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MR. GILLESPIE’S BOOK.
“Rome, as soon by a New-Yorker” is the modest title of a volume by a gentleman with whom we have long been more or less associated in literary labor, and with whose mind, through the columns of the old Mirror, the public have, for years, been most favorably acquainted. To knew so wall the mental qualities by which the book is guided — the elegance of taste, purity and good judgment — that we are scarcely prepared to criticise it as a new book — a little, perhaps, from being as familiar with the subject of the book as with the writer's mind. Mr. Gillespie has gone to work like a tranquil scholar and lover of art, and has toned his book from the second stage of his impressions rather than the first. His views, of course, are more reliable, and, without further comment on the quality of the book which is in all respects admirable, we draw from this reliable source a simple extract which does a task we had long since set down for ourselves — expresses a proper appreciation of CRAWFORD the Sculpture.
Our AMERICAN ARTISTS, without exception, are doing honor to themselves and to their country. Leutze has already a European reputation. The recent exhibition in New York of his “Return of Columbus in Chains,” is a better eulogium upon him than any words could be. The achievements of Mr. Huntington, in the imaginative department of art, would perfectly satisfy the aspirations of most American painters, who have never seen higher models of excellence than are to be found in our own country; but Mr. Huntington has learned from his own past experience what increased power native genius may derive from foreign cultivation; and he has therefore returned to Rome, to pursue his studies with the aid of all the advantages which that city offers in such profusion, and thus to make himself worthy of yet higher honors than those which he has already so justly received. Mr. J. E. Freeman rivals the Venetian school in the brilliancy and richness of his coloring. His picture of Psyche sleeping, with Cupid watching for her awakening, exhibits flesh tints and texture worthy of Titian. His beggar boy, a la Murillo, extending his hand for charity, while his little sister sleeps in the sun at his feet, tells its story most expressively, and almost persuades you to drop a baiocco into the supplicant's out-stretched palm. Mr. L. Terry has nearly completed a grand composition of “Jesus among the Doctors in the Temple.”
Sculpture, however, seems to be the most genial form of the development of American Art-genius. Powers and Greenough are in Florence, but in Rome is the studio of Crawford, whose poetic conception, graceful fancy, and classic feeling, have already placed him in the very foremost rank of art. He is a native of the city of New York, but has past the last ten years in Rome, in absorbed devotion to his art, and in unwearied study of those great exemplars of Phidias and his compeers, which fill that city with a marble population. The seed thus sown has already produced a bountiful harvest, and promises yet richer fruit. The countrymen of Crawford seem to be little aware of how much he has already achieved, and how lofty a rank is assigned him by the Roman critics, the most accomplished and fastidious in the world. His studio is filled with groups, figures, busts, and bassi-relievi — the undying children of his imagination — among all which the only one generally known in America is his Orpheus, which was modelled in 1839, and was the surprise and delight of all the artists of Rome, till the discriminating taste of some public-spirited citizens of Boston transferred the statue to their Athenaeum.
The peculiar merit of Crawford's style (considered apart from his highest attribute, that of poetic imagination) is its happy union of a classical spirit with a natural, though idealized, execution. The impugners of a classic taste in sculpture would have each generation begin again for itself, and work out its own experience, rejecting all the aids of antiquity. The same principle should make the geometer burn his Euclid and try to discover each theorem anew for himself, instead of starting from that platform, and in his turn advancing the science a little farther. The ancients were giants, and we may be pigmies; yet if we stand on their shoulders we shall be able to see even farther than they. The Greeks experimented in art, and finally attained, and have handed down to us, certain principles, laws, and exemplars, approved by their most perfect taste and most delicate organization, the equal of which the world has never since seen.
Since the above was written, Mr. Crawford has returned to his native country, after an absence of ten well-employed years. The friends of Henry Clay have exercised sound taste and discrimination in profiting by the opportunity of the artist's presence to engage him as the sculptor of the statue which they propose to erect to the veteran statesman. But a yet greater design is now in agitation — that of a monument to Him who was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” The subject has for a long while occupied the mind of our New York sculptor, and the visitor, who was admitted to the inner room of his studio in Rome, saw there various models of such monuments as would be worthy of the subject. One is a grouping of military and civic trophies, surmounted by an equestrian figure. Another is a colossal statue, the height of which is intended to surpass that of any other in the world, and to be at least ninety feet; the famous figure of San Carlo Borromeo, on Lago Maggiore, being but sixtysix. The Committee, to whom the grand project of a Monument to Washington has been entrusted, should invite Mr. Crawford, and other competent artists, to produce their designs, so that they might be enabled to select the most impressive plan offered by the best qualified artist. When this important point is settled, and the public are assured that the result will be an honor to the taste as well as the patriotism of the country, then, and not before, will flow in the necessary contributions, the sinews of art as well as of war.
It is only by such great works of public ornament and patriotic commemoration that Art can be enabled to develope [[develop]] its full powers in aiding the moral and intellectual progress of society. Private liberality seldom has a higher object than the decoration of a drawing-room. The public patronage, which enables the artist to depict great actions, and to perpetuate noble examples, is the most splendid, permanent, and honorable to a great and enlightened nation. It was this, especially, which contributed to raise the arts to excellence in Greece, and to revive them in Italy; and from this alone can we hope to obtain similar results in our own land. If we desire to create an American school of Art, we should extend to all worthy American Artists that liberal and enlightened patronage of the Government, which a Roman Journal (at the conclusion of a eulogistic notice of the Orpheus) has invoked for Crawford, in the following joint compliment to the sculptor, and to the nation:
“We hope very soon to learn that the country of this valorous sculptor, which raises so many monuments worthy of her power, has made use of the chisel of this young man to honor some of his fellow-citizens, and at the same time herself; and that she has thus shown herself successful above every other nation, while it is given to her, to exalt with honors and rewards the living who render her glorious, and at the same time to procure by the Arts immortality for the dead.”
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Notes:
This review was specifically rejected as being by Poe by W. D. Hull.
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[S:0 - NYEM, 1844] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Works - Criticism - Literary (Willis ?, 1844)