AMERICAN MASTERS OF SCULPTURE

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THE SHERMAN MONUMENT

By Augustus Saint-Gaudens

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AMERICAN MASTERS OF
SCULPTURE

BEING
BRIEF APPRECIATIONS OF SOME AMERICAN
SCULPTORS AND OF SOME PHASES
OF SCULPTURE IN AMERICA

BY
CHARLES H. CAFFIN

Author of “American Masters of Painting”



Garden City       New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1913
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Copyright, 1903, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
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INTRODUCTION

THE year 1876, the date of the Centennial Exhibition, is a landmark inthe progress of American sculpture as it is in that of Americanpainting. Not to be fixed too definitely, and yet serving approximatelyas a starting-point of new conditions which have transformed what hadbeen a sporadic and largely exotic product into a lusty, homogeneous andthoroughly acclimatised growth. I speak of the gradual improvement andspread of taste in the community; the steady trend of students to Parisand the habit of American sculptors to make their own country the sceneand inspiration of their labours.

The earlier tendency had been toward Italy; to Rome and Florence,especially, where American colonies existed. Here the student adoptedthe Canova tradition of sweetened classicism, or the infusion ofnaturalism into the classic vein, represented in the work of a fewromanticists; and, having learned his craft, remained in Italy topractise it. His sources of instruction had not been of the best and heworked in an atmosphere tainted with artistic and political decadence....