November, 1916 
23 
“American Stock" 
by A. Sterling 
Calder, shov-s an In¬ 
dian of the modern 
school—grand in his 
simplicity. He would 
appear to advantage 
on a desk in a liv¬ 
ing-room or on a 
hall table 
that might have been christ¬ 
ened “A Yard of Podunk”, 
found a gleeful welcome, and 
casts, any casts, appeared 
sacred. There were Ameri¬ 
cans who could shed tears of 
real sympathy when Beppo 
Alcuno dropped his basket 
and wailed, “Two Admiral 
Dewey, four Pope of Rome, 
six Virgin Mary—all gone to 
hell together!” Whereas, 
casts differ. The majority 
are reductions. How made? 
Kate, being of Caproni ex¬ 
traction, faithfully reproduced 
the superb contours of her 
original in the Louvre. Us¬ 
ing a full-sized cast from the 
original, a conscientious 
workman had modeled the 
first Kate, not by eye, but by 
employing an apparatus some¬ 
what resembling the penta- 
graph. Duplicate was of 
humble origin. With a wood- 
cut to misguide him, some 
East Side genius thumped her into shape— 
or rather, out of it—by eye. Triplicate, 
alas, showed how a charlatan can take it 
out on an ungrateful world when his 
“Thaw-White Tragedy—swell-dressed dy¬ 
ing figure of White, swell banner” has been 
rejected by the Chamber of Horrors. No 
doubt Moses intended a dig at Triplicate 
in his commandment. “Thou shalt not 
make unto thee any graven images.” 
Frivolities in Plaster 
On the whole, however, the mania for 
casts from the antique kept classic ideals 
before the average citizen, and—theoreti¬ 
cally, at least—was a powerful educative 
influence. In practice—well, consider. It 
did not prevent our going in headlong for 
Barye, whose “Walking Lion,” the one ex¬ 
ample of nature-faking in his otherwise ad¬ 
diculous! There is an unalterable serious¬ 
ness about marble, an unalterable earnest¬ 
ness about bronze. They suggest monu¬ 
ments. You cannot twaddle in marble or 
bronze, or, if you try it, the materials hit 
back. Instead of your making a fool of 
them, they make a fool of you. And you 
cannot squelch the outspoken candor of 
geology by tinting hair and eyes. Pigs is 
pigs, marble is marble, bronze is bronze. 
Or is it, invariably? According to Dallin, 
department-store bronze is sometimes pew¬ 
ter. Better a genuine plaster cast than a 
bronze-washed swindle, though in these days 
no one wants plaster, anyhow. 
Where You Can’t Go Wrong 
To be sure, Miss Annette Kellermann, 
height, nine inches, still 
adorns an occasional shop- 
window. A nude and wing¬ 
less angel still floats in air— 
flying-ballet style. The fa¬ 
miliar cupid still perches on 
shelves, dangling his chubby 
legs. But the great manufac¬ 
turers have ceased making 
casts for private houses, and 
now make them only for 
schools. With the supply 
checked at its source and 
with the furniture movers so 
iconoclastic, it looks dark in¬ 
deed for that plaster “bust of 
Pallas, just above my cham¬ 
ber door.” Thanks to the 
enormous increase in wealth, 
people are buying marbles and 
bronzes—bronzes especially. 
They are learning to buy good 
ones. American sculptors, 
instead of waiting for the 
“right man” to die or pray¬ 
ing, nightly, “Oh, Lord, 
please put it into the hearts 
of the natives to start an ex- 
(Continued on page 54) 
Truly modern in 
spirit and execution 
is "The Dancer." by 
Cecil de Howard. Of 
this collection this 
is perhaps the easi¬ 
est to place. It could 
find its way into 
nearly any room of 
a conservative type 
mirable menagerie, still struts in apartment- 
house windows, recalling that pathetic 
notice at the World’s Fair, “Ladies! Do 
not sit on the lion's tail. It has been 
broken off twice already.” And neither 
did the rage for plaster of Paris prevent a 
deluge of department-store sculpture from 
Italy, with Arardt not yet in sight even to¬ 
day. They’re here in all their glory. 
Very tempting, these department-store 
frivolities—the gilt Napoleons, Shake- 
speares, and Dantes, the dainty peasant 
girls with tinted hair and eyes, the statu¬ 
ettes in which marble, bronze and porphyry 
combine to produce a soda-fountain effect 
so convincing that one almost asks for 
straws. But beware! They have certain 
points in their favor. Granted. Many are 
On the end of a refectory table "Magdalen." by Mrs. Ryerson. finds 
a fitting place. The beauty of this bronze is enhanced by the fact 
that it silhouettes against the creamy walls of this little entresol. 
Bronze by courtesy of Gorham; furniture by Mrs. A. V. R. Barnewall 
originals—or hand-made copies in real 
marble. Gilt, in and of itself, is not atro¬ 
cious. Saint-Gaudens used it. Besides, the 
price is fairly high, while the best of plaster 
casts owned up to their cheapness. Finally, 
the modern Italians devote consummate 
patience to chiselling the intricacies of lace 
or embroidery and the patterns of bro¬ 
caded fabrics. Great craftmanship! And 
yet always the suspicion will haunt you, 
“Pretty, but is it Art?” 
Dallin has no words for it—that is, at 
first. Pressed further, he rails at the un- 
Napoleonie Napoleons, the un-Shakespear- 
ian Shakespeares, with gilt to condone bad 
portraiture, and at the all too prevalent sen¬ 
timentality of department-store art. In 
water color, as designs to decorate hand¬ 
kerchief boxes, those comic-opera peasant 
girls might do. In marble or bronze—ri¬ 
