ALFRED GILBERT
No one but Rodin could have presented a naked Victor Hugo without shocking us; but genius will accomplish miracles of audacity where talent does not dare to go beyond a conventional formula.
One of Gilbert's early works, The Sleeper, I am told, is destroyed. Those who remember the figure of the young girl, relaxed in slumber, and almost sinking into the great arm-chair under the spell of the bird that broods over her unconscious form, will be glad to have been privileged to see one of the glories of English art before it disappeared for ever.
Gilbert is a stoutly built, powerful man with a strong, square head and masterful jaw. There is in type a striking resemblance to Beethoven; and this resemblance finds justification in the musical ability of the sculptor, inherited from his musician father.
It is enough now to touch lightly upon the artist's work; to treat of the man would be beyond the knowledge and power of any one writer. Those who knew him intimately are dead. Like Cellini, he alone is capable of revealing the vicissitudes of a career that would have surpassed the Italian master's amazing life, had the modern English genius lived in the sixteenth century.
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