"My new statue!" said Kenyon, who had positively forgotten it in the
thought of Hilda; "here it is, under this veil." "Not a nude figure,
I hope," observed Miriam. "Every young sculptor seems to think that he
must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it
Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of
decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such
things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and
there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist,
therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a
pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses
at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such
circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the
open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, and thus the nude
statues of antiquity are as modest as violets, and sufficiently draped
in their own beauty. But as for Mr. Gibson's colored Venuses (stained, I
believe, with tobacco juice), and all other nudities of to-day, I really
do not understand what they have to say to this generation, and would be
glad to see as many heaps of quicklime in their stead."
"You are severe upon the professors of my art," said Kenyon, half
smiling, half seriously; "not that you are wholly wrong, either. We are
bound to accept drapery of some kind, and make the best of it. But
what are we to do? Must we adopt the costume of to-day, and carve, for
example, a Venus in a hoop-petticoat?"
"That would be a boulder, indeed!" rejoined Miriam, laughing. "But
the difficulty goes to confirm me in my belief that, except for
portrait-busts, sculpture has no longer a right to claim any place among
living arts. It has wrought itself out, and come fairly to an end. There
is never a new group nowadays; never even so much as a new attitude.
Greenough (I take my examples among men of merit) imagined nothing new;
nor Crawford either, except in the tailoring line. There are not, as you
will own, more than half a dozen positively original statues or groups
in the world, and these few are of immemorial antiquity. A person
familiar with the Vatican, the Uffizzi Gallery, the Naples Gallery,
and the Louvre, will at once refer any modern production to its antique
prototype; which, moreover, had begun to get out of fashion, even in old
Roman days."
"Pray stop, Miriam," cried Kenyon, "or I shall fling away the chisel
forever!"
"Fairly own to me, then, my friend," rejoined Miriam, whose disturbed
mind found a certain relief in this declamation, "that you sculptors
are, of necessity, the greatest plagiarists in the world."