152 SPECIAL EEPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



are bad in expression or otherwise. What I want is facts, and the more 

 I can have of these the better. They will not lead me astray as to ex- 

 pression. Small facts and details may be explained in one which are 

 not clearly determined in another, and enable me to make the head more 

 living and true. 



" I regret to hear that no absolute action can be taken by the Board 

 before January 1, 1881. This will greatly delay the execution of the 

 statue, to which I was intending to devote myself immediately on my 

 return to Eome in October or November, so as to be able to finish the 

 model this winter. But if all final arrangement is postponed until Jan- 

 uary before the absolute commission can be given and the contract 

 made, the winter will have i)assed, and the execution of the statue will, 

 I fear, be necessarily j)ostponed for a year, as it is impossible for me to 

 remain in Eome and execute the model during the summer without very 

 great inconvenience and difiiculty. 



''You wish me to send you, if possible, designs for the proposed statue 

 and pedestal, for communication to the Board of Eegents at their an- 

 nual meeting in January, 1881. Of course I can do this, if they think it 

 advisable or necessary; but I must frankly say — I hope they will excuse 

 me in so saying, as no kind of disrespect is intended, or want of confi- 

 dence in their taste and judgment — that I think, if they have any faith 

 in my ability, it would be better for them to leave the conception and 

 execution of the statue entirely to me. There is nothing so dangerous 

 as to interfere with an artist in his design, or to judge of it and criticise 

 it from a small model. The freer he is, the more responsible he feels, 

 and, if he has real ability, the less he is tampered with and directed, the 

 better his work will be. If he has not the requisite ability to do it by 

 himself, he should better not do it at all. No suggestions by any com- 

 mittee and no directions and alterations will ever make his work good. 

 My own experience has been that this divided responsibility and design- 

 ing has almost invariably resulted in dissatisfaction on both sides. The 

 artist can only do well with what is in his own mind, and not what is in 

 the mind of others, and my own judgment is that he does far better 

 when left to himself, always provided he has real capacity for his work. 

 If I may be allowed to allude to my own personal experience, I may add 

 that in the case of almost the only public portrait statue of mine in 

 America, the committee, composed of gentlemen of high taste and pre- 

 tension to artistic culture, after rejecting my own first sketch, and in- 

 sisting on my altering the attitude and arrangement to meet their views, 

 contrary to my notions, were finally persuaded, when the work was 

 completed and it was too late, that they had been entirely wrong in 

 dictatlDg these changes, and regretted that they had interfered. Never- 

 theless they threw upon me the responsibility which belonged solely to 

 them. I made their statue and not mme, and they were disappointed, 

 as I toretold that they would be. But I do not need to speak of my 



