Confessions and Criticisms by Julian Hawthorne
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Julian Hawthorne >> Confessions and Criticisms
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The studio in which Mr. Kemeys works--a spacious apartment--is, in
appearance, a cross between a barn-loft and a wigwam. Round the walls are
suspended the hides, the heads, and the horns of the animals which the
hunter has shot; and below are groups, single figures, and busts, modelled
by the artist, in plaster, terracotta, or clay. The colossal design of the
"Still Hunt"--an American panther crouching before its spring--was
modelled here, before being cast in bronze and removed to its present site
in Central Park. It is a monument of which New York and America may be
proud; for no such powerful and veracious conception of a wild animal has
ever before found artistic embodiment. The great cat crouches with head
low, extended throat, and ears erect. The shoulders are drawn far back,
the fore paws huddled beneath the jaws. The long, lithe back rises in an
arch in the middle, sinking thence to the haunches, while the angry tail
makes a strong curve along the ground to the right. The whole figure is
tense and compact with restrained and waiting power; the expression is
stealthy, pitiless, and terrible; it at once fascinates and astounds the
beholder. While Mr. Kemeys was modelling this animal, an incident occurred
which he has told me in something like the following words. The artist
does not encourage the intrusion of idle persons while he is at work,
though no one welcomes intelligent inspection and criticism more cordially
than he. On this occasion he was alone in the studio with his Irish
factotum, Tom, and the outer door, owing to the heat of the weather, had
been left ajar. All of a sudden the artist was aware of the presence of a
stranger in the room. "He was a tall, hulking fellow, shabbily dressed,
like a tramp, and looked as if he might make trouble if he had a mind to.
However, he stood quite still in front of the statue, staring at it, and
not saying anything. So I let him alone for a while; I thought it would be
time enough to attend to him when he began to beg or make a row. But after
some time, as he still hadn't stirred, Tom came to the conclusion that a
hint had better be given him to move on; so he took a broom and began
sweeping the floor, and the dust went all over the fellow; but he didn't
pay the least attention. I began to think there would probably be a fight;
but I thought I'd wait a little longer before doing anything. At last I
said to him, 'Will you move aside, please? You're in my way.' He stepped
over a little to the right, but still didn't open his mouth, and kept his
eyes fixed on the panther. Presently I said to Tom, 'Well, Tom, the cheek
of some people passes belief!' Tom replied with more clouds of dust; but
the stranger never made a sign. At last I got tired, so I stepped up to
the fellow and said to him: 'Look here, my friend, when I asked you to
move aside, I meant you should move the other side of the door.' He roused
up then, and gave himself a shake, and took a last look at the panther,
and said he, 'That's all right, boss; I know all about the door; but--what
a spring she's going to make!' Then," added Kemeys, self-reproachfully, "I
could have wept!"
But although this superb figure no longer dominates the studio, there is
no lack of models as valuable and as interesting, though not of heroic
size. Most interesting of all to the general observer are, perhaps, the
two figures of the grizzly bear. These were designed from a grizzly which
Mr. Kemeys fought and killed in the autumn of 1881 in the Rocky Mountains,
and the mounted head of which grins upon the wall overhead, a grisly
trophy indeed. The impression of enormous strength, massive yet elastic,
ponderous yet alert, impregnable for defence as irresistible in attack; a
strength which knows no obstacles, and which never meets its match,--this
impression is as fully conveyed in these figures, which are not over a
foot in height, as if the animal were before us in its natural size. You
see the vast limbs, crooked with power, bound about with huge ropes and
plates of muscle, and clothed in shaggy depths of fur; the vast breadth of
the head, with its thick, low ears, dull, small eyes, and long up-curving
snout; the roll and lunge of the gait, like the motion of a vessel
plunging forward before the wind; the rounded immensity of the trunk, and
the huge bluntness of the posteriors; and all these features are combined
with such masterly unity of conception and plastic vigor, that the
diminutive model insensibly grows mighty beneath your gaze, until you
realize the monster as if he stood stupendous and grim before you. In the
first of the figures the bear has paused in his great stride to paw over
and snuff at the horned head of a mountain sheep, half buried in the soil.
The action of the right arm and shoulder, and the burly slouch of the
arrested stride, are of themselves worth a gallery of pseudo-classic
Venuses and Roman senators. The other bear is lolling back on his
haunches, with all four paws in the air, munching some grapes from a vine
which he has torn from its support. The contrast between the savage
character of the beast and his absurdly peaceful employment gives a touch
of terrific comedy to this design. After studying these figures, one
cannot help thinking what a noble embellishment either of them would be,
put in bronze, of colossal size, in the public grounds of one of our great
Western cities. And inasmuch as the rich citizens of the West not only
know what a grizzly bear is, but are more fearless and independent, and
therefore often more correct in their artistic opinion than the somewhat
sophisticated critics of the East, there is some cause for hoping that
this thing may be brought to pass.
Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, or cimmaron, the most
difficult to capture of all four-footed animals, whose gigantic curved
horns are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a hunter can bring
home with him. The sculptor has here caught him in one of his most
characteristic attitudes--just alighted from some dizzy leap on the
headlong slope of a rocky mountainside. On such a spot nothing but the
cimmaron could retain its footing; yet there he stands, firm and secure as
the rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the fore legs rigid
and straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind legs pose easily in
attendance upon them. "The cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he
never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic comment; and we can
recognize the truth of the observation in this image. Perfectly at home
and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, the cimmaron curves its
great neck and turns its head upward, gazing aloft toward the height
whence it has descended. "It's the golden eagle he hears," says the
sculptor; "they give him warning of danger." It is a magnificent animal, a
model of tireless vigor in all its parts; a creature made to hurl itself
head-foremost down appalling gulfs of space, and poise itself at the
bottom as jauntily as if gravitation were but a bugbear of timid
imaginations. I find myself unconsciously speaking about these plaster
models as if they were the living animals which they represent; but the
more one studies Mr. Kemeys's works, the more instinct with redundant and
breathing life do they appear.
It would be impossible even to catalogue the contents of this studio, the
greater part of which is as well worth describing as those examples which
have already been touched upon; nor could a more graphic pen than mine
convey an adequate impression of their excellence. But there is here a
figure of the 'coon, which, as it is the only one ever modelled, ought not
to be passed over in silence. In appearance this animal is a curious
medley of the fox, the wolf, and the bear, besides I-know-not-what (as the
lady in "Punch" would say) that belongs to none of those beasts. As may be
imagined, therefore, its right portrayal involves peculiar difficulties,
and Mr. Kemeys's genius is nowhere better shown than in the manner in
which these have been surmounted. Compact, plump, and active in figure,
quick and subtle in its movements, the 'coon crouches in a flattened
position along the limb of a tree, its broad, shallow head and pointed
snout a little lifted, as it gazes alertly outward and downward. It
sustains itself by the clutch of its slender-clawed toes on the branch,
the fore legs being spread apart, while the left hind leg is withdrawn
inward, and enters smoothly into the contour of the furred side; the
bushy, fox-like tail, ringed with dark and light bands, curving to the
left. Thus posed and modelled in high relief on a tile-shaped plaque, Mr.
Kemeys's coon forms a most desirable ornament for some wise man's
sideboard or mantle-piece, where it may one day be pointed out as the only
surviving representative of its species.
The two most elaborate groups here have already attained some measure of
publicity; the "Bison and Wolves" having been exhibited in the Paris Salon
in 1878, and the "Deer and Panther" having been purchased in bronze by Mr.
Winans during the sculptor's sojourn in England. Each group represents one
of those deadly combats between wild beasts which are among the most
terrific and at the same time most natural incidents of animal existence;
and they are of especial interest as showing the artist's power of
concentrated and graphic composition. A complicated story is told in both
these instances with a masterly economy of material and balance of
proportion; so that the spectator's eye takes in the whole subject at a
glance, and yet finds inexhaustible interest in the examination of
details, all of which contribute to the central effect without distracting
the attention. A companion piece to the "Deer and Panther" shows the same
animals as they have fallen, locked together in death after the combat is
over. In the former group, the panther, in springing upon the deer, had
impaled its neck on the deer's right antler, and had then swung round
under the latter's body, burying the claws of its right fore foot in the
ruminant's throat. In order truthfully to represent the second stage of
the encounter, therefore, it was necessary not merely to model a second
group, but to retain the elements and construction of the first group
under totally changed conditions. This is a feat of such peculiar
difficulty that I think few artists in any branch of art would venture to
attempt it; nevertheless, Mr. Kemeys has accomplished it; and the more the
two groups are studied in connection with each other, the more complete
will his success be found to have been. The man who can do this may surely
be admitted a master, whose works are open only to affirmative criticism.
For his works the most trying of all tests is their comparison with one
another; and the result of such comparison is not merely to confirm their
merit, but to illustrate and enhance it.
For my own part, my introduction to Mr. Kemeys's studio was the opening to
me of a new world, where it has been my good fortune to spend many days of
delightful and enlightening study. How far the subject of this writing may
have been already familiar to the readers of it, I have no means of
knowing; but I conceive it to be no less than my duty, as a countryman of
Mr. Kemeys's and a lover of all that is true and original in art, to pay
the tribute of my appreciation to what he has done. There is no danger of
his getting more recognition than he deserves, and he is not one whom
recognition can injure. He reverences his art too highly to magnify his
own exposition of it; and when he reads what I have set down here, he will
smile and shake his head, and mutter that I have divined the perfect idea
in the imperfect embodiment. Unless I greatly err, however, no one but
himself is competent to take that exception. The genuine artist is never
satisfied with his work; he perceives where it falls short of his
conception. But to others it will not be incomplete; for the achievements
of real art are always invested with an atmosphere and aroma--a spiritual
quality perhaps--proceeding from the artist's mind and affecting that of
the beholder. And thus it happens that the story or the poem, the picture
or the sculpture, receives even in its material form that last indefinable
grace, that magic light that never was on sea or land, which no pen or
brush or graving-tool has skill to seize. Matter can never rise to the
height of spirit; but spirit informs it when it has done its best, and
ennobles it with the charm that the artist sought and the world desired.
*** Since the above was written, Mr. Kemeys has removed his studio to
Perth Amboy, N. J.
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