Daniel Chester French: Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor, Pt. 2

"The Angel of Death and the Sculptor" in marble
by Daniel Chester French

"Having brought the plaster version of "Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor" with him to Paris, Daniel French left it behind there to be cast in bronze. In May, the completed work went on exhibit at the Salon de Champs-Élysées, where it won a third-place medal from the jury, a rare honor for an American. 'To those who understand the undercurrents of the Parisian art world,' marveled art critic William A. Coffin, 'the significance of such an award under the circumstances is very great, for it shows that the work was thus recognized purely because of its transcendent merit.'

French had meanwhile shipped the plaster model back home to New York, where it soon stimulated an extraordinary publicity wave of its own, fueled by two separate and widely praised local exhibitions, the first at the Society of American Artists, the second at the New York Architectural League. Photographs of the model were soon 'seen in every picture store,' with sculptor Lorado Taft reporting that 'they hang in thousands of homes' and could be found 'in offices and upon the desks of men of business.' Applauded Taft: 'It is a wonderful thing, a very great privilege, to be able to talk thus to one's countrymen. - and to do it in a language so exalted, with an eloquence so sustained.'

The craze for these photos made French aware for the first time of a potentially lucrative confluence of media: sculpture and photography. One-dimensional images of his three-dimensonal works might not convey the full depth of the originals, but they could successfully 'puff' his creations and, in the bargain, earn extra money as authorized reproductions. Within months, the sculptor would copyright an official photograph of 'Death and the Sculptor,' presumably to begin marketing copies on his own. For the rest of his career, French kept a close watch on photographs of his statues, trying when he could to control the images and profit by them.

In August 1893, without the fanfare of an official public dedication, the Millmore family quietly installed the original bronze over their brother's gravesite at Forest Hills Cemetery. With the approval of the Milmore heirs, Dan French authorized four new plaster copies - one each for museums in Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Chicago, where it became a mainstay and an inspiration to both writers and musicians. One poet composed an ode, a minister wrote and published a long sermon lauding French for 'shaping death as a friend', New England composer George Whitefield Chadwick created 'a Symphonic poem,' which he debuted at the New York Philharmonic that February, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, commissioned French to  produce a marble version for their permanent collection. By depicting an artist confronting the tenuousness of life against a backdrop of eternal mystery, he had managed to suggest that great art would outlast great artists - and much more."

To be continued

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

 

Daniel Chester French: Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor

"Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor"
by Daniel Chester French

"Without question, the most acclaimed of French's works in the 1890s was the ambitious composition in extreme high relief formally titled 'Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor.' This memorial to French's deceased contemporary and onetime artistic rival, Martin Milmore, was commissioned for the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston.

French knew precisely what his subject looked like.. He had known Milmore in both Florence and Boston, though never intimately enough to consider him a close friend. Milmore had died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of thirty-eight in 1883, without ever approaching French's success.

French's original clay maquette showed an elaborately winged angel calling home a vigorous young sculptor midwork, his chisel and mallet in hand, and his knee resting on a ledge for support as he labors on a sculpture of his own. His final composition strayed little from this. It showed the angel of death hooded, her face in somber and perpetual shadow, yet somehow unthreatening, even comforting. She would appear clutching a garland of poppies, signifying both death and the bestowal of fame, leaning towards and gently touching the chisel held by the visibly startled, quintessentially modern young artist. 

As always, French conducted methodical research to get his details exactly right. In 1890, he even wrote to his childhood bird-watching companion, William Brewster, with this request: 'I have this winter to model an angel and it occurred to me...that you might help me in the study of wings. Can't you without much trouble...get me a lot of them? I should like half a dozen pairs or so of different kinds and sizes, not with a view of copying anyone particular specimen, but for the purpose of studying up on the subject.' Before long, French's studio boasted a collection of birds wings. 

He took a plaster version with him on yet another extended European trip that began in November 1891. Returning to Paris, he established a 'dear little studio" not far from the Arc de Triomphe. Here, French received compliments from guests who inspected the Milmore as it progressed, and then basked in additional praise from a hundred 'artists and otherwise" who visited  when French exhibited the finished plaster at a studio salon in January 1892.  

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Daniel Chester French: The Lincoln Memorial's Sculptor" by Cynthia Close for "Art & Object.")

 

Daniel Chester French: Lighting the Lincoln Memorial

"When the Lincoln Monument was finished and the statue put in place, it was found that the lighting was so bad that for those first few years it was a constant grief to the sculptor and his artist friends. If Mr. Bacon had lived, this could, of course, have been corrected, but, with the architect of the building gone, it became a serious problem.

As at first designed, the whole ceiling was of glass, the light coming from above, as it should, to light the statue properly. During the process of building, the scheme was changed and a slightly colored marble was used in place of the glass. This gave a beautiful soft glow to the interior of the great room, but, alas! it, in conjunction with the hard light coming from the blue sky in front, was fatal to the face. At certain times of the day it was well enough, but at other times the effect was distressing. It made the face lined and haggard, and the knees unduly prominent. I think at the time, Mr. French was so discouraged about it, and for a while so hopeless of any solution of the problem, that he felt that it could never look as it was intended to look."*

"Nothing could be done, of course, without the government's sanction and an appropriation from Congress. When French's initial appeals fell on deaf ears, he turned to modern technology for evidence. He had photographs made of the large model still at Chesterwood - lit perfectly by his overhead studio skylight. Then he ordered corresponding photos of the statue in Washington as it looked in the worst possible light streaming in from the visitor entrance, then he released the comparative shots to the public.

In 1927, he asked Ulysses S. Grant III, the new director of public buildings and grounds, to allow Tiffany & Co. to try designing new glass panels overhead - to no avail. Finally he turned to the Sunlike Illuminating Company to design 'not merely a bulb, but a specially made reflector with a prismatic arrangement of cobalt oxide mirrors inside' to light the statue artificially. At last Grant came around, and floodlights were finally installed on the ceiling, removing the last barrier to the perfection French had long sought for the Lincoln Memorial. He described himself as a 'happier man' after visiting Washington in the spring of 1929 and finding the illumination 'more satisfactory than I could have believed possible.'**

To be continued

(* Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.
** Excerpts from "Daniel Chester French: The Lincoln Memorial's Sculptor" by Cynthia Close for "Art & Object.")

 

 

Daniel Chester French: The Lincoln Memorial, Pt. 2

The Piccirilli brothers lifting the left 
hand of the Lincoln statue into place. 

"The Piccirilli Brothers were awarded the contract to cut the Lincoln in marble from the plaster model. The great size - it is, I believe, the largest marble statue in existence - made it necessary to build it up from twenty pieces of stone. It is a proof of the accuracy with which the copying was done that, although the pieces were cut separately and were not assembled until put together on the pedestal in the Memorial, they fit together as perfectly as if carved from one block and sawn apart.

Mr. Bacon and the young architects in his office worked for some ten years upon the plans. Once given the order it had become the absorbing object, the inspiration of his life. He took but small interest in other work, his whole mind seeming to concentrate upon the gradual evolving of this monument, as well as to the idea of abstract beauty for which it stands.

A year after its completion he died at the age of fifty-eight. His friend Dan French said of him, at the time, that it seemed as if Bacon had been created for the sole purpose of making the Lincoln Memorial; that he had achieved a reputation for monumental work when the commission was given him; that after its achievement it would have been difficult for him to go back to more commonplace work; that, his great work finished, it seemed almost part of the scheme that he should pass on.

Great honor was conferred upon him. The greatest of these, and indeed the greatest ever conferred upon an architect in America, was when the Institute of Architects presented its medal to him at a dinner which concluded the Annual Meeting of the Institute in Washington, May 18, 1923. The dinner, attended by five hundred members and guests, was held in a great marquee at the east end of the Lagoon in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and at its close there was a beautiful pageant. Bacon, attended by the President of the Institute, guests of honor, and special guests, embarked upon a barge in the Lagoon and this, escorted by the members in costume upon either bank, was rowed down to the steps of the Memorial, which was effectively illuminated for the occasion. Here President Harding awaited them, and, introduced by Chief Justice Taft, the Permanent Chairman of the Lincoln Memorial Commission, he presented to Henry Bacon, with an appropriate address, the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects - 'the highest honor within its power to give.' Mr. Cortissoz referred to Henry Bacon as 'an embodied conscience.'" 

To be continued

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

 

 

Daniel Chester French: Lincoln Memorial Preliminary Work

Daniel French with a 6 ft. high model for
the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

"It was during the last years of the war [WWI] that Mr. French made, or at least finished, the seated statue of Lincoln for the Memorial in Washington D.C. His friend, and for years his collaborator, Henry Bacon, had been appointed the architect to design and build the Memorial, and he immediately engaged Mr. French to make the statue for which his beautiful building was to be the shrine. This was in 1915, but it was not till 1920 that it was finished and erected.

Few people understand the hazards, aside from the labor,  of cutting a statue in stone. The finest marble still comes from the ancient quarries in Italy - Carrara and Serravezza; but however carefully selected, a dark spot or defect of some sort may develop, necessitating the choosing of another block and beginning all over again. An excellent white marble from Georgia was chosen as being particularly well adapted to the execution of so large a figure as the Lincoln.

The popular idea that a sculptor rises from his couch at midnight, seizes his mallet and chisel, and, in a fine frenzy, hews out a beautiful statue before morning, exists only in poetry. Sculpture is a much more serious business than that. Occasionally a sculptor, when the spirit moves him, himself cuts a head or a torso out of the marble without a model or previous study, but usually the sculptor's model is copied by a marble-cutter and finished by the artist. There is evidence to prove that the old-time sculptor proceeded in much the same way as do the sculptors of the present day.

In order to determine how large the statue should be, a temporary plaster model of the Lincoln was made about twelve feet in height and erected in place in the Memorial. This proved much too small, and two solar prints were made, one eighteen feet in height, the other twenty feet, and put in place. Cut out from the background, they looked strangely like the real thing, and, as a consequence of these experiments, the statue was eventually made twenty feet in height instead of twelve as was orginally planned. Mr. French and Mr. Bacon, our daughter, and Evelyn Longman, who did much of the decorative work in the Memorial, went down to Washington to try the experiments."

To be continued

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

 

Daniel Chester French: Portrait Painting!

"Margaret French," a pastel by Daniel French

"During our summers at Chesterwood, Mr. French's greatest amusement was to play at portrait painting. He always hoped for a free summer when he might go off with a painter friend and study, and, with no idea of exhibiting, he painted all the girls who came to visit us. He was quite wonderful at catching a likeness, which showed, of course, his trained hand and eye in another line of work.

Some painters, as we know, care but little for the likeness, but Mr. French always claimed that, if the drawing were absolutely correct, the painting must look like the sitter. 'A likeness,' he used to say, 'consists not so much in getting in all the details, as in getting what you do get right. It really does not need very many details to convey an impression of a face or figure. A silhouette is a strong likeness as far as it goes, and it goes pretty far in spite of the fact that there are no eyes, no ears, no modelling of any kind. If the outline is absolutely correct, it looks exactly like the person.'" *

"In 1885, he took lessons and studied in Paris the following year and frequently painted portraits of his daughter, Margaret. She sat for at least four oil portraits and five in pastel. Inspired by her father, she also studied art at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, and became known as a portrait sculptor. And it was Margaret, the Frenchs' only child, who ensured that Chesterwood and her father's legacy would be transferred to the National Trust for Historic Preservation." **

To be continued

(* Excerpts from "Memories of a Sculptor's Wife" by Mary Adams French.
** Excerpts from "Daniel Chester French: The Lincoln Memorial's Sculptor" by Cynthia Close for "Art & Object.")

 

 

Daniel Chester French: The Question of Expense

Maquettes by Daniel French

"In connection with studio life and the making of statues, there is one question - grave to every sculptor - which is naturally little understood by the outside world - the question of expense. A large room - for architectural sculpture a huge room - is an absolute necessity. The clay, the wax, the setting up of statues and busts, the skilled carpentry work, heavy express charges, models, the turning of the clay into plaster, and later the turning of plaster, by skilled workmen, into bronze or marble - all, unless a man is highly paid, eat up a large part of the profits.

I have known, in Mr. French's case, that sometimes when a statue was put in place, it was found that the entire large appropriation - in one case some $50,000 - was entirely used up in the expenses of casting, stonework, water for the pool, etc. Except in the case of another appropriation being made, there would be nothing left for the sculptor.

People generally do not understand the expense. For example, there was one of the great captains of industry. He wanted a statue of a certain kind for a certain place. He commissioned his architect to ask Mr. French - not to give the order, but to make a model on approval. Mr. French said that he should be glad to do so and submit the model, but that he charged for his designs, and that the price would be $500. Shortly after this, the architect received a letter from the captain of industry saying: 'What's the matter with these artist fellows What does French mean by charging for a design? Tell him that when I want a job, I go for it! Why, I've crossed the ocean in search of a job.' This so amused the architect that he told us about it, and Mr. French's comment was, 'Tell Mr. R___ that it's a great many years since I have had to go to Europe, or anywhere, to get a job.' 

I have often wished that I knew Mr. R___. He is a big man in his way, and I know that he must have a sense of humor and would appreciate the idea, if his attention were called to it, that he could not approach a work of art as he would a leak in the bathroom." 

To be continued

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