MEDEA CHARMING THE DRAGON.
MEDEA, daughter of the King of Colchis, for the sake of her lover Jason, ventures into the presence of the Dragon which guards her father's treasure, the famous Golden Fleece, and by the magic liarmonies of her lyi-e charms the Dragon asleep, and enables Jason to carry off the treasure.
This is the theme of Mr. Thornycroft's statue, and in it we see the Royal Sorceress standing erect striking v,ith a plectrum the strings of a great lyre, and looking down at the Dragon with an expression of calm, conscious power easily capable of achieving her end.
The Dragon — which by the way the Greeks con- ceived as a snake — has coiled itself round her, and so upreared 'its long length' to the sweet music. In its coils the folds of her garment are pressed close to her limbs, so narrowing the lower half of the figure, and giving it an intentionally 'terminal'- like aspect. On the base there is a symbol of the golden treasure in the architecturally treated rams' heads by which it is decorated. It is interesting to know that the sculptor has endeavoured to give the cliaracter of an Asiatic Greek type to the head of Medea, and that the Dragon was modelled from a boa which lately died at the Zoological Gardens. The lyre, a very difficult instrument to obtain accurate details of, was taken from a Greek vase in the British Museum, and the drapery was studied from a soft, heavy silk crepe, made into the form of a Greek dress.
SCULPTURE AT THE GLASGOW EXHIBITION.
V.
WE may speak of sculpture in Scotland, but not of a Scottish school or any national character in the productions of the art in Scotland. Of other countries it is possible to distinguish the productions, and say of this piece or that that it is Italian, French, English, or German, as the case may be, but sculpture in Scotland is either pseudo-Greek based on casts from the antique, or a pale reflection of what is current in the school of London. The coldness of the climate, the narrow views of the people, and their general indifference to artificial beauty, have all combined to retard the progress of sculpture in our midst. To be a sculptor in Scotland has been to make tombstones or starve, and still means remaining far away from any centre of living traditions and from that community of emulation and aspiration without which no great work is possible in an art so chaste and spiritual, offering so little of seduction to win the love and application which it demands. Naturally any centre of sculpture which has been in Scotland has been in Edinburgh, the capital, where for a considerable number of years there has existed a moderately artistic and lucrative practice in portrait bust-making, more, however, dependent on personal influence and memorial needs than any love of the medium, other than perhaps a pedantic idea of the 'correct thing,' born of the cold classical culture of this modern or northern Athens, doubtless a twin birth with the strange desire after Greek temples on high places shown by the city.
Edinburgh has persistently, and with few exceptions, kept her sculpture commissions for the encouragement of local talent ; and although the result may not be of a high order, it will be interesting as a record when the patriotic effort to create a school has succeeded, as it doubtless will in due time. The first and necessary evidence is to be found in the fact that the number of her professional sculptors has been trebled within the last twenty years, there now being some twelve or thirteen where there were formerly only three or four.
The veteran Sir John Steell is still among us, but has retired from work after a long and favoured career. In his time he received the biggest and best public commissions that have ever been given in Edinburgh and the neighbourhood, many of them great artistic opportunities and magnificently paid. Sir John is represented in the Sculpture Gallery by several small reproductions in bronze of colossal originals. In other parts of the building may be seen colossal plaster models of Scott, Bums, and The Queen, also by him. We prefer not to criticise any of these works. Calder Marshall is an Ediri-
