The Spirit of American Sculpture

The Spirit of American Sculpture

The Spirit of American Sculpture surveys the development of sculpture in the United States, beginning with Patience Lovell Wright, a Quaker wax modeler from New Jersey whose vivid likenesses and outspoken republican character in London (observed by Abigail Adams and Elkanah Watson) serve as a colorful prologue to native sculptural achievement, though she remains a "sculptress" of curiosity rather than a founder of the art. Thomas Jefferson emerges as the decisive early patron, arranging for the French sculptor Houdon to travel to Mount Vernon to model Washington from life for Virginia's Capitol, while later steering North Carolina toward Canova's pseudo-classical idealism; through Jefferson, both French realism and Italian idealism become permanent currents in American sculpture. The material and spiritual obstacles facing pioneer sculpture are traced, from the absence of marble quarries and bronze foundries to the Puritan suspicion of beauty, with early figures like William Rush—ship's-figurehead carver, self-taught sculptor of the Spirit of the Schuylkill, and founder of the Pennsylvania Academy—singled out as the first true American sculptor. The narrative follows sculpture's growth through the Capitol's pedimental and decorative commissions in Washington, where Greenough, Crawford, and Hiram Powers work amid scant resources; Greenough's colossal marble Washington as Olympian Zeus becomes an object of ridicule despite Saint-Gaudens's later defense of the early masters, while Powers's Greek Slave achieves unmatched nineteenth-century fame. Attention turns to the "three leaders" who shaped American sculpture over forty years: John Quincy Adams Ward, the Ohio-born realist whose Washington and Indian Hunter established a native, unaffected style and who urged American artists to study abroad but live at home; Augustus Saint-Gaudens, born in Dublin of a French father and an Irish mother and brought to America as an infant, celebrated for the Farragut, the Shaw Memorial, the Sherman equestrian group, the Rock Creek figure, and his mentorship of younger sculptors; and Daniel Chester French, the "classic spirit personified," creator of the Minute Man, the Republic, the Angel of Death, the Gallaudet group, and the Lincoln Memorial figure, praised for bringing urbanity and humanist warmth to American art. Olin Warner and Karl Bitter, both dying before their full promise was realized, are noted as important complementary talents. Subsequent chapters examine sculpture's relation to national expositions—the Centennial of 1876, which humbled American sculptors by exposing them to European work, and the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which under Saint-Gaudens's leadership demonstrated fruitful collaboration among sculptors, architects, and painters and led to the founding of the American Academy in Rome. The book surveys the problem of the portrait statue and modern dress, the rise of the equestrian statue from Clark Mills's pioneering Jackson through Shrady's Grant monument, the art of relief and coinage (with Saint-Gaudens's coin reforms highlighted), garden sculpture and fountains (including work at Saint-Gaudens's Cornish estate, Aspet), small bronzes by sculptors like Bessie Potter Vonnoh, and the crafts of bronze casting and marble cutting, including the Piccirilli family's workshop. The role of the National Sculpture Society, founded in 1893 under Ward's presidency, is detailed as a unifying force promoting exhibitions, competitions, and public education in sculpture, with figures like Lorado Taft and F. W. Ruckstull credited for their service. A final chapter considers foreign influences—French, Italian, Celtic, and increasingly Slavic and oriental—shaping American sculpture, discusses Rodin's powerful but architecturally uncollaborative influence exemplified by his Balzac, and closes by affirming that American sculpture's foundation rests on a broad, enlightened Puritanism uniting art and moral earnestness, quoting Ward's and Saint-Gaudens's deathbed convictions that devoted, disinterested effort in art elevates the human mind.

By Adeline Adams · First published 1923 · Genre: Art History, Sculpture, American History · 11 chapters · 35,346 words

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American sculpture · sculpture history · sculptors · portrait sculpture · monuments · neoclassical sculpture · realism in art · idealism in art · 19th-century art · American Renaissance · public art · art patronage

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The Spirit of American Sculpture is listed on Textopian as an essay by Adeline Adams, dated 1923 CE.

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