Daniel Chester French: Marriage

"Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell"
by Daniel Chester French

"Dan French and I were married in Washington in July, a terrible time and place to be sure, in which to marry, or to do anything, but if one will marry an artist...

A few weeks before the day set for the wedding, which was to have been in June, Dan wrote me, 'What should you think if I told you that even now at the last minute I must change my statue' - this was the Gallaudet which was to be put up at the Deaf Mute College outside of Washington -' and I am afraid it will put off our wedding for a month.'

The rest of the letter was apologetic and contrite, but - 'Saint-Gaudens has been in and says that the legs are too short. Perhaps I should have known this without any one telling me, had I not been diverted by the prospects of approaching matrimony. However, when you can pin Saint-Gaudens down and get a real criticism from him, it is better than anybody's, and so what can I do except give the Doctor an inch or two more of leg, and meanwhile, what kind of a lover will you think me anyhow?'

Of course I knew well enough that, in sculpture, legs and arms and heads were always being cut off and jostled about, and there was nothing to do but accept it, so we picked out a nice hot day in the hotteset city in the world, so to speak, and were married, and I went to New York to live.

Dan French had lived in New York only that last year before our marriage, having given up his studios in Concord and Boston. That first winter he had worked in that of his friend while his new house in West Eleventh Street was being prepared for us. This house was most interesting and I loved it, but a home in a side street, with all the hustle and hubbub of a great city, with no intimate friends and no neighbors, seemed somewhat appalling to me after the easy-going life of Washington in which Ihad grown up. My husband knew already most of the literary and artistic people who afterwards made our lives interesting, but it took a little while for me to know who people were, and to get used to the hurried, slap-dash methods of a metropolis.

There were the Gilders, the Saint-Gaudenses, the Will Lows, the Dewings, the Kenyon Coxes, the Blashfields, William Dean Howells, the Martin Conways, and always Mr. French's old friend, Benjamin C. Porter. And at these houses, which were thrown open to us, there were all their friends, writers and painters from all over the world."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.)

 

 

Daniel Chester French: Endymion and Home

"The Awakening of Endymion" by Daniel Chester French

"Ensconced in the fairytale setting of Thomas Ball's studio whose uplifting atmosphere he likened to a Renaissance workplace of old, Dan French began shaping his concept for 'Endymion," the long-slumbering Aeolian shepherd of Greek myth. Although he carefully observed Ball chipping away skillfully at polished stone, French had not quite mastered the technique himself. If nothing else, he learned in Florence to concentrate on his clay and plaster models, and delegate to specialists the task of enlarging, casting, and carving his 'sketches' into final form. It was a routine he would follow for the rest of his long career. 

As French learned, great sculptors conceived their works, but did not necessarily carve them, too. Michelangelo may once have done so in this city, but the masters of the modern age were no longer expected to be expert marble cutters. French vowed never to take chisel to marble again. Except for polishing and finishing, which he would always insist on performing himself before any of his marbles were unveiled, after 'Endymion' he never again worked in the medium. 

During his final months in Florence, he added the finishing touches to his sculpture, for which he had high hopes. He had labored on it for more than a year. Once, after sending a photograph of the conceptual clay sketch home to his father, he had been gratified to learn that his family and friends thought it 'the loveliest thing that ever was.' But then others added what must have been received in Florence as a devastating critique 'Can a sleeping man's arm stay up from his body as the left one is? Would it not fall down?' Young French set to work trying to subdue it.

Not until late June did he satisfy himself that the sculpture could not be improved upon further. After bidding goodbye to the sprawling Powers family, French departed Florence on July 10, 1876 - just six days after the centennial of American independence. He was also determined to attract a high-paying customer for 'Endymion.' He was destined to be disappointed. Eventually, shipped back to Concord at considerable expense, it earned decent enough reviews when placed briefly on exhibit at Boston's St. Botolph Club, but still ended up a white elephant. Years later, perhaps eager to forget the entire experience, a disappointed French would leave the statue behind when he moved out of his Concord home. A century later still, a subsequent owner would relegate the weather-beaten marble to the backyard. Not until 1983 would it be rescued and installed at Chesterwood."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French" by Harold Holzer.)  

 

Daniel Chester French: Italy and Thomas Ball

"While Dan French's father in Concord was looking after his boy's interests at home, the son over in Florence, where his good luck seemed to pursue him, was trying not to have too good a time. 'They all do everything they can to make me happy,' he wrote. 'They not only treat me like one of the family, but they take me about to see everything and everybody - such interesting people!'

He lived with Preston Powers' family [Dan's friend and son of sculptor Hiram Powers], and within a few days of his arrival, he and Mrs. Powers, a young girl of twenty or twenty-one, went out in search of a room which would be suitable for a studio. They found one quite near the Porta Romana, outside which dwelt the numerous families of Powers, and Mr. Thomas Ball, at that time the most distinguished American sculptor as well as a man of a most wonderful personality.

Mr. Ball's villa was a large brown structure, in the middle of Italian gardens, a coterie of the literati, the musicians, the artists from America and England, and from the neighboring Florence, delightful surroundings for a young man who had led such a quiet life in a small town in America. To the youth it seemed incredible that such good luck could have come to him. 

Mr. Ball wrote to Dan's father:

My dear Sir: You would like to know why I have done this thing. I would ask you why the hearts and homes of the entire neighborhood were thrown open to your son before he had been here a week? Why do all the mothers (five at least), if he happens to be unwell vie with each other in their endeavors to make him enjoy it? Why did I, when I went from curiosity, to see his 'Minute Man,' notwithstanding its surprising merit for a first work, find myself when I left the studio, thinking much more about the artist than the statue? And why did I go again and take my wife to see the artist?

As far as I am concerned, I will tell you, I recognized in his simple, ingenuous artist nature, something more than talent; something indispensable to a true artist. And when he came here and took a studio not far from me, but too far for me to see him as often as was good for him, I thought how, twenty years ago, I came here to make my first struggle, and how welcome was the face of dear old Powers whenever it brightened my door. 

And then I thought how nice it would be, when I was up to my elbows in clay, on a ladder 15 feet in the air, to have someone that I could call upon to receive my visitors; and I decided at once to give him a corner in my studio and invited him forthwith. I find it works well... and if he does not try my patience...he can stay as long as he pleases... Believe me, my dear sir, it will always give me pleasure to do anything in my power to advance the professional interests of your son. Very truly yours, Thomas Ball

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.)

 

Daniel Chester French: The Minute Man

The "Minute Man" by Daniel Chester French

"The town of Concord had decided to erect a statue of a Minute Man on the battle-field by the 'rude bridge that arched the flood.' The Commission appropriated one thousand dollars, and had unofficially asked Dan French, at that time twenty-one, to make the statue. The tradition in the family is that he made a sketch and took it down to Mr. Emerson and Judge Hoar, upon whose recommendation it was immediately accepted.

Of course this commission was a serious thing for a youth whose only training had been one month in the studio of Mr. Ward in New York, some lessons in drawing with Dr. Rimmer in Brookline, a prize in the cattle show the year before, and some advice from Miss May Alcott. 'I wonder whether I can do it,' he wrote to someone. 'By this time next year I shall know.'

He made his models, the second and final one in a room in a business building in Boston, with a poor light. He still wonders how he was able to do it. There was no one except a stray sculptor at that time who knew anything about the mechanics of the trade, so he and his father went to work, and his practical mechanical instinct carried him through, though with various catastrophes. When his first model was finished, they got the plaster ready - the amount which someone had told him would be sufficient - made their mold, dissolved the plaster, stood the model on its head, and poured the plaster into it. There must have been a hole somewhere, underneath the hair perhaps, for all the plaster ran through the mold and out upon the floor - the last drop they had - so they had to wait for another day when they could renew their supply.

I don't remember whether it was the 'Minute Man' or whether it was a bust made about the same time which gave him great trouble as to the hair. They tried in every way to make it have a natural look, and finally his father said, 'Oh, take a brush and comb, and treat it the way you would treat hair, and I guess it will look like hair.' His struggles must have been of great interest and amusement to his family.

The statue was unveiled after Dan had gone to Italy for studies. His father wrote, 'A perfect spring morning. The sun is bright and the air still, and the bluebirds and robins are talking very busily about their nests... The old Minute Man does us credit... Everybody, great and small, is delighted. I confess to a great thrill at the sight of 'D.C. French' on the base!'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.) 

 

 

Daniel Chester French: First Instruction

While still a teenager Daniel French
executed this bust of his father

"There was at that time in New England but little art but there was a love, as represented in old prints and engravings, a reverence for old furniture and for all inherited worth, that was at least appreciative. In Concord there was small need of money, small ambition for purely worldly success, and Dan French, with an absorbing interest in the worthwhile things of life, cared little, even at that period, for aught save to be left alone to work out his newly discovered vision of art.

His father wrote often for the magazines, was a man of literary attainments, and welcomed eagerly the first glimpse of anything like genius in his children. His family, who had probably never seen a sculptor in their lives, were amazed and interested, and his fellow townspeople immediately decided that something like a miracle had happened in their midst, that this young product of their beloved town was going to be the greatest sculptor of all ages.

But at that time there was no art school or art class in Boston, but he frequented the Athenaeum and studied the Greek casts there, modeled for a short time with J.Q.A. Ward in New York, and for a while in Boston with Dr. Rimmer, whose recognition as a sculptor, he always claimed, was not commensurate with his achievements. Rimmer was a very great draughtsman, and to him in after years Mr. French attributed the solid foundation of his work. Miss May Alcott, who had recently come back from her studies in Europe, did much to help him, both with her sympathy and with her tools. 

'Father talked to May Alcott about my newly developed interest in sculpture,' I have heard Dan tell many times in later life,' and she said, 'If he will come down to see me, I will lend him some tools.' I tell you I lost no time. I harnessed old Bucephalus, hurried down to the other end of the town, learned what I could in a short call, and brought a handful of tools back in triumph. One of these crude wooden implements I have always by me and am using it to this day.'" 

Some of Daniel French's sculpting tools

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.) 

 

Daniel Chester French: An Introduction

Head of the "Lincoln" and Daniel Chester French

Daniel Chester French, the creator of the famous Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., was, at first, just one of Mary Adams French's cousins, but their lives were to become intertwined in the years to come, as he studied abroad and she grew into a young woman. This story is told in her book, "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife," which we shall take up at that point in their lives.

"When I was about sixteen, my cousin Dan came home from Europe and came with my young aunt Sarita to see me. I remember it perfectly, the first time I definitely remember him, in that square box of a convent parlor, the high room painted a gloomy brown, with horsehair furniture, and one entire side a square lattice, through which now and then a nun was permitted to talk to a friend. Dan was twenty-six, and, I thought, very handsome. It was romantic to tell to my school fellows of this new cousin, a sculptor - an unknown quantity in those days in Washington - who had lived abroad. He had just come back from his studies in Mr. [Thomas] Ball's studio in Florence, and spent the next two winters in Washington, where, though I saw him little, he brought a new and artistic touch into my life.

When I read of Raphael, 'whom the gods loved and whom women loved,' I have often thought that my artist was at least born with a golden spoon in his mouth. Of sturdy New England stock, a race of lawyers back of him, with an intellectual environment certainly unequaled in American life, Dan French seems never to have encountered the struggles of poverty and misunderstanding which have been considered - which he theoretically considered - as necessary to the development of genius.

His father was a judge, his two grandfathers were lawyers - one of them Chief Justice of the State of New Hampshire - while his life, during the most crucial years, was spent amid the 'high thinking and plain living' of Old Concord.

It was a simple and interesting life when I came to know it a few years later, but just before that time, while he was growing up, while his first statue, the 'Minute Man,' was coming into life, and during his two years in Italy in the studio of Mr. Ball, it must have been filled with an atmosphere of high purpose that was unusual as well as of great intellectual interest."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.)  

Augustus Saint-Gaudens: The Curtain Drawn

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial

 Concerning Augustus Saint-Gaudens' completion of the Albright Caryatids, Homer Saint-Gaudens wrote: "With that commission my father's work came to its end, closed while he was making almost superhuman efforts to keep active despite the progress of his illness. In that commission he gave his strongest indication of what his future work would have been, work notably of a monumental character he had never before attained. His sickness brought only feebleness of hand, none of mind. To the last his vision grew even fuller and deeper.

A few days before his death which came on August third, 1907, he lay watching a sunset behind Mount Ascutney, from 'Aspet,' the spot which years before had seemed to him restful and far away. He spoke out of a long silence, 'It's very beautiful,' he said, 'but I want to go farther away.'"

His obituary in "The New York Times" on August 8, 1907 read:

"Attended by artists of note from many parts of the East, the funeral services over the ashes of Augustus Saint-Gaudens were held late today in the small studio near the late sculptor's hom, 'Aspet.' The services were conducted by the Rev. O.B. Emerson, a retired Unitarian clergyman of Cambridge, Mass., while tributes to the life work of the deceased were paid by Kenyon Cox, the artist, and Precy Mackaye, the playwright. Arthur B. Whiting of Boston, presided at the organ, playing a number of selections throughout the service. 

Besides Mrs. Saint-Gaudens and her son, Homer, the relatives present included Miss Marie Saint-Gaudens of New York, a niece; Louis Saint-Gaudens of Plainfield, a brother; Dr. Arthur H. Nichols and wife of Boston, Joseph Homer of Brookline, Mass., and Mrs. O.B. Emerson of Cambridge.

The Summer colony of artists about Cornish was represented by Joseph Earle Frasier, John Flanagan, Mr. Keeck, and Adolph Weinman of New York, and Herbert Adams of Plainfield.

The ashes were interred in Ascutney Cemetery at Windsor, Vt., in a lot near that of Senator Evarts." 

(Excerpts from "The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens" by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his son, Homer Saint-Gaudens.)