Here hushed expectancy is keyed 

 to tremulous delight by thegroup- 

 ing and expectancy in postures 



A suggestive bit of "Longwood", 

 the estate of Mrs. Pierre Dupont 

 which is at Wilmington, Delaware 



SCULPTURE IN THE GARDEN 



The Principles Involved in the Choice of Concept and the Proper Disposal 

 of Groups and Figures, Studied in the Garden with the Aid of Living Models 



JEAN DE STRELECKI 



[Editor's Note: Member of a distinguished Russian-Polish family, Comte de Strelecki is a photographer because he is first 

 of all an artist in the fullest sense. In more or less leisure moments a painter and a dramatic poet, his study of the garden's 

 embellishment with sculptured forms brings out an element in the subject altogether unsuspected heretofore, but of such importance 

 to the whole matter that it seems that too great emphasis of it is hardly possible.] 



ARDENS are always haunted, so the poets tell us, 

 with mysterious and lovely beings whom ordinary 

 mortals never see. Yet even ordinary mortals feel 

 2 their presence — we all know that — : and so, just as I 

 have yet to find the garden that may not be made still lovelier 

 and more appealing by the proper introduction of sculpture, 

 so have I yet to find the mortal who does not warmly welcome 

 and respond to it. This is only what we might expect of 

 course, since sculpture simply embodies, in tangible form, 

 those elusive essences just mentioned, to which most mortal 

 eyes are holden; but right here we face the extremely import- 

 ant crux of the whole matter of sculptured features in the 

 garden. Almost never are they appropriate or appropriately 

 placed. Commonly they are anything they may happen to 



be — any statue that is handy, I think your idiom has it — 

 without regard to anything more than the closing of a vista 

 perhaps, or the centring of some plot. What a waste of 

 opportunity! What lamentable ignoring of richest possibi- 

 lities! 



THE greatest exponents of the plastic art that ever lived 

 were the Greeks and Romans; and it is especially to be 

 remarked that they understood the moral value embodied 

 in a sculptured concept, and made full application of it in 

 every instance. They built temples and great gardens, and 

 enriched both with statues that represented gods and god- 

 desses who were themselves the personification of deep funda- 

 mental truths, profound philosophic conclusions, or soaring 



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