the French allegory and horrible melodrama
of Roubillac's monument to Miss Nightingale, in Westminster Abbey?
How like Horace Walpole to dote on Ann Conway's canine groups! We
actually feel sleepy, as we examine the little black marble Somnus
of the Florence Gallery, and electrified with the first sight of the
Apollo, and won to sweet emotion in the presence of Nymphs, Graces,
and the Goddess of Beauty, when, shaped by the hand of genius, they
seem the ethereal types of that

----"common clay ta'en from the common earth,
Moulded by God and tempered by the tears
Of angels to the perfect form of woman."

Yet the distinctive element in the pleasure afforded by sculpture is
tranquillity,--a quiet, contemplative delight; somewhat of awe
chastens admiration; a feeling of peace hallows sympathy; and we
echo the poet's sentiment,--

"I do feel a mighty calmness creep
Over my heart, which can no longer borrow
Its hues from chance or change,--those children of to-morrow."

It is this fixedness and placidity, conveying the impression of fate,
death, repose, or immortality, which render sculpture so congenial
as commemorative of the departed. Even quaint wooden effigies, like
those in St. Mary's Church at Chester, with the obsolete peaked
beards, ruffs, and broadswords, accord with the venerable
associations of a Mediaeval tomb; while marble figures, typifying
Grief, Poetry, Fame, or Hope, brooding over the lineaments of the
illustrious dead, seem, of all sepulchral decorations, the most apt
and impressive. We remember, after exploring the plain of Ravenna on
an autumn day, and rehearsing the famous battle in which the brave
young Gaston de Foix fell, how the associations of the scene and
story were defined and deepened as we gazed on the sculptured form
of a recumbent knight in armor, preserved in the academy of the old
city; it seemed to bring back and stamp with brave renown forever
the gallant soldier who so long ago perished there in battle. In
Cathedral and Parthenon, under the dome of the Invalides, in the
sequestered parish church or the rural cemetery, what image so
accords with the sad reality and the serene hope of humanity, as the
adequate marble personification on sarcophagus and beneath shrine,
in mausoleum or on turf-mound?

"His palms infolded on his breast,
There is no other thought express'd
But long disquiet merged in rest."

In truth, it is for want of comprehensive perception that we take so
readily for granted the limited scope of this glorious art. There is
in the Grecian mythology alone a remarkable variety of character and
expression, as perpetuated by the statuary; and when to her deities
we add the athletes, charioteers, and marble portraits, a realm of
diverse creations is opened. Indeed, to the average modern mind, it
is the statues of Grecian divinities that constitute the poetic
charm of her history; abstractly, we regard them with the poet:--

"Their gods? what were their gods?
There's Mars, all bloody-haired; and Hercules,
Whose soul was in his sinews; Pluto, blacker
Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns
At every limp he took; great Bacchus rode
Upon a barrel; and in a cockle-shell
Neptune kept state; then Mercury was a thief;
Juno a shrew; Pallas a prude, at best;
And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers;
Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer,
Sat in the circle of his starry power
And frowned 'I will!' to all."

Not in their marble beauty do they thus ignobly impress us,--but calm,
fair, strong, and immortal. "They seem," wrote Hazlitt, "to have no
sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration. In their faultless
excellence they appear sufficient to themselves."

In the sculptor's art, more than on the historian's page, lives the
most glorious memory of the classic past. A visit to the Vatican by
torchlight endears even these poor traditional deities forever.

On lofty ceilings vivid frescoes glow,
Auroras beam,
The steeds of Neptune through the waters go,
Or Sibyls dream.

As in the flickering torchlight shadows weaved
Illusions wild,
Methought Apollo's bosom slightly heaved
And Juno smiled.

Aerial Mercuries in bronze upspring,
Dianas fly,
And marble Cupids to the Psyches cling
Without a sigh.

To this variety in unity, this wealth of antique genius, Crawford
brought the keen relish of an observant and the aptitude of a
creative mind. His taste in Art was eminently catholic; he loved the
fables and the personages of Greece because of this very diversity
of character,--the freedom to delineate human instincts and passions
under a mythological guise,--just as Keats prized the same themes as
giving broad range to his fanciful muse. A list of our prolific
sculptor's works is found to include the entire circle of subjects
and styles appropriate to his art--first, the usual classic themes,
of which his first remarkable achievement was the Orpheus; then a
series of Christian or religious illustrations, from Adam and Saul
to Christ at the Well of Samaria; next, individual portraits; a
series of domestic figures, such as the "Children in the Wood," or
"Truant Boys"; and, finally, what may be termed national statuary,
of which Beethoven and Washington are eminent exemplars. Like
Thorwaldsen, Crawford excelled in _basso-rilievo_, and was a
remarkable pictorial sculptor. Having made early and intense
studies of the antique, he as carefully observed Nature; few
statuaries have more keenly noted the action of childhood or
equestrian feats, so that the limbs and movement of the sweetest of
human and the noblest of brute creatures were critically known to him.
In sculpture, we believe that a great secret of the highest success
lies in an intuitive eclecticism, whereby the faultless graces of the
antique are combined with just observation of Nature. Without
correct imitative facility, a sculptor wanders from the truth and
the fact of visible things; without ideality, he makes but a
mechanical transcript; without invention, he but repeats
conventional traits. The desirable medium, the effective principle,
has been well defined by the author of "Scenes and Thoughts in Europe":--
"Art does not merely copy Nature; it _cooeperates_ with her, it makes
palpable her finest essence, it reveals the spiritual source of the
corporeal by the perfection of its incarnations." That Crawford
invariably kept himself to "the height of this great argument" it
were presumptuous to assert; but that he constantly approached such
an ideal, and that he sometimes seized its vital principle, the
varied and expressive forms yet conserved in his studio at Rome
emphatically attest. He had obtained command of the vocabulary of
his art; in expressing it, like all men who strive largely, he was
unequal. Some of his creations are far more felicitous than others;
he sometimes worked too fast, and sometimes undertook what did not
greatly inspire him; but when we reflect on the limited period of his
artist-life, on the intrepid advancement of its incipient stages
under the pressure of narrow means and comparative solitude, on the
extraordinary progress, the culminating force, the numerous trophies,
and the acknowledged triumphs of a life of labors, so patiently
achieved, and suddenly cut off in mid career,--we cannot but
recognize a consummate artist and the grandest promise yet
vouchsafed to the cause of national Art.

Shelley used to say that a Roman peasant is as good a judge of
sculpture as the best academician or anatomist. It is this direct
appeal, this elemental simplicity, which constitutes the great
distinction and charm of the art. There is nothing evasive and
mysterious; in dealing with form and expression through features and
attitude, average observation is a reliable test. The same English
poet was right in declaring that the Greek sculptors did not find
their inspiration in the dissecting-room; yet upon no subject has
criticism displayed greater insight on the one hand and pedantry on
the other, than in the discussion of these very _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of
antiquity. While Michel Angelo, who was at Rome when the Laocooen was
discovered, hailed it as "the wonder of Art," and scholars
identified the group with a famous one described by Pliny, Canova
thought that the right arm of the father was not in its right
position, and the other restorations in the work have all been
objected to. Goethe recognized a profound sagacity in the artist:
"If," he wrote, "we try to place the bite in some different position,
the whole action is changed, and we find it impossible to conceive
one more fitting; the situation of the bite renders necessary the
whole action of the limbs";--and another critic says, "In the group
of the Laocooen, the breast is expanded and the throat contracted to
show that the agonies that convulse the frame are borne in silence."
In striking contrast with such testimonies to the scientific truth
to Nature in Grecian Art was the objection I once heard an American
back-woods mechanic make to this celebrated work; he asked why the
figures were seated in a row on a dry-goods box, and declared that
the serpent was not of a size to coil round so small an arm as the
child's, without breaking its vertebrae. So disgusted was Titian with
the critical pedantry elicited by this group, that, in ridicule
thereof, he painted a caricature,--three monkeys writhing in the
folds of a little snake.

Yet, despite the jargon of connoisseurship, against which Byron,
while contemplating the Venus de Medici, utters so eloquent an
invective, sculpture is a grand, serene, and intelligible art,--more
so than architecture and painting,--and, as such, justly consecrated
to the heroic and the beautiful in man and history. It is predominantly
commemorative. How the old cities of Europe are peopled to
the imagination, as well as the eye, by the statues of their
traditional rulers or illustrious children, keeping, as it were, a
warning sign, or a sublime vigil, silent, yet expressive, in the
heart of busy life and through the lapse of ages! We could never
pass Duke Cosmo's imposing effigy in the old square of Florence
without the magnificent patronage and the despotic perfidy of the
Medicean family being revived to memory with intense local
association,--nor note the ugly mitred and cloaked papal figures,
with hands extended, in the mockery of benediction, over the beggars
in the piazzas of Romagna, without Ranke's frightful picture of
Church abuses reappearing, as if to crown these brazen forms with
infamy. There was always a gleam of poetry,--however sad,--on the
most foggy day, in the glimpse afforded from our window, in
Trafalgar Square, of that patient horseman, Charles the Martyr. How
alive old Neptune sometimes looked, by moonlight, in Rome, as we
passed his plashing fountain! And those German poets,--Goethe,
Schiller, and Jean Paul,--what to modern eyes were Frankfort,
Stuttgart, and Baireuth, unconsecrated by their endeared forms? The
most pleasant association Versailles yielded us of the Bourbon
dynasty was that inspired by Jeanne d'Arc, graceful in her marble
sleep, as sculptured by Marie d'Orleans; and the most impressive
token of Napoleon's downfall we saw in Europe was his colossal image
intended for the square of Leghorn, but thrown permanently on the
sculptor's hands by the waning of his proud star. The statue of Heber,
to Christian vision, hallows Calcutta. The Perseus of Cellini
breathes of the months of artistic suspense, inspiration, and
experiment, so graphically described in that clever egotist's memoirs.
One feels like blessing the grief-bowed figures at the tomb of
Princess Charlotte, so truly do their attitudes express our sympathy
with the love and the sorrow her name excites. Would not Sterne have
felt a thrill of complacency, had he beheld his tableau of the Widow
Wadman and Uncle Toby so genially embodied by Ball Hughes? What more
spirited symbol of prosperous conquest can be imagined than the
gilded horses of St. Mark's? How natural was Michel Angelo's
exclamation, "March!" as he gazed on Donatello's San Giorgio, in the
Church of San Michele,--one mailed hand on a shield, bare head,
complete armor, and the foot advanced, like a sentinel who hears the
challenge, or a knight listening for the charge! Tenerani's
"Descent from the Cross," in the Torlonia Chapel, outlives in
remembrance the brilliant assemblies of that financial house. The
outlines of Flaxman, essentially statuesque, seem alone adequate to
illustrate to the eye the great Mediaeval poet, whose verse seems
often cut from stone in the quarries of infernal destiny. How grandly
sleep the lions of Canova at Pope Clement's tomb!

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