The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition Part 7

The contagious mirth of "The Duck Baby," a garden figure by Edith Barretto Parsons, is irresistible. This plump little image of good cheer conquers the most serious; every observer breaks into answering chuckles as this smile-compelling small person, holding fast her victims, beams upon them. The frieze of busy ducklings on the pedestal base adds to the amusing impression. This figure makes such a universal appeal that thousands of postal card pictures and amateur photographs by exposition visitors have been sent in a steady stream throughout the land, scattering the Duck Baby's good cheer far and wide ever since the Exposition opened. In the presence of so much that is weighty and powerful, this popularity of the "Duck Baby" is significant and touching indication of the world's hunger for what is cheerful and mirth provoking. Another well-liked and winsome work with a chubby baby figure at its center is "The Bird Bath" by Caroline Risque, in which a lovable baby, with an expression of the tenderest sympathy, holds a little bird to his breast.

Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus Garden Exhibit, Colonnade

Under the branches of a low tree the poetic group by Edward Berge, "Muse Finding the Head of Orpheus," a white marble group of superior elegance and texture, arrests the pa.s.serby. A Muse kneels, drooping in exquisite pathos over the head of Orpheus found in the waves. The sculptor has chosen the tragic side of the Orphean myth. The son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, whose heaven-taught lyre charmed men and beasts, melted rocks and even opened the gates of Erebus, had failed to win from death his bride, Eurydice, lost to him for the second time. As he wandered disconsolate, the Thracian bacchantes wooed him in vain. Maddened by failure and by their baccha.n.a.l revels, they called upon Bacchus to avenge, and hurled a javelin upon him. But the music charmed the weapon, until the wild women drowned it with their cries. Then they dismembered the singer and threw him to the waves; but the very fragments were melodious and reached the Muses, who buried them where the nightingale still sings "Eurydice." So runs the allegory; even drowned by earthly clamors, slain and torn by wanton hands, the song of Poetry continues, the weeping Muses save.

Diana Garden Exhibit, South Lagoon

In a setting of surpa.s.sing appropriateness and beauty, installed high amid the tall shrubbery as if emerging from the edge of one of her own forests, the huntress Diana points the arrow she is about to let fly.

This rendering by Haig Patigian, who made the heroic Powers and other decorations on Machinery Hall, is simple, cla.s.sic, pure, imaginative, poetic in purpose and in effect. He has softened the traditional coldness of the G.o.ddess by a warmer humanity without injuring the sense of proud aloofness. The Maiden G.o.ddess of the Hunt bears in her hand the crescent bow, its lines here strongly suggestive of those of the young moon, of which it is the symbol and this G.o.ddess the deity. Mr. Patigian exhibits in the Colonnade a companion piece, "Apollo, the Sun G.o.d," twin brother of Diana. A vivid figure of manly grace, Apollo is presented in the guise of the sun of the morning. He kneels and shoots an arrow upward; the long, pleasing curve of his bow suggests the outline of the sun above the horizon as Apollo releases his first bright shaft of light.

Eurydice Garden Exhibit, Colonnade

This "Eurydice," by Furio Piccirilli, pictures the nymph as standing against the background of an echoing rock, listening to the distant strains of the magic lyre of her lover, Orpheus. Orpheus had been taught to play by Apollo, his father, and could enchant the animate and inanimate world by his music. So he charmed the nymph, Eurydice; but Hymen, G.o.d of marriage, refused to prophesy happiness at their nuptials and soon Eurydice, in escaping from a pursuer, trod upon a snake, was bitten and died. Orpheus' sorrowful music moved all the earth to pity.

Even Pluto and the keepers of Erebus relented, allowed the musician to descend into their forbidden realm and lead Eurydice back to life, provided he should not turn backward to gaze upon her until they reached the world of mortals. But the lover could not resist the desire to a.s.sure himself of her presence, looked, and lost her forever. Furio Piccirilli, who made this marble, is the sculptor who has graced the Exposition with the four Fountains of the Seasons in the Court of that name. For this "Eurydice" and his other small group, "Mother and Child,"

he has taken a silver medal.

Wood Nymph Garden Exhibit, Colonnade

Isadore Konti, from whose hand came also the inspiring, panels at the base of the Column of Progress, described in a preceding page, is the sculptor of this pretty "Hamadryad." The Dryads and Hamadryads lived, according to old legend, within the trunks of trees and perished with their homes. So it was an impious act to destroy a tree without cause.

This nymph of the woods has emerged from the tree-trunk home or from some rocky fastness and taken the urn of a naiad, a sister nymph of brook and fountain, to give drink to the gentle, confident fawn that is her charge. The little animal is lapping the stream that flows from the overturned vase. This study in white marble follows tradition and is regarded chiefly for its gentle grace and careful tooling. It is harmoniously composed and has a beautiful surface. Mr. Konti's varying moods are, represented in the Fine Arts collection by a number of works, each revealing a different intention - from the pretty and restful, like this, to the large and stirring.

L'Amour Garden Exhibit, Colonnade

There are few more complete examples of delicacy of feeling and of refined, caressing perfection of tooling than this exquisite marble group, "L'Amour," by Evelyn Beatrice Longman. The purity of its emotion, the tenderness and fidelity of its poignant pose, are surpa.s.sed only by the marvel of surface finish. The surface has been gone over so lovingly, so painstakingly, so repeatedly that the marble has taken on the soft, warm impression of living flesh. And the gentle unstrained modeling has the plastic grace of the human body. Miss Longman, winner, by the way, of a silver medal for exhibits in the Fine Arts, is the maker of the Fountain of Ceres in the Forecourt of Seasons that has been described. She is an earnest and serious artist of abundant talent whose work is treated with ever-increasing respect and admiration. She won the compet.i.tion for the doors of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, for which there were many distinguished aspirants. She presents Love in the group under discussion as a rarefied and inspiring emotion in which the physical and spiritual commingle and "sense helps soul" as well as "soul helps sense."

An Outcast Garden Exhibit, Colonnade

This epic figure, "An Outcast," compelling by its earnestness and the tragedy of its motive idea, is handled with firmness, a.s.surance and a perfect sense of volume and sculptural ma.s.s values. It is exhibited by Attilio Piccirilli, the artist who designed the Maine Memorial in New York City. The appeal of "An Outcast" is too direct to need any illumination. Its frank bigness and physical power and tenseness, so suggestive and so desperate, are Rodinesque. But though the work is influenced by that master's school and thought, it is by no means a copy of his method. This sculptor has a number of interesting groups in the exhibit palaces and has been granted a gold medal. The dejected and desolate Outcast, so huge and so tragic, is in sharp contrast with the quaint and fanciful "Fawn's Toilet," by the same hand, at the entrance to the Colonnade. Attilio and Furio Piccirilli, whose work has been here noticed, are brothers, members of a family of sculptors.

The Sower Garden Exhibit, Colonnade

One of the most useful services of a great Exposition, especially as it relates to the world of art, is its service in bringing to the attention of the public the power of new and rising stars on the horizon of achievement. Albin Polasek has made his work generally felt at this Exposition, where he received a silver medal. He is one of the most talented sculptors of the American Academy at Rome. He won honorable mention in the Paris Salon in 1913, and the Prix de Rome in 1910. He was the holder of the Cresson scholarship. His "Sower" was the culminating work of his early labors, the product of his final year at Rome, in which year a heroic figure is required of every student. It caused the critics to prophesy for this sculptor the future that is developing. Mr.

Polasek's work has the same una.s.sailable rigor of truth as that of Charles Grafly, who was his teacher. "The Sower" enn.o.bles an humble theme. It has sweep and life and distinction of bearing. In "The Girl of the Roman Compagna," close at hand in this Colonnade, the sculptor shows his equal power in a softer theme. The Roman girl is a well-poised and beautiful expression of the spirit of old Rome in the days of her grand simplicity.

The Bison Garden Exhibit, South Approach

These mighty monarchs of the plains, now disinherited by human progress, the American bisons, are here more than portrayed; they are realized.

Their essential characteristics, their strong ma.s.s, bulky without clumsiness, are made present and convincing in these two statues by A.

Phimister Proctor, a master of animal sculpture. There is good reason for the living and sharp aspect of these plaster models. They are not copies of the permanent statues; they are the sculptor's own original plasters from which the permanent pieces were cast. A number of Mr.

Proctor's animal studies stand in the great zoological parks of our nation. He does not idealize or humanize the beasts he depicts; but he understands them and reverses the underlying life that gives them their racial and personal individuality. Partly his Canadian love of the wild, partly a technician's delight in mastering this difficult phase of art, has caused a lifelong devotion to animal studies. They are not photographic, but combine the qualities of sculptural beauty with rugged and imposing freedom. A varied and stimulating collection of Mr.

Proctor's work, exhibited at the Exposition, has won a gold medal. It includes the famous "Princeton Tiger."

The Scout Garden Exhibit, South Lagoon

Cyrus Edwin Dallin has devoted many years and much of his high talent to the poetry and beauty of the American Indian. He says that this Scout is to be the last of his long series of Indian studies, and he believes it to be the best of them all. Surely it has an exalted beauty and is a n.o.ble example of Mr. Dallin's firm, finished, accurate method, perfection of restraint and free grace of modeling. It has a clear and beautiful directness that is almost Greek in feeling. Those who do not believe in the picturesqueness and dignity of the Indian as celebrated in these bronzes, need only to have seen the photographs in the exhibit of the Indian Memorial booth in the Palace of Education. Some of the chiefs there shown have the dignity of Caesar and the knightly splendor of heroic periods. Copies of almost all the Dallin Indians and other of his notable works appear in the Palace of Fine Arts, where Mr. Dallin is a gold medalist; They include the famous "Appeal to the Great Spirit,"

which stands before the Boston Museum of Art.

The Thinker Exhibit, Court of French Pavilion

It is a satisfaction that at the entrance to the Pavilion of France should stand this great work of the master sculptor of our age. This is a replica of "Le Penseur" (The Thinker), placed before the doors of the Pantheon in Paris. Paul Gsell says of it: "Before us, the Thinker, his fist beneath his chin, his toes clutching the rock upon which he sits, bends his back beneath the overpowering weight of a meditation that surpa.s.ses the endurance of the human spirit." Here, tremendous, rugged, primitive human strength at its highest power suffers under the first great grapple of the human mind with problems of the unknowable universe. It is majestic, true, an expression of our age; it is everlasting art. Rodin kept this replica outdoors for a long time, thinking the rigor of the elements helpful to its finish. "The Thinker"

and other Rodins in the French Pavilion are loaned by Mrs. A. B.

Spreckels of San Francisco. Americans and American museums have long appreciated this master of whom Octave Mirbeau says: "Not only is he the highest and most glorious artistic conscience of our time, but his name burns henceforth like a luminous date in the history of art."

Earth Fruit Pickers, Court of Ages