OF THIS BOOK ONE THOUSAND COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD AN APPRECIATION JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD AN APPRECIATION WRITTEN FOR THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE SOCIETY BY ADELINE ADAMS NEW YORK M C M X I I H3 X 37 COPYRIGHT, I912, BY THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE SOCIETY NON HA L OTTIMO ARTISTA ALCUN CONCETTO CH'uN MARMO solo in SE NON CIRCOSCRIVA COL SUO SOVERCHIO, E SOLO A QUELLO ARRIVA LA MAN CHE OBBEDISCE ALL'iNTELLETTO. MICHELAGNOLO BUONARROTI M32552 CONTENTS PAOB List of Illustrations . . . . . * . xi Chronological List of Works xiii Chapter I ... 1 His farewell — His long service in art — Ancestry and birth. — Early environment and opportunity — He enters Brown's studio. Chapter H 8 Significance of Brown and Ward in the develop- ment of American sculpture — Three periods — A. The Dark Ages of sculptural design — B. The middle period — C. Contemporary period — Pecu- liar difficulties of middle period — Brown and Veroc- chio compared — Jefferson on Canova — Brown's genius — Ward's opportunities in Brown's studio. Chapter HI 15 Qualities and equipment — Stay in Washington, and busts modeled there — Return to New York — Portraits — Indian Hunter and Freedman — Election to Academy in 1863. Chapter IV 19 His peculiar message as an American sculptor — Views on contemporary criticism — Technical proc- esses — Patriotism — Breadth of view — Bronze casting in Brown's studio — Feeling for the classic ix CONTENTS PAGE Chapter IV. — Continued — Masculine quality — The Thomas — Words of welcome to the women members of the Sculpture Society — Personality. Chapter V 27 Modeling of small objects — Rodin — Beauty un- related — Arts over-correlated — Ward's golden mean — His architectural conception of work — The example of the Farragut — Ward's generosity of spirit. Chapter VI 32 Statues along the Atlantic seaboard — Central Park statues — The Hunter — The Shakespeare — The Seventh Regiment Soldier — The Pilgrim — Comparison with the Puritan — Other New York statues, especially the Washington — The Beecher — The Garfield — Portrait busts. Chapter VII 45 Review of works — Three typical statues, the Hunter, the Garfield, the Hancock — Century memorial addresses by Adams, Mather, Cary, and Sloane. Chapter VIII 53 Activities in different organizations — Work upon Advisory Committees — Library of Congress — Dewey Arch — Lincoln letter — Relation toward clients — Honors received — Honors due — Atti- tude toward art and life. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of John Quingy Adams Ward, 1905 Frontispiece AT THE END OF THE BOOK John Quingy Adams Ward in his studio . Indian Hunter, bronze statue The Peace Pledge, group in relief . Shakespeare, bronze statue .... General Thomas, bronze equestrian statue General Lafayette, bronze statue . General Washington, bronze statue The Garfield Monument, bronze . Horage Greeley, bronze statue ... Alexander Lyman Holley, bronze bust Henry Ward Beegher, bronze . General Hangogk, bronze equestrian statue August Belmont, Sr., bronze statue John Quingy Adams Ward's Studio 1857- 1907 -1864 1872 1872 1878 1883 1883 1887 1890 1890 1891 1911 1911 1891 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE WORKS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD Bronze equestrian statue of General Washington, Union Square, New York, unveiled July 4, 1856. (Assist- ant to H. K. Brown, sculptor.) Indian Hunter, bronze statue, Central Park, New York, 1857-1864 Illustrated. Alexander H. Stephens, bust, 1858. Senator Hale, bust, 1858. The Freedman, bronze statuette, 1865. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, statue, Newport, R. I., unveiled October 2, 1868. The Good Samaritan, group in granite, commemorating the discovery of ether as an anesthetic. Public Gar- den, Boston, September 26, 1868. Seventh Regiment Memorial, bronze statue, Central Park, New York, 1869-1873. The Peace Pledge, group in relief. . . Illustrated. Shakespeare, bronze statue. Central Park, New York, May 23, 1872 Illustrated. General Reynolds, bronze statue, Gettysburg, August 31, 1872. Israel Putnam, bronze statue, Hartford, Conn., June 18, 1874. General Thomas, bronze equestrian statue, Washington, D. C, 1878 Illustrated. xiii CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS William Gilmore Simms, bronze statue, Charleston, S. C, June 11, 1879. General Daniel Morgan, bronze statue, Spartanburg, S. C., 1881. General Washington, bronze statue, Newburyport, Mass. General Lafayette, bronze statue, Burlington, Vt., June 26, 1883 Illustrated. General Washington, bronze statue, Sub-Treasury, New York, November 26, 1883 Illustrated. Pilgrim, bronze statue. Central Park, New York, June 6, 1885. The Garfield Monument, bronze, Washington, D. C, 1887 Illustrated. William E. Dodge, bronze statue. Herald Square, New York, 1885. Horace Greeley, bronze statue, Tribune Building, New York, 1890 Illustrated. Alexander Lyman Holley, bronze bust, Washington Square, New York, 1890 Illustrated. Henry Ward Beecher, bronze, Brooklyn, N. Y,, June 24, 1891 Illustrated. Five Emblematic Statues, around the cupola of State Capitol, Hartford, Conn. Poetry, statue. Library of Congress, Washington, D. C, 1897. William H. Fogg, bronze statue. National Academy of Design. Henry B. Hyde, bronze statue, Equitable Building, New York. Naval Victory, Dewey Arch, New York, 1899. George William Curtis, bronze bust. New Public Li- brary, New York, 1903. Governor Horace Fairbanks, marble bust, Public Li- brary, St. Johnsbury, Yt. Vice-President Hamlin, bust. Dr. Valentine Mott, bust. xiv CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS Joshua Giddings, bust. James T. Brady, bust. Abraham Cowles, colossal bust, Newark, N. J. William H. Vanderbilt, bust. Colonel Elliott F. Shepard, marble bust. Dr. Goodale, bust, Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Corcoran, marble bust, Washington, D. C. Dr. Jones, marble bust, Washington, D. C. Joseph Drexel, marble bust, Washington, D. C. Orville H. Dewey, bust. Roscoe Conkling, bronze statue, Madison Square, New York. Pediment on New York Stock Exchange, marble, 1903. General Hancock, bronze equestrian statue, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, 1911 Illustrated. Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, Syracuse, N. Y., 1907. General Sheridan, equestrian statue, 1908. August Belmont, Sr., bronze statue. . . Illustrated. CHAPTER I '.,^/^\.^\'^^H "TT WILL say adieu. And when the waste mold that I encloses my personality shall have been broken, I A ask no greater honor than to have my brother sculptors meet here, and say a kind word in my memory. " These words were spoken by John Quincy Adams Ward at the end of an address in memory of the young sculptor, Lopez. They were indeed words of farewell : not long after- ward, the waste mold, to use Ward's own figure, touchingly significant to men of his own craft, was indeed broken; and the kind word he has asked of us is but a matter of truth and justice, in rendering tribute to a personality that will long outlast its shattered mold. A certain wistful charm, as of imagined things that might have been, envelops the story of creators like Raphael and Keats, cut off in the summer of their hope. Such men seem but as messengers of themselves ; we love them for their beautiful promise, as well as for the fair things they have had time to do before they were hurried away; and we for- get, or cast aside as too gross, our harsh proverb concerning the fruit soon ripe. Those whom the gods love — ah, what exquisite harmonies must remain forever undis- covered, because such men die young! But no nimbus of incompleteness lingers around the achievement of Ward; the unusual and happy conjunction of early bud and constant good fruit was granted to his 1 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD genius. In him, age performed the promise of youth; more than half a century of mastery was his. That bronze figure of the Indian Hunter, for which he made the first studies in 1857, and which was finished in its present form in 1864, and four years later placed in New York's Central Park, bears no trace either of the arrogance or the timidity of the apprentice; and his last work, unveiled in 1911, the eques- trian st,atw,e ; of General Hancock, for Philadelphia's Fair- mount 'F'^rk; shows the strong mind and sure hand that £h^pe(^; W^'t^ls'inessage at its best. In American art, he is at once ancestor and descendant — a precursor, yet a mod- ern instance. Even in his later years, he is almost as much the typical "young man for war," as the "old man for counsel." Times changed, and he, for a longer moment than is given to most men, changed with them; always, with that extra- ordinary mind's eye of his, scanning the horizon for each new art-problem, whether borne on the tide of general prog- ress, or tossed rocket-like into his consciousness by some individual attempt in art. "I curse your stuff," he whim- sically cries, in an instant of expansion, speaking to a younger sculptor who had been experimenting in the appli- cation of color to sculpture — "I curse it roundly! But I beg of you, keep on with it, keep on in your own way. For it may lead to something yet. " Curiosity, and the desire for beauty have each their place in art, says the critic : and the Columbus-like curiosity for the "something yet" was always with Ward. " I want to see every statue that ever has been made," he muses. "His career," writes Caffin in his "American Masters of Sculpture," "connects the past with the present, spanning the long interval like a bridge : one pier, embedded in the old condition of things when American sculptors first began to make America the scene and inspiration of their art, its arch mounting above the indifference to, and ignorance of, things artistic, which prevailed before the influence of European 2 AN APPRECIATION art began to be felt here, and its other pier firmly incorpo- rated into the new order." Only an artist of exceptional force and initiative and staying power could have traversed the space that separates our hesitating artistic utterance of half a century ago and our present fairly articulate expression of our national idea in art. If Mr. Ward's career may indeed be likened to a bridge, it is a bridge under which much water has already flowed. For though our art annals are still short, they are not exactly simple; and rapid action characterizes the story. Who were the forbears of this sturdy American sculptor, strong in body and in mind, molded in the type for continu- ance? They were of the hardy English stock that the Virginians were made of. In 1632, John W'ard, of Norfolk, England, landed at Jamestown, and established a planta- tion. This settler's grandson. Colonel James Ward, con- stantly active in military and surveying expeditions during the French and Indian War, was killed fighting Indians on the frontier in 1774: this grandson's son. Colonel William Ward, moved from Virginia to Kentucky, where he lived until 1789, when, attracted by the favorable conditions of the Northwest Territory, he became the owner of large tracts of land in what is now the state of Ohio. In 1805, he laid out and named the town of Urbana, the county-seat of Champaign County. In this town, in 1830, was born his grandson, John Quincy Adams Ward, destined to become the sculptor-laureate of his day. Thus Ward came of a stock of farmers, fighters, creators, constructors: and let it not be said that of such stock no artist may be born ! . It is true that in Ward's youth on a farm near the grow- ing town of Urbana, not the least whilY of any air remotely resembling that which we call an art atmosphere ever reached his nostrils. Urbana was not different from other grow- ing towns of that period. Even in liberal New York, youth counted it a dissipation to view the Greek Slave, by Hiram Powers; and "when this statue was first exhibited in 3 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD Cincinnati, a delegation of clergymen was sent to judge whether it were fit to be seen by Christian people." This point settled, and public morals declared safe, as far as pos- sible danger from Powers was concerned, young Ward made the pilgrimage, and saw the statue. '* I would have gone through any imaginable privation," said he, years later, "had I been able to speak to the sculptor that day!" Yet in spite of the hard conditions of the time, the boy's creative and constructive instinct, derived from fort-build- ing and town-making forefathers, produced its own art atmosphere, where none was found ready-made. In his early years on the farm, a close and loving observation of nature was developed, as may be learned from the Reminiscences written by Ward seventy years after certain happenings in his boyhood. "The narrative is remarkable," says the editor to whose paper the sketch was contributed, "for its beautiful and vigorous English, which leads to the belief that Ward might have been America's dean of literature instead of sculpture, had he chosen the life of a man of letters." Editorial enthusiasms aside, one calls to mind, on reading the sketch, Octave Mirbeau's words in the preface to "Marie Claire." "Ce qui nous etonne surtout, ce qui nous sub- jugue, c'est la force de Taction interieure, et c'est toute la lumiere douce et chantante qui se leve, comme le soleil sur un beau matin d'ete. Et Ton sent bien souvent passer la phrase des grands ecrivains." Yes, the phrase of the great writers is often Ward's. He writes thus: "A flock of murderously close-plucked geese, marked with a daub of red paint on the back of their heads, moved leisurely over the place, nipping the struggling grass under the fennel, the old boss gander who dragged a broken wing keeping a wary eye on any passing boy. The little daisy-shaped flower and the strong peculiar odor of the fennel come back to me now with the freshness of yesterday." Of "Flago's spotted cow": "The muffled clank of her bell as she fed among the tall iron weeds always set me 4 AN APPRECIATION dreaming of some different and far-off life — something hoped for, yet feared." Even the sordid details of the farm topography have their poetic significance in the boy's growing mind: "Around the flattened ash dumps queer bits of old iron suggested the possibilities of vast and complicated machinery. The grin- ning white pegs in the parted soles of warped and blackened old boots suggested the heads and teeth of crocodiles and alligators ; and once, after reading in a Sunday-school book about Hindoo mothers sacrificing their children to the croc- odiles on the banks of the Ganges, I placed some of these old shoes on the edge of the pond, and put mud babies in their mouths." The classic troop of mud babies, dough rabbits, beeswax soldiers, and putty horses which a naive tradition grants to the childhood of every sculptor really existed in Ward's case. He created his own art atmosphere, and the little world enveloped therein he peopled with all sorts of figures made from clay, wax, or whatever material his hands could find. The local potter "became his friend, and gave him the free- dom of his workshop. " This brings him to sculpture's very brink — a perilous position for a youth whose family would have him become a farmer, or a merchant, or a physician. At sixteen, he was taken from school to assist on the farm, and the world-old struggle of ambitious youth began within him — the struggle between inclination and duty. His heart was not in any of the different kinds of work he tried to do, hoping against hope to square his own convictions with the desires of his family. As it is the tendency of romantic human nature to exaggerate the rigors of early struggle, the dignified words of Greenough concerning his own aspira- tions may here be remembered: "My friends opposed my studying the art, but gently, reasonably, kindly." Ward had nothing of the minor poet about him, and in telling the story of his youth, never showed the minor poet's yearn- ing for the martyr's crown ; you are not asked to drop the 5 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD sentimental tear for young genius misunderstood. Probably his labors were good for him. For nearly three years he remained on the farm, but he was neither happy nor successful: his family, seeing this, permitted him to take up the study of medicine, in which he thereupon engaged himself for a brief period. His health having given way, a visit to a sister in Brooklyn was sug- gested. Henry Kirke Brown, the sculptor, had a studio in that city. Ward's sister had talked with Brown on the sub- ject nearest to the boy's heart — the opportunity to study sculpture — but the result was not encouraging. "If you think you have genius of the highest order,'' wrote his sister, "you may come on and study." It is a rather large contract which calls for "genius of the highest order"; Ward's youthful modesty would not permit him to believe himself thus supremely gifted, and he went back to the farm. Nevertheless, as his health did not improve, the visit to Brooklyn was after all accomplished. He had lost confidence in himself, and some persuasion was now required before he could bring himself to go to Brown's studio. Once there, however, the inspiring sight of clay, plaster, marble, and all the sacred apphances of genius aroused his ambition again. In the end, he overcame the natural prejudice of his family against art — it is to be noted that in such cases little is said of the natural prejudice of art against the family — and at the age of nineteen, he began work in Brown's studio, where he remained seven fortunate years. He began as a paying pupil, continued as a paid assistant, and emerged as a young sculptor well fitted to win his own way. In his case, as in that of his friend, William Dean Howells, and many another exceptional Ohio boy, there was a natural reaction against the "westward pressure of the races" — a return backward upon civilization's steps, in the search for the particular place that needed him and his gifts. New York needed Ward; and aside from brief visits to Europe 6 AN APPRECIATION for travel and study, and certain memorable hunting trips in the West and South, he passed the rest of his life working in New York. Here, when prosperity came, he built him a house and studio. He acquired also a beautiful and beloved summer home in the Catskills, finding his necessary rest and recreation in outdoor life and sport there. All his days, he was a hard worker and a good sportsman. CHAPTER II A BRIEF survey of American sculpture will help us to understand the true significance of men like Brown and Ward in the scheme of our artistic redemption. A rough and ready classification of our national achievement in sculpture might grant it three periods, and, as has already been said, Ward was sufficiently the Colossus to bestride the last two of these. Our British ambassador, whose genial studies of the English-speaking peoples have continued for more than forty years, has lately reminded us of the truth that the Englishman and the American have never yet been the great artists of the world. The American colonists — Heaven help them ! — had troubles of their own, that filched away the time they might have had for thinking on the Beautiful. Thus the first act in the drama of our national art moves languidly enough through two centuries of time : and the art of sculpture may be excused for lagging a little behind her more lightly-stepping sister, the art of painting, since sculpture is far more heavily weighted by her material accoutrements. A wealthy colonist, yearning for examples of art, might more easily import a picture than a statue. Smybert and other limners came to us more than half a century before the sculptors, Houdon and Ceracchi. Our first period, our American Dark Ages of sculptural design, produced but a slender output, consisting chiefly of modern civilization's early luxury, the portrait, and her 8 AN APPRECIATION early necessity, the tombstone. Yet not without value, both artistic and historic, were these meager beginnings. For instance, the American who desires to perfect his knowledge of lettering, will look to it that his acquaintance with classic and Renaissance forms is supplemented by a study of the naive inscriptions on the slate burial stones now crumbling on forgotten hillsides, or hemmed in by the traffic of great cities, here in the United States. Our second period in sculpture had naturally far more movement and color and variety : its early activities centred around our struggling national consciousness, which showed itself (to speak of but one way) in the building and decora- tion of our national Capitol, and which gained new force after the War of 1812, and the destruction at Washington incident thereto. This second period gave us not only our first equestrian statues, but a host of more or less successful busts, figures, and groups; it started with Greenough and Crawford and Powers, and ended with that Great Awaken- ing, the Centennial. Our contemporary period dates from that magic moment, the year 1876. It was a sublime in- stant : we beheld a great light ; and by it we almost saw our- selves as other see us. What a difference between the American sculpture shown at the Centennial and that exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair, in 1893! The world had not supposed us capable of such progress. Without the reminders of thoughtful observers like Mr. Bryce, we might forget that we are not art's chosen people. Most of the sculptors of our important middle period were of the Early Exodist variety. These men have in- curred the displeasure of the ultra-patriotic; but seen in sober perspective, their Hegira is something that could hardly have been helped. Their environment was unsuitable ; their art-impulse desired a better country. In the thirties and forties, the young sculptor who remained in America to do his work must have had great independence of mind or excep- tional opportunity for production ; or else, as the smug little 9 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD Stevenson boy observes, "his dear papa was poor." There were few casts and practically no photographs to teach us the splendors of Old World art; and steel engravings, how- ever excellent in themselves, could scarcely point out the whole plan of artistic salvation. In the matter of reproducing his work, the sculptor was at a disadvantage, both as to marble and bronze. American marble suitable for sculpture was then even more difficult to obtain than it is now; and the use of Italian marble involved expense, delay, and frequent disappointment. It was not until the year 1847 that the casting of a large statue in bronze was accomplished in America; nor was the result a remarkable success. The statue was of Doctor Bowditch, of Boston, and was by the Englishman, Ball Hughes: its material was not the "imperishable bronze" of song and story, since the original cast in Mount Auburn has been replaced by a replica bearing the legend "Recast by Gruet Jne., Fondeur, Paris, 1886." In 1852, the year before Brown's Washington was begun, Clark Mills, after incred- ible difficulties, succeeded in casting his equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson. Decidedly the odds were against the art of sculpture in America! With little stimulus save his own imagination, and with his very tools and materials warring against him, many a young sculptor concluded that the best way to meet his difficulties was to turn his back upon them forever. "ItaUam venit" is all that may be written of many a gifted young man who crossed the seas in search of favoring skies. Too often the artist found Italy, but never really found him- self. Some men, however, were made of stouter stuff, and Henry Kirke Brown was one of these. The career of Brown affords a certain parallel to that of Verocchio, whose race was run four centuries earlier. Like Verocchio, Brown may be called a man of one masterpiece. As Verocchio's name is known to the world through his equestrian statue of the great condottiere, Bartolommeo 10 AN APPRECIATION CoUeoni, so Brown's will endure because of his equestrian statue of a soldier of a different stamp, General Washington. Again, each of these artists, in framing the masterpiece on which his fame rests, and for which his own genius is respon- sible, had the assistance of a younger man, a man of more ardent temperament: though this is by no means to assert that Ward, in the Washington, played a part equal to that ascribed to Leopardi in the Colleoni. And whatever their limitations, both Brown and Verocchio had the supreme gift of being the men for the hour. Symonds speaks of Veroc- chio's "limited powers, meager manner, and prosaic mind," and in the same breath declares that "few men have exer- cised at a very critical moment a more decided influence. " So, too, the critic who states that Brown was not a great sculptor, invariably hastens to observe that he nevertheless did a great work. Surely he was one of the strong forces in the shaping, or rather the reshaping of our American sculp- ture. Had our country received a longer visit from Houdon, to whom we owe sterling portraits of Washington, Franklin, and John Paul Jones, we might perhaps have derived from this great French sculptor a vigorous naturalistic tradition — a tradition not exalted, perhaps, but assuredly whole- some. "Copiez, copiez toujours, et surtout copiez juste" was Houdon's counsel to the young artists of his own country; but this maxim does not by any means sufficiently indicate the real worth of his work in eighteenth-century sculpture. But our nineteenth-century sculpture failed to assimilate his robust quality, and until the appearance of Brown, was mainly dominated by the influences of Canova and Thorwaldsen. Even to this day we, as a people, are said to be sentimental in our art. A side light on early conditions is thrown by a letter of Thomas Jefferson, lately published by the North Carolina Historical Commission. This letter was written from Monticeilo in 1816, on the subject of the statue of General 11 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD Washington which the legislature of North Carolina had ordered to be procured. "Who should make it? There can be but one answer to this: Old Canove of Rome. No artist in Europe would place himself in a line with him ; and for thirty years, within my own knowledge, he has been considered by all Europe as without a rival. He draws his blocks from Carara, and delivers the statue compleat and packed for transportation at Rome. ... I am not able to be exact as to the price. We gave Houdon at Paris 1000 guineas for the one he made for this state; but he solemnly and feelingly protested against the inadequacy of the price, and evidently undertook it on motives of reputation alone. He was the first artist in France, and being willing to come over to take the model of the General, which we could not have got Canove to have done, that circumstance decided on his employment. We paid him additionally for coming over about 500 guineas, and when the statue was done we paid the expenses of one of his under-workmen to come over and set it up, which might perhaps be 100 guineas more. I suppose therefore it cost us in the whole 8000 D., but this was only of the size of the life. Yours should be something larger. The difference it makes in the impression can scarcely be conceived. As to the style or costume, I am sure the artist, and every person of taste in Europe would be for the Roman, the effect of which is undoubtedly of a different order. Our boots and regimentals have a very puny effect. Works of this kind are about one third cheaper at Rome than Paris; but Ca- nove's eminence will be a sensible ingredient in price. I think that for such a statue, with a plain pedestal, you would have a good bargain from Canove at 7000 or 8000 D. and should not be surprised were he to require 10000 D. to which you would have to add the charges of bringing over and set- ting up. The one half of the price would probably have to be advanced, and the other half paid on delivery. " The statue was ordered, made, and delivered. In 1822, 12 AN APPRECIATION in obedience to a resolution of the legislature of North Carolina, Governor Holmes writes to Canova of the com- pleted work: '*It commands the wonder and applause of the Western Hemisphere, and will prove to the young enthusiastic artist of the New World, what the sublime labors of Praxiteles and Phidias, those favorite sons of Greece, did to their imitative brethren and admiring spectators, chaste models of admira- tion and perfection." I have ventured thus to dwell upon certain matters of ancient history in American sculpture, because it is only by a study of the conditions and by comparison with his im- mediate predecessors that a man like Brown may be appre- ciated : and Brown had of course a strong influence on Ward's career. Fortified by examples of "old Canove" and "the classick stile, " the New World's "young enterprising artist" was indeed developing, but he was still in his imitative stage. At the time of Canova's death in 1822, and for a generation afterward, sculpture throughout the world was lacking in real creative force. In America as elsewhere, there was sore need of a little leaven of initiative to leaven the whole lump of imitation in art. Brown had initiative enough to pro- duce one of the best equestrian statues we have. Born in 1814, he began his art studies early; but he was twenty-eight years of age when his long-cherished plan for study abroad was carried out. Paris had not yet become the world's great art school. Brown spent four years in Italy, but rejected the lifeless tradition of pseudo-classicism. He had weighed the ideals of Canova in the balance of his Yankee philosopher's brain, and had found them wanting. Ward, his enthusiastic young disciple, was naturally, both from temperament and from circumstance, ready to follow Brown's example, and to out-Brown Brown himself, if nec- essary, in registering a protest against the emasculate in art. The seven years spent with this sculptor were invaluable for the Ohio boy's development as man and artist. 13 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD Besides receiving a well-nigh ideal training in his art and its supplementary technical processes, he had the privilege of meeting the leading men of the country — the leading men in letters, art, science, and statesmanship. One of the advantages enjoyed by Brown's pupils — an advantage uncommon in the fifties — was an evening drawing class in which master and students worked together from the living model. Among Ward's fellow-students from 1853 to 1855 was Larkin Mead, the young Vermont sculptor, who later went to Florence, where he joined another Vermonter, the veteran sculptor, Hiram Powers. An interesting friendship had sprung up between Ward and Mead, but the latter chose Italy for his permanent workground, while Ward remained in his own country. Ward was five years the elder, according to dates, but present-day criticism finds his work more modern in spirit than that of his friend. Far more than the young sculptor of to-day can realize, much of Ward's production during his mature years was in advance of his day and generation. It was fortunate for him and for the art of his country that his priceless native gift of independent vision was not lost or mislaid during those wonder-working years of apprenticeship. Instinct in selection is one of the artist's most precious qualities, whether that instinct be directed toward the tangled web of material offered by every subject in art, or toward the count- less influences life daily pours around him; and of the dif- ferent elements of growth found in Brown's studio. Ward's mind, like a strong plant in a goodly garden, chose eagerly and unerringly just what it needed for its highest develop- ment. 14 CHAPTER III WARD'S choice of a career was early confirmed by his evident ability. His artistic equipment natu- rally differed somewhat from that of the young sculptor of to-day. It excluded all that the Paris schools give to-day by their situation near the base of supplies of historic untransplanted examples in art, their peculiarly in- spiring intellectual environment, their contact with men of widely differing types, their stimulus of camaraderie, that generous relation which, inviolate in youth, almost inevit- ably loses something of its integrity between men, after the real struggle has once set in. On the other hand, he formed desirable acquaintances among his own countrymen; and his training included a fairly large and varied experience in work on productions destined for the market-place, not for the clay-bin — productions which of necessity were pushed through to the bitter end, according to contract. The abso- lute destruction of a student's piece of work permits many pleasant illusions about it. Ward had the advantage of seeing work subjected to a rude sort of acid test in being placed before the public, an experience often more educa- tional than enjoyable. Entering heart and soul into his master's projects, he soon learned how like a searchlight is the public gaze, discovering in a work of art flaws that no studio light could ever reveal. To the man in him as well as to the artist, he owed the 15 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD recognition the years began to bring. The practical work- ing heroic quaUties of a man were his — honesty, enthusi- asm, common sense, mental and physical vigor, the pioneer's ability to emerge in case of an emergency. He therefore engaged and retained the confidence of his fellow-men. John La Farge, in writing of Delacroix, quotes from the French painter's journal a pious wish, fervently expressed, "never to belong to any of those trades of humbug which influence the human race. " A similar wish dwelt always in Ward's mind. His beginnings were not phenomenal, either as to unpre- cedented struggles or unmeasured success. He never at any time merited the adjective "meteoric," which the more or less happy headlines of intensive journalism once fastened upon the brilliant young sculptor, Macmonnies. The bit- ter and the sweet of his early experiences wholesomely tempered each other. On finishing his engagement with Brown, he did not immediately leave the Brooklyn studio, but carried on his own work there for a short time. In 1859 he went to Washington, where he remained for two winters during the sessions of Congress, and modeled several busts. Those were the days of the supreme intellectual conflict preceding our Civil War, and Ward's mind doubt- less matured greatly under the stimulus of life in Washing- ton. He made portraits of Senator Hale of New Hamp- shire, of Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, and of Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. One can scarcely imagine two men farther apart in their points of view than Giddings and Stephens; Giddings, the first Western abolitionist member of Congress, had for twenty years made it the chief object of his life to bring up the burning question for debate, both in season and out, while Stephens, though at first opposing the principles of secession, yielded to them in the end, and be- came Vice-President of the Confederacy. The bust of Ste- phens, begun in Washington, was finished in Stephens's Georgia home, where Ward saw slavery in its milder aspects. 16 AN APPRECIATION From such experiences, a thoughtful young man must have gained greatly in breadth of view. In 1861, he opened a studio in New York, his time for the next two or three years being given to portrait busts, orna- mental modeling and designing, and also, what probably pleased him best, study upon his Indian Hunter, his Freed- man, and other compositions. Among his sitters at this time were Dr. Orville Dewey, the Unitarian clergyman and writer, and Dr. Valentine Mott, the famous surgeon. The Freedman, a bronze statuette appearing in 1865, is Ward's answer to the great national question which he had heard discussed from his youth up, and which had become in- finitely grave during his sojourn in Washington. The fig- ure was never executed in a larger size; it nevertheless created a sensation, for which its timeliness was in a meas- ure responsible. It represents, very gravely and simply, a seated slave who has burst his bonds. If the Freedman may be interpreted as answering one question of the day, it may also be said to ask another question, which has scarcely been answered up to the present; the negro, looking at his broken fetters, seems to ask what he is to do next. It is with great soberness and restraint that the artist has sug- gested this inquiry, for like the Hunter, the Freedman is conceived in the true classic spirit. Both of these works, with their broad objective statement of fact supplemented by their appeal to the beholder's sympathetic imagination, foreshadow the quality of Ward's later achievement. His election to the National Academy of Design in 1863, his completion of the Indian Hunter in 1864, the acceptance of that work by the Central Park Commissioners, together with the successful exhibition of both the Freedman and the Hunter at the Paris Exposition of 1867, definitely and brilliantly conclude the prologue to his career. I have purposely said "prologue" rather than "formative pe- riod, " because in a large and sane development like Ward's, the formative period can never be considered as a closed 17 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD incident. He was by nature a man peculiarly fitted to meet his fellow beings, and to give and take largely in his con- tact with life. His destiny called him to be one of the fortunate few who throughout a long life-cycle may grow without ceasing. 13 CHAPTER IV IN later years, as President of the National Academy of Design, Ward, with characteristic directness, once warned that august body against ''dropping into a conceited security." This warning duly in mind, we nevertheless need not be ashamed of what our country has accomplished in sculpture, and we know that the works of our best sculptors are valued in other lands. What then was the peculiar message of Ward as an American sculptor? What was his individual contribution to our art history? What gifts had he that other men had not? Wherein did that "personality" whose "waste mold" has lately been broken differ from or resemble or transcend other personalities of the time? Mr. Ward himself said, concerning the young sculptor, Lopez, " Contemporary criticism is always of doubtful value; I shall not compare him with any of his contemporaries, for this would be absurd, inasmuch as, if an artist has an individuality, it cannot be compared with the individuality of another. Each takes his own point of view of the sub- ject, and gives us something different — so different — and yet so interesting, that it would be perilously near foolish- ness to say, this one is the greatest painter, that one the greatest sculptor, of the day. " This is high ground; not all of us can attain unto it. Some of us may even believe, with the critic, that "progress 19 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD of the mind consists for the most part in differentiation," and will go our way, differentiating. To begin with the thing of lesser moment, yet important, no other American sculptor ever worked more manfully than he to encourage in his own country the various technical processes upon which sculpture depends for its truthful presentation. Further, no other ever anchored his hope so firmly as he, in the value of the American idea, the American standpoint, the American basis — bias, if you will — for the noblest development of our nation's art. No other ever sur- passed him in sheer virility of purpose and act. But over and above and beyond these things, few artists of any period have been so gifted as he, in greatness of vision, in passion for truth, in feeling for proportion, not only in the daily mat- ters of his art, but in the larger business of the relation of that art to human life. We are but too familiar with the practical difficulties which beset the sculptor in all his works — the conditions which, even in his highest flights, cripple him at the start, and bear false witness against him at the finish. Nature herself conspires against him by concealing with infinite cunning that one black blot in the marble, which by and by, on the last lap, will present itself, inevitable, indestructible, on some hero's sculptured nose. The sculptor's auxiliary forces — plaster-molders, quarrymen, stone-cutters, bronze- founders — are often aliens, with whom his relations are not always those of perfect understanding, either of the spoken word, or the written contract, or the spirit underlying each. Ward's patriotism could never accept with grace the easy proverb, "they arrange these things better in France. " He knew that we ought to arrange them better than we do, here in the United States. His work with Brown had early initiated him into the mysteries of marble-cutting and bronze-casting. "In 1849," writes Mr. Bush-Brown, "my uncle made a trip to the frontier, where he made a series of drawings, water-colors, and models of Indians; the Indian 20 AN APPRECIATION heads and statuettes were cast in bronze in his Brooklyn studio, by a corps of Frenchmen imported for the purpose. " These were among the earliest bronze castings ever made in this country. The experience gained by Ward in his con- tact with the French artisans was used to advantage some years later, when the chasers and riveters employed on the finishing of Brown's famous bronze equestrian statue of Washington struck for higher wages, and were dismissed. Ward took up their work where they left it, and finished it satisfactorily. Once again the body of a horse makes a tradition: "I spent more days inside that horse than Jonah did inside the whale, " says Ward. That the sculptor's auxiliary forces do their wot-k as well as they do at present is owing to the influence of those who, like Ward, are not ashamed to find out with their own hands the limitations and possibilities of bronze and stone. By so doing, they come into better relations with the craftsman; they can sympathize with him in his difficulties, and yet need not be deceived by flimsy excuses. But Ward's patriotic feeling in his art naturally extended far beyond the matter of reproductive processes. Like Brown, he believed that American art should treat of Amer- ican subjects. His views are clearly set forth in a magazine article of the late seventies. Not for him the suave sur- roundings of the colony of expatriates in Florence, nor the relaxing atmosphere of the Victorian-American-Italian school of sculpture at Rome, so marvelously depicted in Hawthorne's '* Marble Faun." "A cursed atmosphere," cries Ward. "The magnetism of the antique statues is so strong that it draws a sculptor's manhood out of him. A modern man has modern themes to deal with ; and if art is a living thing, a serious, earnest thing, fresh from a man's soul, he must live in that of which he treats. . . . An American sculptor will serve himself and his age best by working at home." He advised every young artist to go abroad, but not to stay there. He had a singularly just 21 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD appreciation of the modern French school. "Paris has the best draughtsmen in the world," said he, speaking in the year 1878; "its system of teaching is the best, training the eye to the movement of figures, and to accuracy of repre- sentation. " (It is interesting to note that he places "move- ment" before "accuracy.") Cautioning the student against studying the cast so long that "nature puts him out," he adds, " In sculpture, no man can ignore the grandeur and the beauty of the antique. Adhere to nature, by all means, but assist your intelligence and correct your taste by the study of the best Greek works. If one is faithful and conscien- tious, he will find that every good Greek work is verified in nature. After years of observation, I have found things in nature that I once doubted, and the joy of the discovery was intense." These words show Ward's long acquaintance with all that makes the happiness of the true seeker, and interprets to us an important side of his character. It was perhaps this lively sympathy with the true classic, the spirit of Phidias in the Parthenon pediments, that made him so impatient of the languors of the pseudo-classic; for the Renaissance tradition, fostered during the past genera- tion by the academic teaching of France, and upheld by the works of Dubois, Falguiere and Mercie, appealed strongly to a certain side of his nature, as did everything stamped with the seal of a vigorous sincerity. The tradition which has given us the Colleoni and the Gattamelata could never speak to him in vain. "I think," says Mr. French, "that Ward's masculinity always impressed me more than anything else about the physical man. His powerful build, his deep strong voice, his forcible choice of words, his motions and gestures — all contributed to this impression. And this quality pervaded whatever he did. Incisive and straightforward as he was — intolerant of sham, impatient of sentimentality — all this showed in his work as in his character — natur- ally!" 22 AN APPRECIATION Yes, Ward's artistic quality well deserves that word of the bard, "Bring forth men-children only. For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males." Male, in the highest sense, are his most characteristic works — the Washington, the Beecher, the Garfield, the Shakespeare, the Thomas. And if no one has surpassed Saint-Gaudens in his presentation of the Angel, a being beyond sex, yet with a strangely compelling charm — a lofty contemplative being from another world — then few have equaled Ward in setting forth the Man, the virile, real, active presence in the world that lies about us. Our country may count herself happy in having many good solutions of that essentially virile problem in art, the monumental equestrian statue. Man's work, this: here lies a field which up to the present has scarcely been entered by women sculptors, and which will probably not in the near future offer any very large "place aux dames. " The eques- trian problem was always of passionate interest to Ward, and three of the finest of our equestrians are associated with his genius. In the first great example of such work ever produced in America, Brown's Washington, Ward acted as Brown's assistant; those were the early summer days of his life, days of the long hours so mysteriously shortened by joyful hard work. In the General Hancock, lately unveiled, Ward in his hale winter of time was himself ably assisted: while in the Thomas, made in his crowning middle years, he dedicates to our art a splendid and highly personal offering. "I have thought," continues Mr. French, "that perhaps his most striking contribution to sculpture is the Thomas equestrian, in which he was a pioneer in rendering the mod- ern thoroughbred horse. If to see and interpret nature 23 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD freshly is at least one of the first attributes of the artist, he won this distinction in this statue." Ward thoroughly loved and understood both the horse and the art of riding, and was thus enabled, in this eques- trian portrait, to seize all the advantages offered by the General's horse and horsemanship. Together with the large monumental quality without which the colossal equestrian may not well exist, the Thomas has an unusual expression of race — a free, high spirit due somewhat to the sculp- tor's sensitiveness to all the fierce beauty of the war horse, 'as revealed to Job. Some equestrian statues indicate in the sculptor a far greater knowledge of art than of horseman- ship; others exhibit the maker's understanding of the horse rather than of the principles of sculpture. The former works may indeed be monumental in effect, but in detail, they will naturally leave certain things to your imagination, if not to your indulgence: while the latter may have a cer- tain originality, or a certain fine documentary significance as to trappings and customs, but they will belong to genre, or to the ethnological, rather than to the monumental. The Thomas equestrian is easily in the true equestrian class. In harmony with Ward's skill in riding was his fondness for outdoor sport. His love of nature was as deep as that of his friend and elder, the poet Bryant, but, as might be inferred from his early environment and active temperament, his communion with nature was that of the sportsman as well as the dreamer. He was a delightful raconteur of his vacation experiences, whether in trout-fishing near his sum- mer home in the Catskills, or turkey-hunting in the South- west. A fine phase of his masculine quality was shown in his gentleness toward women and children. It is not surpris- ing that with his robust talent, his presentation of female beauty concerns itself with the ample and vital and elemen- tal, rather than with the complex, the subtle, or the lure of the evanescent. 24 AN APPRECIATION His figure of Poetry shows a wholesome creature, neither great and wise and gnarled like the eldest of Michael An- gelo's sibyls, nor yet with the wild inspired beauty of the youngest of these. In his acceptance of tradition (and few artists in their work have so well harmonized the tale of the old leading with that of the new light), doubtless the Par- thenon Athene has meant more to him than has the " Femme Inconnue." He was attracted by the valor and the vigor and the forthrightness of the many-sided art of the Itahan Renaissance, rather than by its subtleties. He scarcely shares Leonardo's passion for the strangenesses that are to be found in things. His excursions and discoveries and inventions are all in the broad field of normal wholesome life. If his point of view misses something of the unusual, the novel, it is because he is frankly out of sympathy with the abnormal, the eccentric. Had he been painter instead of sculptor, his broad artistic sympathy would probably have admitted the extreme charm of Leonardo's masterpiece, but his own characteristic gifts of expression would have been ill-adapted to a four years' study of La Gioconda's smile. Since to-day, as always, feminist and hominist claim our attention, it is worth while to quote Mr. Ward's words of welcome to the women elected to the Sculpture Society. **We shall be glad to meet you at the council-table of this Society. Enter the race asking no odds. Sex will not handicap you if you are true to your own instincts and feel- ings. Do that which your woman's mind tells you to do, regardless of what any man has done ; there may be subtle phases of art for you, too fine for the coarser range of the masculine sense." Compared with Mr. Kipling's recent genial dictum, this counsel of Mr. Ward's savors perhaps of the old school. His speech had often an old-time quality of which he himself, a keen observer of men and manners, was somehow oddly aware. I recall a certain address in which, having used the old-fashioned word "methinks" as a preamble to what 25 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD was about to be a well-rounded period, he suddenly paused; glancing out on his audience in an indescribably quizzical way, he said confidentially, as if he were speaking of some one else, "You know I always say methinks when I am about to drop into poetry." And when the hour for remem- bering former things was upon him, his words wove a spell around his hearers. Then it was he forgot to be the fighter of shams ; and as one who had known much, and could therefore praise and pardon much, he spoke with humorous loving- kindness of the greatness and the littleness he had seen in men. But if some intellectual combat were in the air, then the sinews of his mind stiffened and rejoiced, and in an instant he was in the midst of the pelt and parry. Swiftly he chose out his good strong words, and stoutly he dealt his blows with them. Mr. Lorado Taft says that after a talk with Ward, one felt that the rest of the world was half asleep. 26 CHAPTER V IN Ward's days of early struggle, he had modeled with Cellini-like distinction and charm many small objects to be cast in precious metal. Indeed his success in this branch of his art was such that in 1861, he was en- gaged by the Ames Company, founders of Brown's Wash- ington, to model exclusively for them designs for the pre- sentation swords then greatly in demand, as well as for canes and other decorative objects. Among his designs were mountings for the swords of Admiral Foote and Gen- eral Oglesby. It is said that these particular mountings were of solid gold, and cost about three thousand dollars each; at that time, our souls were comparatively undis- turbed by longings for the simple life. Those who have judged Ward's range only through his important monumen- tal work of later years have been surprised by the exquisite- ness of design and workmanship revealed in his modeling of small objects. I recall a delightful little table-bell of silver, with figures in high relief, a marvel of delicate beauty. His hand seemed as happy in shaping a cane-top for a clergy- man as in designing pistol-handles for a Sultan. Modeling, pure and simple, he valued from the sculptor's standpoint, rather than from the painter's; temperamen- tally, he was attracted to the integrity of the solid and simple treatment of the facts of form, after the manner of the Greeks, rather than to the enveloping charm of the 27 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD so-called impressionistic manner. As to the pictorial treat- ment in sculpture — a matter which of course has nothing to do with impressionistic modeling — he was keenly alive to its dangers. His love for the true classic showed him the littlenesses and incongruities resulting from pictorial versions of things to be done in bronze and stone. And whether because of or in spite of his profound feeling for Greek forms, he was seldom pleased with modern attempts in polychro- matic sculpture. Throughout his career, beautiful execution of a "mor- ceau, " deliberately yet enthusiastically studied, was quite within the range of his powers and sympathies, but was far from satisfying the whole of his desire; and it can scarcely be imagined of him, as of Rodin, that he might purposely create a fragment to be valued for itself, as such, and unre- lated. A well-known American sculptor, decidedly an admirer of Rodin, had long entertained a hope that this great French sculptor might complete something to be studied, seen and prized in connection with architecture: a reasonable hope indeed, in the interest of the future, since it is somewhat through the safe-guarding strength of archi- tecture that much of the sculptured beauty of the past has been preserved to the present. An inquiry concerning this was put to Rodin, and received a fine evasive Gallic reply to the effect that the human body is the noblest type of archi- tecture. That is to say, Rodin is most impassioned for his art when it is detached and set apart, presumably invinci- ble in its own beauty — an art isolated, even insulated, rather than an art related and united and harmonized with another art. Certainly, in these days of remarkable achieve- ments in the dancing of a symphony and the orchestration of a landscape — not to speak of other and less successful attempts in the ultra-correlation of the arts — M. Rodin's rigidly exclusive point of view about the art of sculpture has certain undeniable merits: and somewhere between the two extremes of the over-correlated and the wholly 28 AN APPRECIATION unrelated must lie the golden mean. With Ward, as with the Greeks, it was a native impulse to seek that mean ; not simply because it seemed to him safe and sound, but be- cause he found it beautiful. We are wont to speak of the middle course as the safe one, but we may be sure that there are adventurous spirits who choose it for some far finer rea- son than because they find that the "going is good." Many men, many minds; Ward had the mental habit of considering things on the side of their largest relation — • art, for instance, in its relation toward human life, and an individual work of art in relation to its environment. Thus the harmonizing of his sculpture with its surroundings was always an object of intense solicitude with him. Con- stantly, as in the matter of the Beecher memorial, he urges upon his clients the necessity of a definite choice of a site, before the size, shape, and general treatment of a monu- ment can well be determined. Nor is he willing, in such a case as that of a pedestal for the Shakespeare or the Gar- field, to bind himself with absolute rigidity to the lines of any architectural drawing, until after he has well worked out the design of the sculpture itself; believing that in such instances, the architecture should be to the sculpture what the fine frame is to the picture, the beautiful unique binding to the book. His many important works naturally imply the collaboration of many famous architects of widely differing schools; with the noble designs of Richard Morris Hunt he seems to have had a special sympathy. Almost more than any other American sculptor, Ward had by nature what Pater has called the "architectural con- ception of work": yet it was not his destiny to reveal to us, through collaboration with an architect, the peculiar har- mony and beauty and novelty of design which we now know may be attained in the union of sculpture and architecture. It was reserved for the combined genius of Saint-Gaudens and White to blaze the path in this direction. When we remember that Ward was born in 1830, the very year in 29 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD which Charles Bulfinch, our first American architect, fin- ished his work on the Capitol at Washington, we realize that it would have been more than a miracle had this sculptor's time and place in American art permitted him to take a prominent part in any such movement toward the harmon- izing of sculpture and architecture, as that which may be said to have begun with the Farragut monument. Saint- Gaudens was born eighteen years later than Ward, and White and McKim, the two great architects who were his comrades, were the first to give serious thought to creating a new tradition in the ancient art of framing sculpture. It would have been chronologically impossible for Ward to have introduced new departures in this matter; the archi- tects who were his contemporaries were properly busy in larger affairs: construction properly had precedence over decoration. But the Farragut monument, unveiled in 1881, revealed to the world old truths in new guise; the message was told not only by the statue itself, but by its architec- tural setting. We are far from accepting the gloomy state- ment of the French critic who declares that the Farragut pedestal, with its "winds and waves and wild uproar" dom- inated and calmed by the figure of the sea-king above it, is the real fount and origin of the whole Art Nouveau move- ment : yet the fact that such a statement has been made by a Frenchman shows the importance of this new example in the setting of sculpture. And from that day to this, a more serious consideration of the subject has prevailed. An un- interesting or unsympathetic pedestal may work wonders to the discredit of a statue. Though Ward had a true feel- ing for architecture, many of his earlier works are seen under all the disadvantages that the architecture of their day could afford. The world at large will never know how nobly he struggled against these disadvantages: his private corre- spondence reveals the extent of his dissatisfaction with the conditions, and his efforts to improve them. It may here be recalled that when the Farragut monu- 30 AN APPRECIATION ment was first projected, some of the committee wished to have Mr. Ward as the sculptor, while others preferred Mr. Saint-Gaudens, then at the beginning of his career. Mr. Ward, with characteristic largeness of mind, helped to solve the difficulty by saying, " Give the young man a chance. " He believed in the younger blood; no petty considerations prevented him from recognizing its value. In the art organ- izations in which he had influence, his spirit was inclusive rather than exclusive. He held that the newer men would prompt their elders to more decisive and efficient action. 31 M CHAPTER VI "ANY cities in the New England, Middle, and South- ern states possess examples of Ward's sculpture. He is represented as far north as Vermont, and as far south as South Carolina. A particularly interesting statue is the Lafayette, a heroic bronze figure erected in Burlington in 1883, and showing the General as he might have appeared at the time of his second visit to this country ; a sort of middle-aged modified Incroyable brimming with vitality. Boston has the Good Samaritan, a group in gran- ite, commemorating the discovery of ether as an anesthetic — one of Ward's earlier works, having been placed in the Public Garden in 1868. Of the same date is Newport's statue of Commodore Perry, who in 1854, secured the famous commercial treaty with Japan. Hartford has its bronze statue of Israel Putnam, erected in 1874, and Gettys- burg its bronze statue of General Reynolds, completed in 1872. In Spartanburg, South Carohna, is the bronze fig- ure of the gallant Revolutionary General Morgan, who defeated Tarleton in the fight at nearby Cowpens. Its date is 1881; two years earlier, in Charleston, was erected the bronze statue of William Gilmore Simms, who as historian of South Carolina had related the deeds of Morgan. From North to South, along the Atlantic seaboard, these figures tell our country's history. But among all our cities. New York and Washington 32 AN APPRECIATION have naturally the lion's share of Mr. Ward's work. In New York's Central Park are four important bronzes from his hand: the Indian Hunter, completed in 1864, an achieve- ment as American as possible in subject, in artist, and in the influences under which it was shaped; the Shakespeare, placed in 1872, a characteristic work in what may be called Ward's matured style, and created in all those genial cir- cumstances of assured public appreciation and of valued personal friendships with men who were thinking and doing the significant things of the day; the Seventh Regiment Soldier, unveiled the following year; and the Pilgrim, erected in 1885 by the New England Society of New York. Each of these statues has a theme definitely suggested by our national history. The first commemorates the vanished inhabitant, the last the conquering pioneer, in his less harsh aspect; the second honors an intellectual influence from the mother country, and the third, the Republic's defender. Aside from its great natural beauty. New York's Central Park is noted as being in point of time the first large munici- pal pleasure ground laid out in the United States. The year was 1857; and during the first quarter-century of the Park's existence, the so-called Victorian canons of taste pre- vailed among English-speaking peoples. Why should we wonder that there is so much commonplace sculpture in the Park? On the contrary, we may well be surprised and grateful that there is so much that is really good. Ward gallantly did his part to raise the average. In the sixties and seventies, his Indian Hunter and his Shakespeare set a notably high standard. The fact that other sculptors com- ing soon after were not able to reach this standard is easily seen from the two huge uncouth sculptures that flank the south end of the Mall. It is difficult to believe that the "Scott" and the "Halleck" were placed in the Park at a later date than the two works of Ward, not far away. Neither the Hunter nor the Shakespeare is enhanced by its pedestal ; but the Hunter has the advantage of a wonderfully 33 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD harmonious natural setting, the httle clearing and the droop- ing branches making an ideal background for the stealthy stride of the man, and the quivering eagerness of the dog. As to the Soldier on Guard, one of the most honored of our modern sculptors, speaking from the standpoint of one who values both sincerity of feeling and competence in expression, has said that this work is by no means properly appreciated by the public, because we have had a surfeit of soldiers' mon- uments; and the vexed question of the "high pedestal" also enters here. It is natural and perhaps even worth while to observe that Ward's Pilgrim, the latest of his Central Park statues, is dated 1884, two years earlier than the Saint-Gaudens Puritan at Springfield. Plaster casts of both these figures stand near each other in the Chicago Art Institute; com- parison there is interesting, though necessarily incomplete. How differently these two men of genius have solved the problem! "The old Greeks," says Lorado Taft, in writing of the Saint-Gaudens Puritan, "took men and made from them noble abstractions; the modern man poses an abstrac- tion, and develops it into a living man. At least such is the gift of Saint-Gaudens. " Ward too in his Pilgrim has given an abstract idea con- crete form. Possibly he has approached his subject with the deeper reverence, while Saint-Gaudens has touched it with a more playful philosophy. Both sculptors are men with a keen sense of humor; Ward's hand is perhaps stayed by a certain feeling very like ancestor worship; his Pilgrim might be first cousin to his own forefather from Norfolk. The more complex temperament of Saint-Gaudens views the case with greater detachment; the bones of his ances- tors are not in question, and no consciousness of blood- relationship to his subject prevents him from adding to his masterly characterization of it an infinitely delightful touch of sportive malice. His Puritan is a man who makes a grim stir, I warrant you, when he walks abroad ! Woe betide the 34 AN APPRECIATION culprit urchin caught in any prank of lese majeste toward that reverend presence! Saint-Gaudens's conception of the **part," while in itself synthetic, interesting, unique, and in no wise injured by its interwoven thread of friendly satire, is nevertheless one that in the hands of a less gifted artist would lend itself to caricature rather than to truthful pre- sentment. The result is inimitable, but many will attempt imitation, and be lost. Ward in his treatment of the theme purposely avoids insistence upon the more grewsome elements of our early colonial life — elements which by reason of their highly dramatic quality, have already been over-emphasized in our literature, and have thus been deprived of their proper per- spective. When we recall the verdict of history that no- where else in what was called the civilized world did the horrible delusion of witchcraft play so little part as in the American colonies, executions for witchcraft having been discontinued in New England half a century earlier than in Europe, we must admit that from the historical point of view. Ward is justified in his rejection of certain temptingly picturesque phases of the New England character — its grim self-repression, its pitiless exclusion, its frenzied intol- erance. Such elements Ward has regarded as episodic, not fundamental. He has remembered too that although the conditions of our early colonial life were hard, they were on the whole rather to be chosen than those which had been left behind in the mother country: the cheapness of land lessened class distinctions; the rich were not so rich and the poor not so poor as in England. His conception of the Pilgrim, therefore, is that of the grave, upright, fearless but by no means implacable pioneer — a stern man, it may be, but certainly not a sour one — a man equally ready to live by the plough or by the musket, and to die in his bed or in his boots, as the Lord should will. In a sense, it is like the Greek conception in art, no particular stress being laid on any particular characteristic. The Pilgrim, work of a 35 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD home-trained sculptor, is an excellent example of sterling academic compostion, such as has long been taught in the French schools; the Puritan, produced by an artist edu- cated largely under the conventional foreign influences, transcends tradition : it strikes a note of novelty which to the imitator is the siren's song luring him to disaster. Another interesting anomaly is that Ward in represent- ing his Pilgrim, a wayfarer who has crossed an ocean in search of an ideal, has seized him at a moment of repose — ready for action, but not in action ; whereas Saint-Gaudens, depicting a Puritan, a man who puts his foot down and keeps it there, has elected to set him traveling, staff in hand, the Word of God caught up weightily under his arm, and his great cloak displacing much air. But Ward's Pilgrim, though in repose, is on guard. This fact is told quite as much by the high resolution of his bearing as by the musket on which he rests his hand, and the powder-horn and car- tridge-cases slung across his stout leathern jerkin. Every line of him, from the peak of his high-crowned, broad- brimmed hat to the soles of his wide-flapped, square-toed boots, shows that he is not a person to be put upon by the fist of man or fate. His grave eyes, his firm lips, his lightly clenched hand all inform you that he is not spoiling for a fight, but is ready for one, if need be. The Pilgrim has a full measure of that look which critics have found characteristic of Ward's statues — a look which says with the County Palatine, "If you will not have me, choose. " In this. Ward has expressed something of his own conviction as an artist — his sense of the dignity of his calling, and of the eternal sacredness of a man's best. This serene "take me or leave me" of the Pilgrim is a triple mes- sage to us; it is from the subject as well as from the statue, and from the sculptor more than from either. Its language is that of deep conviction, not of shallow conceit; it speaks Ward's own emotions as a creator conscious of power. Criticism of the sort that loves the high and dry distinc- 36 AN APPRECIATION tions of label and pigeon-hole will call Ward's work realistic rather than idealistic, objective rather than subjective, and will assume that both his merits and defects result from the qualities thus assigned. But luckily, the artistic achieve- ment of most men strays at times from the pigeon-hole. Often the critic has all too rashly gone a-gumming: he has no sooner caught his specimen, and marked it realist or idealist, as the case may be, than lo and behold, he has his labor for his pains. The magic of opportunity has com- pletely transformed something in the artist's nature, and gives the lie to the label. Ward passionately loved the facts of form; he revered them and he gloried in them. Yet he often regretted that the public's desire to immortalize its heroes by means of portraiture left him little opportunity for ideal sculpture. Had his time been but twenty years later, he would have witnessed the later stages of a slow but certain change in this respect. The need of the portrait continues, but with it is everywhere an ever-increasing interest in "small bronzes," frequently of ideal subjects; an interest to which he himself has largely contributed, through his endeavors to improve in this country the process of bronze casting. Probably the greatest of his statues are those in which he shows himself both realist and idealist; and of these, his Washington in front of the Sub-Treasury is a noble instance. On our way from the Park to Wall Street, we note in passing, that Herald Square has its statue of William E. Dodge, erected by the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1885. If the voice of prophecy be here permitted, the time will come when this very able work will receive its due meed of public appreciation, and v/hen it will be properly and sharply differentiated from certain of our monuments with which it is now wrongly classed by the flippant unobserver. Printing House Square has its seated figure of Horace Greeley, completed in 1890, a commission from the Tribune Association. Socrates is not the unique human example of 37 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD spiritual greatness in homely guise; and it will be admitted that our American sage and journalist, like many of his con- temporaries, offered a sculptural problem made unusually difficult by mere externals. So, too, a background of plate glass is a perplexing matter. But Ward, in his quality of true artist, has transmuted conditions into opportunities: his fme honesty has extenuated nothing; he has shown the outer man whom the world saw, but he has been able to know and reveal the hero behind the whiskers; and without benefit of silhouette, he has given us a compelling figure, a triumph in sculptured characterization. Half-way up the broad steps of the Sub-Treasury build- ing, in Wall Street, is the beautiful and impressive Washing- ton, a standing figure in which Ward's qualities of correct- ness, dignity and simplicity are seen at their very best, and in absolute harmony with the subject treated. This statue is placed near the spot where our first President was inau- gurated in 1789. Washington is about to take the oath of office; the right hand is extended in a gesture of deep, yet restrained feeling; a cloak at the back gives by its harmoni- ous envelopment a fine amplitude to the composition, and prevents that suggestion of silhouetted silk-stocking dapper- ness which in sculpture is one of the pitfalls of the eighteenth- century costume — a form of dress inherently picturesque rather than sculpturesque. The many-statued Father of His Country has often lent himself to some such innocent ruse: Houdon, it will be remembered, placed a plow at the great man's heels, and even then Jefferson complained of the "puny effect of our boots and regimentals." As an exam- ple of change, or progress, if you will, in our ideals, it is interesting to compare this Washington of Ward's, dated 1883, with Greenough's well-known statue of Washington as the Olympian Zeus, conceived in the full tide of neo-classi- cism. Greenough was our first American sculptor; and as there is nothing which so completely obscures real merit as unfashionableness not yet promoted to antiquity, it is 38 AN APPRECIATION difficult for the present generation to understand how good a work his Washington really is; in these days, we feel un- comfortable in the presence of a Washington whose chest is exposed, and the Greenough "semi-drapery" leaves us and the wearer cold. Even when first seen, the statue was the cause of some disappointment; the controversy between "classick stile" and "modern ideas" was then in its begin- nings. Bulfmch, the architect, a man of taste and culture, writes in 1841, "I send you a sort of defence of this statue from Everett, but am not convinced that the sculpture is suited for modern subjects; the dress presents insuperable difficulties. The first statue of Washington was made by Houdon, and a more unpleasant figure was never seen. It is represented in an old-fashioned coat etc. with hair dressed as he wore it, but far from picturesque with stiff ear curls and a heavy club behind. The next statue was by Chan- trey, in our State house, cloathed as a Roman senator; it was highly commended at first, but is now seen with perfect indifference." It would seem from this extract that neither the modern nor the classic had at that time really gained the day. The pendulum was still swinging. Bulfinch protests equally against Houdon's realism and Ghantrey's classicism. But a statue does not live and die by costume alone ; it is not for clothes' sake that a work of art is accepted or rejected by the world. Ward's Washington, by many sculptors ac- counted his noblest portrait statue, will live because Ward had great thoughts about a great man, and because he had also the genius and skill to present those thoughts greatly and simply. Yet who shall say what shall live? Sculpture, like other work, accepts its risk of being seen in the future' with that "perfect indifference" which sometimes follows "high commendation." And if anything can insure the artist's work against oblivion, it is that large interest, at once human and heroic, which pervades and vitalizes Ward's Washington. 39 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD One of our critics, in expressing a faint wish that the weight of the figure had been planted more squarely on both feet, notes the possibility that the sculptor has purposely avoided the square placing, in order to convey the idea that not ambition, but duty, deliberately considered, has called Washington to his high position. For myself, speaking humbly not as a critic but as a mere lover of the beautiful and the fitting, I take such pleasure in the whole harmony of the design that I find not a line nor a plane nor an accent nor a gesture that I would wish to see changed. The ideas suggested are those of consecration and calm and power; and the rendering of these ideas has been accomplished with a perfection that is no mere negative attribute. Set in the midst of the strain and struggle of the business life of our greatest city, the figure maintains a splendid national sig- nificance. Its largeness of style is in faultless harmony with the classic lines of the building in front of which it stands and the pedestal on which it rests. Leaving eques- trian statues out of consideration, it is not too much to say that in the long line of our portrait statues of Washington — works in which sculptors of at least four countries have expressed themselves — the Washington of the Sub-Treas- ury remains the fitting type and exemplar. Not far from this stately figure is yet another important work of Ward's, the marble tympanum of the New Stock Exchange. From the nature of its position on a building in a narrow street, it is not seen at an advantage, unless the spectator views it from the Sub-Treasury steps; in fact, Washington himself has an excellent opportunity to study it. Its subject, Integrity Protecting the Works of Man, is not unsuited to classical treatment. In this pediment is shown to an unusual degree Ward's austere "architectural con- ception of work, which foresees the end in the beginning, and never loses sight of it, and in every part of it is con- scious of all the rest." In the center stands Integrity, arms outstretched, two genii at her feet; on each side are 40 AN APPRECIATION four figures, some nude, some draped ; the poses are varied, two of the figures being grouped lengthwise to fill that ever difficult acute angle at the base of the pediment (too often an impasse that blocks the artist's good intention as to arrangement), and the other two being so composed as to connect the corner groups with the central idea. The pedi- ment problem, whether to be solved in the large style suited to the Parthenon, or in the joyous vein of Carpeaux's Flora, is always a sufficiently baffling proposition; here, a gravely classical spirit, descended from the Acropolis rather than from the Forum or from the Louvre, broods over this bal- anced, well filled, but not intricate composition of forms practically in the round. To prove that the art of sculpture is duly honored in the shadow of old Trinity and in the heart of New York's busi- ness world, yet another work of Ward's might, until very recently, have been found within one of the famous build- ings of a famous spot. By some miracle, the fire that lately destroyed the Equitable Building has left intact our sculp- tor's statue of Henry B. Hyde, formerly standing in the arcade of that building. Across the Bridge, Brooklyn has her beloved Beecher monument, erected in 1891, called by many critics Ward's masterpiece, and certainly a popular work. Though Ward had a strong sense of the sacredness of the artist's mission, and believed that the artist should be "un etre d'elite, " he loved not, in a work of art, that kind of distinction which leaves its message unintelligible to the mass of the people. "A true work of art," he declared, "will meet the wants and therefore stir the feelings of the ordinary human heart." In the Beecher, as in the Garfield monument in Washing- ton, he has used the opportunity to surround his important central figure (necessarily a portrait, and therefore governed by certain well defined rules), with supplementary figures lending themselves to a freer and more idealistic treatment than the laws of portraiture allow. The negro girl busy 41 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD with her palm branch and the two children with their oak garland count largely in the lyric appeal of the whole work. Epic rather than lyric is the impressive Garfield monu- ment erected in Washington in 1887 by the Society of the Army of the Cumberland. A colossal bronze statue of Garfield surmounts a circular granite pedestal designed by Hunt, the architecture affording spaces for three heroic reclining figures in bronze — the Student, the Warrior, the Statesman — symbolizing three important phases in Gar- field's life. Of the portrait statue itself, W^ard writes, "It was the general desire of those interested in the work that I should represent Garfield in the act of speaking. This I have endeavored to do, or rather, to represent him at the close of a period, while delivering a speech. From personal observation and from information, I have chosen one of his characteristic attitudes and gestures. There has been no attempt to represent any particular incident or moment in his oratorical career, but the statue is meant to broadly suggest to each spectator such interpretation as his memory or imagination may allow." As has already been seen. Ward's aim in a portrait statue is to express with dignity and conviction both the personal characteristics and the historical significance of his subject. He does not wish to leave out the human interest, but, as many of his letters to his patrons show, he prefers to avoid anecdote, or at least to leave the onus of it to the accessory portions of the monument, whether figures or reliefs. In comparing the Beecher with the Garfield, one immediately perceives that, to suit his theme, the artist has changed, quite naturally, the scale of his thought, if the expres- sion may be permitted. In the monument to the popular preacher, both as to the bronze figures and their stone set- ting, all is human, intimate, close to the ground and to the daily struggles of life; in the memorial to the martyred President, sculpture and architecture are carried into the realm of the universal rather than of the intimate and 42 AN APPRECIATION personal ; the historical background is properly broader and more important. The Garfield monument may be said to be conceived in the classic spirit; yet in its own way, as the Thomas equestrian in its very different way, it gave Ward a fine opportunity for virile poetic characterization in por- traiture. For Ward, like Abou Ben Adhem, must be writ- ten as one who loved his fellow-men. And he loved to look upon the outer sheath of a man, and by his art, to divine and declare truly the mystery of the being that was hidden within. Garfield's good looks made him a difficult subject for modern portraiture. We are not like the Greeks; we value individuality above beauty. To the American sculp- tor as to his public, the splendid 3^et homely character of a gnarled form like Lincoln's, or a leonine head like Beecher's makes an appeal far beyond that of personal comeliness. Hawthorne found it singular that Americans, with all their love of change, should care to perpetuate themselves in the indestructible likeness of a marble or bronze bust; but the fashion has persisted, and Ward, as may be seen from the list of his works here given, made many portrait busts of people of importance. Notable among his later productions in this branch of his art is the bronze portrait bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, with its fine architectural setting by Thomas Hastings. This work is made further interesting by the vivid personality of its subject, a wonder- worker of the steel industry, its donors, the "engineers of two hemispheres," and by its situation in Washington Square, a beautiful breathing-space where swarms of humble alien workers now make holiday against a background of old New York's aristocratic memories. The bust of Holley, erected in the Square in 1890, may be said to second, in some sort, the emphatic protest which the Washington Arch with its dignified sculptures eloquently utters against the triviality of the Garibaldi statue hard by. Ward did not scorn the voice of the people, especially the American people, but his vigorous mind was impatient of the namby- 43 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD pamby and the unconstructed — as well as of any work, no matter how well constructed, if conceived in the style stig- matized by the student as "pompier." In his portrait busts, as in his statues and monuments, a virile simplicity prevails. 44 CHAPTER VII WARD'S labors brought him honor and what may even be accounted wealth, if judged by normal standards. It would be idle to say of any artist that everything he has touched is a masterpiece ; but certainly nothing that Ward produced could ever be called a pot-boiler, if by this term we mean a work undertaken for revenue only, and not from conviction and with conscience. Some artists defend such products on the high ground that they need the money to do justice to other artistic enterprises of higher im- port to the world. But defensible or indefensible, the pot- boiler does not figure in the tale of John Quincy Adams Ward's commissions. The list of works here given was revised by the sculptor shortly before his death, and was published in William Walton's article upon Ward in the International Studio for June, 1910. Naturally, such a list is scarcely complete; few artists can recite without omission the story of their fifty years of work. Surely Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph, that fortunate line of Latin freely lending itself to the fame of many an artist-builder, be he sculptor or architect, and lately asso- ciated with the memory of McKim, may here once more be remembered. If we seek Ward's monument, we may well look around us. But the real essence of any man's living quality as an artist is something which forever eludes present-day analysis. Each great artist stands, a world- 45 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD candidate for that gift of immortality which, when all's done, the voices of contemporary criticism can neither bestow nor withhold. By a rude arithmetical sort of judg- ment, we may indeed say that a man's work is of value in the world, according to the sum of what he has put into it — his gifts and his use of them. In the large volume of Ward's work, the first important chapter is the Indian Hunter, begun in 1857, the last, the equestrian statue of General Hancock, finished in 1910. Midway between these is the Garfield monument, dated 1887. These three are fair examples of Ward's production, and it is worth while to consider here all that went to the making of each. It has sometimes been jestingly declared that a figure of an American Indian is a harmless necessary youthful folly of every American sculptor, an inevitable piece, so to speak, of intellectual wild oats; and the wooden images once sacred to the guild of the tobacconists are adduced as proof. But Ward, by reason of his pioneer ancestry, and his early envi- ronment amid the outposts of our civilization, might well take a more serious view of the case. To a man whose fathers lived and died in conflict with Indians, the American Indian is neither a joke nor a mere academic proposition. Ward knew the heroic quality of the vanished and van- quished inhabitant — his poetic significance in our national epic. We read that long after having made the first studies for the Hunter, he felt the need of further research as to genuine aboriginal types; that the journey to the North- west was accomplished at no little sacrifice; and that "he spent several months among the Red men, studying their habits, and making wax models that have since been pronounced marvels in truthful delineation of form and char- acter. " Certainly Ward put into his Indian Hunter some- thing far more vital and lasting than would be found in the excellent academic Indian of some talented young Beaux Arts sculptor (his existence being assumed for the sake of the argument) whose chief knowledge of Indian types has 46 AN APPRECIATION been gained at a Wild West show, and whose studies of the Apache have been made on the Parisian boulevard rather than on the American frontier. So too, in undertaking a monument to Garfield, a man born one year later than himself, in the same State as him- self, and with an environment not greatly differing from his own. Ward is by natural sympathy well adapted to the enterprise. He follows as far as possible his own maxim that a man must live in that of which he treats; he steeps himself in his theme, its suggestions, its poetic inferences; his acquaintance with Garfield is supplemented by ardent study of Garfield's mental and physical characteristics, and of the part he plays in our history. The sculptor yields to the general wish of the Committee of the Army of the Cumber- land that Garfield should be represented as the orator; but he surrounds the orator with figures which not only suggest other and perhaps more significant phases of the man, but which also, being presentments of the human form not wholly tailored out of its divinity, add sculptural beauty to the monument. It is Ward's intention that the Student wrestling with his problem shall recall to us the pliant sensi- bility of youth, that the Warrior ready to meet force by force shall remind us of Garfield's sturdy Saxon ancestry, his courage and alertness, and that the Statesman, by his classic dignity of garb and bearing, shall suggest intellectual domination and the calm of a mind conscious of its own power and rectitude. Such things have been done since the beginning of alle- gory; as one of our sculptors often said, paraphrasing Buffon, "It's the way it's done that makes the difference." It is not the subject that counts: choose the most battered and derided subject in existence, say Industry and the nine Muses; one man's work gives you only weariness, while another's unlocks for you the gates of Paradise. Symbol- ism should be but the brief and beautiful way of giving a message; and the normal mind should welcome any imagery 47 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD bringing fresh visions of beauty or power. Yet since the days of Michael Angelo and the Renaissance monument builders, the use of supplementary symbolic figures has led the sculptor into difficulties. Ward could generally emerge triumphant from such difficulties, because he was guided by his sense of proportion and his love of the golden mean. The three allegorical figures around the base of the Garfield are treated broadly, sculpturally, decoratively ; they have a story to tell if you wish it — not otherwise. Houdon spoke wisely for his own day and generation when he said that no man could hope to make more than one equestrian statue in a lifetime. Our own day, with its increased specializing of human effort, not to speak of its improved methods in bronze casting, grants to the sculptor a wider opportunity. In the equestrian statue of Hancock, Ward had the general advantage of his lifelong love and understanding of the horse and horsemanship, as well as the particular advantage resulting from the researches made by him when studying the Thomas. At that time, he had con- sulted, both for warning and example, as well as for the sake of avoiding unconscious reminiscence, reproductions of every equestrian statue in the world — the marvels of antiquity and of the Renaissance, and the modern works that have not yet surpassed these. It is not to be forgotten, however, that since the date of the Thomas, France, Germany, and Amer- ica have produced fine examples of equestrian sculpture; and some of them may have been all the finer because of the existence of the Thomas. Concerning the completion of the Hancock, a few words from one of the four addresses de- livered at the Ward Memorial meeting of the Century Club must here suffice. The addresses were made by Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., Edward Gary, Herbert Adams, and William M. Sloane; each of these Centurions, in his own characteristic manner, rendered a feeling tribute to the First Vice-President of the Century Association. It is the sculptor who thus speaks : 48 AN APPRECIATION "I believe that the very latest work of Ward's lifetime, the equestrian statue of General Hancock, a work not as yet unveiled, will stand as one of the very finest examples of his achievement. Its large monumental impressiveness has seldom been surpassed. And in these swift-moving times of ours, what an example to his fellow artists to live up to their highest ideals is his struggle throughout this enterprise ! In spite of advanced years and failing health, he worked with all his oldtime strength of conviction, all his passionate love for his art. His lifelong habit of doing his best was upon him. After the one-quarter size model had been com- pleted, and the figure of the General finished in the full size, declining health made it necessary for him to entrust the work of finishing the enlargement of the horse to a younger man, a sculptor of the highest rank. Mr. Ward had be- come too ill to supervise these final stages, but even then his solicitude was of the keenest. He had expressed a wish that I should see the work. Two days before his farewell to us I went to him to tell him that the heroic model was completed, and that, to my mind, this last equestrian statue of his was a masterpiece. The valley of the shadow was very near. His eyes were glazed with suffering, and with desire for the long sleep, yet his work was still in his thoughts. I shall not soon forget his look, when on hearing my words, he turned to his wife and murmured, 'Now I can go in peace.' " From these three works of Ward's, his last, his first, and that which stands between, we may in a measure judge all the works of his hands. His spirit of consecration never failed. Whether some future generation may or may not scant its approval of his labors, the present generation has recorded its testimony that he himself in the performance of his work scanted nothing that his generous equipment might give. It may not be out of place to quote here a few sentences from each of the other memorial addresses made at the 49 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD Century Club in honor of Ward, for each is an impressive and beautiful appreciation. "Such an art," said Mr. Mather, "presupposes disci- pline, clearness of aim, self-knowledge on the part of its creator. It is not my purpose to appraise Ward's singularly even and meritorious production. It seems to me to have a high and especial value in view of prevailing notions that hysteria and the artistic temperament are convertible terms. Ward's life and purposeful well-balanced work are an effective protest against the fallacy that the life artistic ranges between overt melodrama and inward tragedy. Such a life is exemplary, because it suggests that any of us who pursue the intellectual life with self-directing discipline are little brothers at least of the artist; such a life and work are doubly precious to the artist. They recall the older traditions of sane, persistent, intelligent endeavor, the grand manner of living the life artistic." "I am tempted," said Mr. Cary, "to speak of Ward as a typical Centurion, but really there is no such thing; the con- ditions are too complex. But there are Century types, and Ward was one of the most satisfactory. He was extraor- dinarily interesting. He was shrewd in his judgments, pen- etrating, independent, and all his ideas had distinctness, and a touch of distinction. They had a wide range, were expressed with candor, and seemed to me the output of an unusually vigorous and unusually open mind. Not that he was without antipathies and prejudices. He had a work- ing assortment of both; but he did not parade the former as righteous indignation or the latter as deliberate convic- tions. . . . His talk and his conduct were, it seemed to me, like his art, sturdy, faithful, fine. One test of the Centurion he stood without the least doubt. He gave to, as he took from, the Club in all ways the very best practi- cable. He always manifested an unobtrusive but complete fidelity to the duties of the various offices to which he was chosen by his fellow-members. " 50 AN APPRECIATION Referring to Ohio as his own birthplace as well as that of Howells and of Ward, Mr. Sloane said, "For a time the two vice-presidents and the secretary of this association were New Yorkers born in Ohio : we typified a certain movement of advance and recession whereby the metropolis selects what it can use." He describes Ward thus: "Though he has passed into the splendid and illustrious community of our dead, there is not one of us but can make him present to the eye of our memory and imagination, here and now at this table, where he so often sat and stood. He was a fine figure of an American, vigorous, supple in his frame, in later years a trifle bowed, but always erect in spirit and self-reliant in bearing. His brow was massive, his eyes keen and observant, his nostrils full and broad, and there was a play around his mouth and chin which argued the nervous readiness of a man able to uphold the beliefs which he held. Perhaps of all his limbs his arms and par- ticularly his hands were the most characteristic, the hands that obey the behests of the mind but give limit and pro- portion to its ideals." It may here be remarked in parenthesis that, in spite of the differences supposed to exist between the Celtic and Latin types, many artists have observed a strong resem- blance between Ward's head and that of Michael Angelo, a resemblance due to the keen eye, the firmly modeled nose, the pugnacious mouth and chin, and the high cheek bones. Mr. Sloane' s address continues with a scholarly appre- ciation of Ward's art. "The history of sculpture in its largest outline is an oscillation between the suggestion to the beholder of indefinite emotions and the expression by limit and proportion of objective perfection. The Orient had its Cyclopean, heroic masses, its promise of form, its subjective, impressional, intentional message of the beyond. By ages of struggle and effort there was evolved the statue in the round, which can be grasped in all its beauty by 51 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD secular minds: definite, typical, balanced, complete. It was a long journey from the Memnon to the Hermes. From the Greeks to the Americans is another evolution. Within it there is the low relief and the high, the grotesque and the monumental, the mechanical and the sentimental. But the sculpture of sensibility has mainly harked to the classical, though we are again feeling the influences of the romantic and even of the oriental in a strange eclecticism which seeks to combine both. Ward knew nothing of European studios during his formative period, nor of the Greek statues in their originals. What reading and the study of casts could do he did not disdain, and in the main his influences were classical. But though familiar with the rules of his craft and obedient to them, when he transcended them it was with a singularly independent power. His work is objective to the highest degree and he is himself in it to address an audience which understands, to excite emotions that are not feigned, to arouse aspirations which may be realized." 52 CHAPTER VIII WARD'S lifework included many tasks other than those of the fortunate artist absorbed in his own daily round of creating and interpreting. What is my art doing for my country? was the constant question of his soul. His acceptance of the Presidency of the newly formed National Sculpture Society in 1893 was one of the many instances of his patriotic spirit. The honors and the penalties of office had long been familiar to him. From 1864 until his death, in 1910, he was a member of the National Academy of Design, and of the Century Associa- tion; in 1874, he was chosen President of the Academy, the sole instance in which this honor has been accorded to a sculptor; he was Vice-President of the Century from 1906 until his death. The list of organizations which he honored by active membership is indeed long and varied, ranging from Academies to Zoological Societies. Some of these bodies, as the Century, the Union League, the Lambs, claimed him upon his social or civic side; others appealed to his sympathies in matters archeological or historical; others sought him for his sportsman quality. But it was particu- larly to the many Associations, Federations, Institutes, Leagues and Societies devoted to the fine arts that he gave his constructive ability, his enthusiasm for high ideals, his unswerving conscientiousness, his dogged perseverance. He had been a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum, and 53 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD later became a Trustee and life member of the American Academy at Rome. He was a member of the Architectural League of New York, the Municipal Art Society of New York, the Fine Arts Federation of New York, and the National Arts Club; he was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in 1895, and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1898. Emi- nently a "man's man" was Mr. Ward; gregarious, and delighting in the give and take of the council table. The difficult and often thankless labors of an important member of various advisory committees were his natural portion; he was appointed upon the Advisory Committee on the Fine Arts to represent the city of New York at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1892, and, ten years later was a member of the Advisory Committee of Sculptors for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. As President of the Sculpture Society, he was called upon, in the second year of the Society's existence, to give his advice in the highly important matter of the sculptural decorations for the new Library of Congress, in Washington. In this duty Saint- Gaudens and Warner were associated with him. "It is to be hoped that the sculptors to whom these works have been allotted will acquit themselves with such credit that the Government will be induced to decorate every public build- ing it may hereafter erect," said Ward; and certainly the great work of decorating the Congressional Library gave a new and marvelous impetus both to our painting and to our sculpture. The sculptural scheme, as is well known, included for the exterior, nine colossal busts, three pairs of spandrels, three important bronze doors; for the interior, eight colossal emblematic figures, twelve heroic portrait statues in bronze, one large clock with sustaining figures, and many other works. Our best sculptors are represented ; as a whole, their work here is of a very high order. Two of the most beautiful and vigorous of the heroic bronze statues are by Paul Wayland Bartlett, a sculptor whose 54 AN APPRECIATION genius was greatly appreciated by Ward, and whose col- laboration he enjoyed in the pediment of the New York Stock Exchange. Advisory work of this sort may well be called construc- tive counsel; less pleasing to his genial nature were the no less necessary duties of destructive criticism, but these too he performed as part of his service, accepting with them the acute discomforts that often came in their train. As Chair- man of an advisory committee considering the selection of a certain model for an equestrian statue, he writes, "Our mission would have been more agreeable could we have aided in the immediate solution of this question; but we were prompted by a feeling that no work of this importance should take the risk of not representing the best talent of the day. We cannot refrain from expressing regret that some method or system has not been arrived at by which the Government could be assured of the best results when it oilers such desirable commissions." Constructive ser- vice appealed far more strongly to his tastes than could any manner of destructive or prohibitive action. In speaking of the Art Commission created under the Greater New York Charter, a body whose duties are largely those of passing upon all works of art and permanent structures to be ac- quired by the city, by purchase, gift or otherwise, he said, "Thus far we have progressed, but the ideal is still ahead of us! This Art Commission has only judicial power, and the artists are in too small a minority. This Commission should have power to initiate schemes, to establish a general system of adornment for the city, and to direct all that pertains to its artistic appearance. " Ward loved his responsibilities, and accepted them quite as much for what he could give as for what he might gain. One steady purpose actuates him, the upbuilding of our art. Of the young Sculpture Society, he writes in his report for the year 1896, "Whatever reputation it may attain shall be established by its deeds, not by empty promises." Almost 55 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD a quarter of a century before that time, he had said, as President of the Academy, "There is no rest for the individ- ual artist until his faculties are dead : there must be no rest for the Academy while this Republic lives, for that is the duration of her life." The same spirit of healthy unrest shapes both utterances. More than a generation ago, Ward was urging upon the Academy cohorts the same counsels they are hearing to-day, touching the necessity of a deeper conviction and a closer brotherhood in their efforts to obtain a new and larger building. "How we shall accomplish this," says his report for 1875, "is a matter of careful thought and work for the next year. The money is in the city, to be had for the proper asking: but, fellow Academi- cians, we cannot ask for this money while our own hearts are cold or lukewarm toward the Academy." Had there been men enough of Ward's enthusiastic temper, that "next year" might not have stretched out into something like two score years! It seems scarcely possible that the thought expressed in this report dates from our pre-Centennial days. Able leader though he was, he was not, like the Cicero described by Brutus, constitutionally unable to follow any- thing that other men begin. When Charles R. Lamb, en- thusiast for the City Beautiful, originated the idea of the Dewey Arch as a dignified artistic feature of New York's tribute to the hero of Manila, on the occasion of his visit to the city in 1899, Ward gave that idea his cordial support," and side by side with younger sculptors, somehow found time to make his own contribution to a notable work. To him was assigned the great group crowning the Arch, and representing Naval Victory, erect in her chariot drawn by six sea-horses, the treatment of the central figure being frankly inspired by that of the Nike of Samothrace. This Arch, though a temporary monument, lives in the perma- nent records of our time, an extraordinary instance of the results of artistic co-operation. "We wasted not a word, a dollar or an hour in diplomacy, but acted on the assumption 56 AN APPRECIATION that our position needed no apology; that we might expect support so far as our plans commended themselves to those in charge." As President of the Sculpture Society, Mr. Ward thus congratulated his fellow sculptors: "Your con- ception of the idea was brilliant, your enthusiasm was splen- did, your humility the promise of exaltation. Many have remarked, 'You artists builded better than you knew'; they did not know that we 'knew', better than opportunity had ever allowed us to build!" In looking over a mass of Ward's letters, addresses and reports, all bearing upon the art of our country, a sculptor lately said, "We younger men little knew how heroically Ward worked for us and for our art: most of us were too untrained in the organizing work which he did so well, and apparently so easily, to realize that such work could not have been done without unremitting, unselfish endeavor." Throughout his career, his high sense of personal respon- sibility made it impossible for him not to give time and thought when counsel was asked. Thus, concerning a Lincoln monument projected shortly after the President's assassination — a monument which he himself, on account of other work, is unable to undertake, he writes, on being re- quested to give the Committee the benefit of his ideas: "First as to the statue. Lincoln does not appear to me as a bold leader at all, nor characteristically an ambitious man. He was not the projector or originator of the great idea associated with his administration, neither did he, solely, discover the method by which the idea was consummated. A man of good heart, keen intuition, and great moral cour- age, but with a strong regard for estabUshed law, he wished to know the hopes and desires of the people before giving them voice. . . . Slow in processes, he hesitated into immovable decisions. . . . He was the medium through which the spirit of Liberty worked a grand revolu- tion. Therefore I should represent Lincoln in an attitude of great repose, [without] passion — almost listening. To 57 JOHN QUINGY ADAMS WARD represent him in group, as simply Emancipator, would be as doubtful art as it would be doubtful history." Here again is the phrase of the great writers. "Slow in processes, he hesitated into immovable decisions" is a masterly sentence in the grand style, and with the rhythm proper to prose. Turning from the manner to the matter of Ward's letter, written in 1867, we note that his conception of the sculptured Lincoln is not by any means that which then prevailed, but rather that which prevails at present: the best of our recent statues of Lincoln show him in an "attitude of great repose, without passion, almost listening, " as suggested by Ward years ago, when it was the fashion of the day to show Lincoln in the very act of strenuous eman- cipation, and with the word "Proclamation" writ large on his extended scroll. The letter concludes with hints as to ways and means whereby "incidents and events," often the main objects of a committee's anxious thought, might be illustrated in a series of reliefs around the base of the statue, giving richness and boldness to a work in which the statue itself would be spared the necessity of telling an anecdote. The relation between sculptor and patron, like every human relation, changes with circumstances. Comedy or tragedy, the drama goes on, but the situations vary. Each new commission has its own peculiar problem, each new committee its own peculiar psychology, each new situation its own peculiar appeal or perplexity, or joy or despair. Should any one zealous for the guidance of young sculptors ever compile a series of letters from a well-known sculptor to his patrons, many of Ward's letters would be found models of broad thought and clear expression, of perfect sincerity and, what is more remarkable in a man of great directness of character, natural tact. His imagina- tion easily compasses the other person's point of view. He has of course his share of human prejudice; but his large sanity would laugh at the pretentious attitude of those 58 AN APPRECIATION artists who, in their intercourse with their fellow men, as- sume themselves to be made of some fabulous superior stuff defying analysis and exempt from explanation. However uncompromising in his artistic conscientiousness, he does not disdain explanation, but even deems it a duty. As in the extract just given, ideas set forth in many of his early letters prevail to-day, and prove his quality of pre- cursor. Known as a man of ideas, and of honest and picturesque statement, he was often approached by the copy-seeker with the classic request for a thousand words upon one of those subjects on which artists are supposed to meditate diligently, such as — What Practical Good Is Accom- plished by Art, or What Constitutes Beauty in Woman, or, still more haunting question, What Is Art, and What Is Obscenity? He groaned in spirit, but thought it right to respond, whenever the question seemed to him to have any practical bearing. He made many vigorous pleas for art education; but his message must not be taken, he insists, as "a call for thousands of young people to rush into art for its direct lucrative results. Unless, with true artistic humility, they are willing after proper training to take positions in the industries where art is applied, the great majority of them will not alone be doomed to disappoint- ment, but they will in no wise benefit the community." In 1909, the Architectural League of New York estab- lished two medals of honor for award for distinguished merit, to sculptors and mural painters represented in its annual exhibition. The first two artists thus honored were John La Farge and John Quincy Adams Ward. Only a short time before, in an address given at a meeting of the National Arts Club, in honor of La Farge, Ward had saluted his old friend as "the lover of beauty, the grand artisan, the great artist, . . . whose writings are most learned tributes of a master of the present to the masters of the past." A short time afterward, both painter and sculptor had joined 59 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD those masters of the past. Men of diametrically opposed artistic qualities, they were as one in their life purpose ; and they passed on together, shoulder to shoulder, in their last search for the beautiful. What changes had they not wit- nessed together, this side of the great change! Other lofty figures in the world of American art were passing also, in point of time not far removed from these two. Within a few short years, we have lost two great architects, White and McKim; two great painters. Homer and La Farge; two great sculptors, Saint-Gaudens and Ward. We have lost the cheer of their bodily presence, but we have not lost the light they lifted up. All were men whose better part lives greatly, even after death. Ward had lived to see much of the neo-classicism of our "Marble Faun" moment relegated bit by bit to the gentle shelter of dim museum-aisles. It was a long day, that day of the misty morning when the nervous young knuckles of the boy from Ohio rapped at a master's studio door — day of the golden noon when beauty wreathed itself singing on the green around a triumphant new statue of .an old bard — day of the tranquil evening when the sculptor laureate received from a jury of his peers the golden tribute to dis- tinguished merit. In all that period of time, many indeed were the nine-days' marvels of American plastic art that swam into our ken, only to become as warnings, not ex- amples. Small wonder then that Ward, in his autumn of life, was not greatly perturbed by the neo-impressionistic mani- festations of those who have followed with the greatest ardor the least significant maxims of the more eccentric masters. He could afford to smile whimsically upon the current slang of the atelier, from phrases like "the spiritu- alizing of the marble," of the Victorian-Italian- American period, down to fantastic catch-words like "fatty ends," popular in our so-called "fm de siecle" days, and "blond modeling" or "palpitating surface" heard only yesterday. He had in his time seen many men adjudged, if not to death, 60 AN APPRECIATION at least to temporary defeat, "for want of well pronouncing 'Shibboleth.'" If he himself had a shibboleth of his own, it was that of "American art for the American people." He used vari- ous quaint figures of speech to bring this thought of his home to the mind of the hearer. "He who thinks too long in an adopted language," he would say, "will have for- gotten his mother thought. " Yet his sense of humor would permit him to smile occasionally at his own slogan, as at another man's, and he himself would have been the first to acknowledge that the quality of indigenousness is not the sole requisite for a national art. The belief that "a man must live in that of which he treats" is upon the whole a sane one; yet few artists would be found strong enough to cling to it as tenaciously as did Ward, without great hazard to their highest artistic development; and he himself, but for his own immense artistic curiosity, might have suffered loss. He never underrated the value of study abroad as a part of an artist's equipment; but any plan for prolonged residence abroad seemed to him out of harmony with proper patriotic ideals, and he frankly said so. His deep interest in our American Academy at Rome would never make him lukewarm toward our National Academy of Design, or our National Sculpture Society. Of late years it has been the fashion for artists and other folk across the water to come over and tell us things about ourselves — what we do, and how we do it, and wherein we are justified or not in our continued existence. It is for us to listen wisely, and learn all we may from the Italian sculptor or French painter or Irish player who visits our borders. An English painter who has just come to us says with regret that he cannot find in our art any of the national individuality that we ought long ago to have attained, if we are indeed and in truth a people of vitality and creative force, a nation thinking and speaking for itself. He chides us because we have founded no school of our own, 61 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD but are still accepting traditions already decadent in the Old World. Many of our own artists — those of them who are taking thought for our future as well as for our present — believe that the time is drawing near when we shall give far deeper consideration than we do now to the subject of our art as the truthful expression of our life and character as a people. When that times comes, the education of our young art students must be received, even more largely than at present, under American influences. The "living quality" in our art is something that subsequent ages may talk of more wisely than we ourselves ; we merely know in a general way that the permanent things in the art of past ages are the things that have most truthfully reflected the life and the ideals of the land that gave them birth. Thus the pendulum of modern thought is swinging back to the point of view held valiantly by Ward ; a further evidence of his prophetic vision. It has not been the purpose here to point out in Ward's large work its natural human limitations, but rather to consider it as he himself would have considered any artist's work, for its worth in the world. Vainly, however nobly, shall a man regret that he has but one life to give to his chosen task. The fig and the olive are good, but it is writ- ten that the fig tree cannot bear olive berries, neither a vine figs. What Ward has done in his unique place in our sculp- ture is to-day more important to us than what it was not his part or lot to do. His rugged genius rightly chose to express itself in the upright, downright, rich and massive round — in the colossal equestrian statue and the lofty monument rather than in the delicate vibrations of low relief. His soul sought and found the straightforward rather than the subtle. A natural interpreter of the man on horseback, the soldier armed for battle, the statesman, the captain of industry, he wisely refrained from such fields as that of the charming intimate sympathetic portrait in relief — a field in which modern sculptors both here and in 62 AN APPRECIATION France have rivaled the master medalists of the Italian Renaissance. His vivid consciousness of his own personal responsibil- ity as an artist was joined to a large sense of outside values, and fortunately for us, his interest in his own day's work included the influence of that work on his country's prog- ress, on human uplift. Art for art's sake was dear to him, but art for life's sake was doubly so. Had he lived and moved and worked in an older country than ours, under a mellower civilization, the beautiful and vigorous impress of his mind upon his time would have won for him the re- wards and honors and titles that older governments confer on genius, and the faithful stewardship thereof. We Amer- icans are wont to speak lightly of Old World academic honors — of the ribboned buttonhole that flourishes in France, Belgium and Italy, of the cumbrous polysyllabic titles accompanying the name of the German artist, of the baronetcy conferred upon the worthy British sculptor before he lays down his clay for good and for all. But are these honors as empty as we pretend ? Do they not often win for their possessors a certain just due of prestige, and, what is more important, a higher opportunity for usefulness in the best years of life, a surer protection from undeserved distress when usefulness is no more ? Our young Republic honors her soldiers; the Arms already receive their reward. The Letters and the Arts, no doubt, are to be taken up in a later lesson. To-day, however, the achievement of Ward may well rest content to speak for itself; surely his life work has shown that he was of those, who, in the quaint phrase of Cennino Cennini, "follow the arts from nobleness of mind." He not only shaped the monuments of dead heroes, but molded the minds of living men. His "personality" — that mysterious essence which during a man's lifetime must be bounded within a mere "waste mold" — has to-day a larger influence because in his work he was greatly able 63 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD to lay aside that which we often think of as personality, self. In his labors we see reflected the better and higher spirit of the age in which he lived, an age which (paradox- ically enough, since it is the voice of awakened idealism speaking within us) we constantly deplore as material- istic. It will matter little, in all our talk of him, whether we call this great American sculptor an idealist gifted with intensely practical vision, or a realist to whom ideals were dearer than aught else that life could give. While we speak, his work puts on immortality. 64 THE ILLUSTRATIONS JOHN QUINCY ADAMS WARD IN HIS STUDIO, I907 FRAGMENT FROM PEACE PLEDGE SHAKESPEARE GENERAL THOMAS GENERAL LAFAYETTE GENERAL WASHINGTON • m THE GARFIELD MONUMENT ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^1 ■i .-1^. ^ ' (^jMr HORACE GREELEY ALEXANDER LYMAN HOLLEY HENRY WARD BEECHER GENERAL HANCOCK AUGUST BELMONT, SR. ^ < CO < < >■ O z S a z X o /^ M32552 1^1^ ■^37 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY RICHARD S. WORMSER y 22 West 48th Street New York ill