reliefs of Peace and War, and the Neptune fountain, both in
front of the imperial palace, and the Schiller monument before
the royal theatre, all in Berlin, are perhaps his most successful
works. The Bismarck in front of the Reichstag building suffers
from the excessive use of allegorical motifs and from other
errors of taste.
Of Begas’s many pupils, Who participated in the execution of the numerous statues that flank the Siegesallee in the Berlin Thiergarten, the most distinguished is Joseph Uphues (b. 1850), who is the creator of the Moltke monument in Berlin, and of the Frederick the Great in the Siegesallee, a replica of which is to be found in Washington. Adolf Brütt (b. 1855) and Gustav Eberlein should be mentioned among the most successful Berlin sculptors; Robert Dietz, as the founder of an important school in Dresden; and Wilhelm Ruemann (d. 1906) and Rudolf Maison among the modern sculptors of Munich.
The closing years of the 19th century were marked by an enormous advance, not only in public appreciation of sculpture but in productive activity. The younger generation of Berlin sculptors includes such distinguished artists as Fritz Klimsch, who is best known by “The Triumph of Woman” and “The Kiss "; Hugo Lederer, the designer of the Bismarck monument in Hamburg; August Gaul, who excelled in statuettes of animals; Max Kruse, a woodcarver of great ability; and Louis Touaillon, who spent his early years in Rome, and became famous for the excellent anatomy and, action of his equine studies. Karl Seffner, of Leipzig; August Hudler, of Dresden; Georg Weba, Fritz Christ, Erwin Kurz, Hermann Hahn, Theodor von Gosen and Hugo Kaufmann, all of Munich, should also here be mentioned. Adolf Hildebrand (b. 1847) is best known by his Wittelsbach fountain in Munich and his Reinhard fountain in Strassburg. He has also executed some excellent medals and plaquettes. Franz Stuck, who has ranked among the leading painters of modern Germany, has also produced some powerful pieces of sculpture, such as the Beethoven, and the “Athlete holding a heavy Ball.” Max Klinger (b. 1857), famous as painter and etcher, revived polychromatic sculpture in Germany. His Beethoven monument, at the Leipzig Museum, is the best known example of his work in this direction. The great composer is conceived as Jupiter enthroned, with the eagle at his feet. The Work caused an enormous sensation on its first appearance before the public and became a veritable apple of discord around which a wordy war was waged by the different factions. The Leipzig Museum also owns his Cassandra and a rough-hewn portrait bust of Liszt. One of his most striking works is the Nietzsche bust at Weimar. At the Albertinum, in Dresden, is an important late work of his, a marble group of three beautifully modelled life-size figures, “The Drama.” (J. H. M.; M. H. S.; P. G. K.)
During the first half of the 19th century the prevalence of a cold, lifeless pseudo-classic style was fatal to individual talent, and robbed the sculpture of England of all real vigour and spirit. Francis Chantrey (1782–1841), produced a great quantity of sculpture, especially sepulchralModern British sculpture. monuments, which were much admired in spite of their limited merits. Allan Cunningham and Henry Weekes, who excelled in busts of men, worked in some cases in conjunction with Chantrey, who was distinguished by considerable technical skill. John Gibson (1790–1866) was perhaps after Flaxman the most successful of the English classic school, and produced some works of real merit. He strove eagerly to revive the polychromatic decoration of sculpture in imitation of the circumlilio of classical times. His “Venus Victrix,” shown at the exhibition in London of 1862 (a work of about six years earlier), was the first of his coloured statues which attracted much attention. The prejudice, however, in favour of white marble was too strong, and both the popular verdict and that of other sculptors were strongly adverse to the “tinted Venus.” The fact is that Gibson’s colouring was timidly applied: it was a sort of compromise between the two systems, and thus his sculpture lost the special qualities of a pure marble surface, without gaining the richly decorative effect of the polychrome either of the Greeks or of the medieval period. The other chief sculptors of the same inartistic period were Banks, the elder Westmacott (Who modelled the Achilles in Hyde Park), R. Wyatt (who cast the equestrian statue of Wellington, removed from London to Aldershot), Macdowell, Campbell, Calder Marshall, and Bell. Samuel Joseph (d. 1850), working in a naturalistic spirit, produced some excellent work, notably (in 1840) the remarkable statue of Samuel Wilberforce now in Westminster Abbey. The brilliant exception of its period is the Wellington monument in St Paul’s cathedral, probably the finest plastic work of modern times. It was the work of Alfred Stevens (1817–1875), a sculptor of the highest talent, who lived and died almost unrecognized by the British public. The value of SteVens’s work is all the more conspicuous from the feebleness of most of the sculpture of his contemporaries.
During the last quarter of the century a great change came over British sculpture—a change so revolutionary that it gave a new direction to the aims and ambitions of the artist, and raised the British school to a level wholly unexpected. It cannot be pretended that the school yet equals either in technical accomplishment, in richness or elasticity of imagination, or in creative freedom, the schools of France and Belgium, for these have been built up upon the example of national works of many generations of sculptors during several centuries. British sculptors, whose training was far less thorough and intelligent than that which is given abroad, found themselves practically without a past of their own to inspire them, for there existed no truly national tradition; with them it was a case of beginning at the beginning.
The awakening came from without, brought to England mainly by a Frenchman—Jules Dalou—as Well as by Lord Leighton, Alfred Gilbert and, in a lesser degree, by Onslow Ford. To Carpeaux, no doubt—despised of the classicists—the new inspiration was in a great measure due; for Carpeaux, who infused life and flesh and blood into his marble (too much of them, as has been here shown, to please the lovers of purism), was to his classic predecessors and contemporaries much what in painting Delacroix was to David and the cold professors of his formal school. But it was to Jules Dalou that was chiefly due the remarkable development in Great Britain. A political refugee at the time of the Commune, he received a cordial welcome from the artists of England, and was invited to assume the mastership of the modelling classes at South Kensington. This post he retained for some years, until the amnesty for political offenders enabled him to return to his native land; but before he left he had succeeded in making it clear that severe training is an essential foundation of good sculpture. This had been but partly understood—is not even now wholly realized; yet by the impression he made, Dalou improved the work in the schools beyond all recognition. The whole conception of sculpture seemed to be modified, and intelligent enthusiasm was aroused in the students. When he departed, he left in his stead Professor Lantéri, who became a naturalized Englishman, and who exercised a beneficent influence over the students equal to that of his predecessor. Meanwhile, the Lambeth Art Schools—where Mr W. S. Frith, a pupil of M. Dalou, was conducting his modelling class under the directorship of John Sparkes (d. 1907)—were being maintained with great success. At the Royal Academy, where in 1901 the professorship of sculpture was revived after many years, the inspiring genius of Alfred Gilbert aroused the students to an enthusiasm curiously contrasting with the comparative apathy, which passed as dignified restraint, of earlier days. British sculpture, therefore, when it is not coloured directly from the Italian Renaissance, is certainly influenced from France. But it is remarkable that in spite of this turning of British sculptors to romantic realism as taught by Frenchmen and Italians, and in spite of the fact that the spirit of colour and decoration and greater realism in modelling had been brought from (abroad, the actual character of British sculpture, even in its most decorative forms, is not in the main other than British.
Nevertheless, there has been shown a tendency towards reviving the application of colour in sculpture which has not
