f 
June. 1920 
27 
STATUARY IN THE SMALL GARDEN 
The Setting Must Be Right and the Statue Must Be Harmonious Jfdth Its Setting — 
American Statues for American Gardens 
HAROLD A. CAPARN 
B y the small 
garden usual¬ 
ly is meant land 
up to two acres or 
therealjouts, so 
planned and deco¬ 
rated as to give 
one an instant 
sense of home. 
\\'ithin this area 
sculpture is rare, 
for several reasons. 
The first of these 
is probably tradi¬ 
tion. Our Ameri¬ 
can “yard” outside 
of the necessary 
roads, walks and 
outbuildings, usu¬ 
ally consists of a 
lawn wi t h trees 
and bushes. Once 
in a while one 
finds a box-edged 
formal garden with 
a summerhouse, 
pergola or sundial. 
Statuary is rarely 
found, now that the plaster lion and cast-iron 
stag have gone out of fashion. 
It is to be regretted that sculpture is either 
too expensive for ordinary use, or too cheap. 
A piece of really worth-while original sculp¬ 
ture costs a good round sum, and although 
the owner of a small place can often afford it, 
he thinks it too pretentious for his uses, unduly 
costly, out of scale, in fact. Spent on the 
house or its contents, such an outlay might 
seem a small matter; but anything more than 
the conventional lawn and cheap shrubbery 
seems to the average commuter a useless ex¬ 
travagance. He would rather buy a new auto¬ 
mobile or hire an additional maid. It is just 
a question of the point of view^ 
Less Expensive Pieces 
As for the other kinds of sculpture, there is 
plenty to be had at low cost. And it is of good 
quality, so far as the design is concerned. But 
anything in plaster looks more or less tawdry, 
especially if it is a classical Venus or Mercury. 
Plenty of good replicas of standard works 
can be imported for the price of a good piece 
of furniture, but they have a foreign look, and 
we have not yet found the way to make them 
appear an integral part of the landscape. 
As soon as one puts a classical piece among 
rectangular flower beds, people begin to call 
the result an Italian garden. It takes a great 
deal more than some box edging with imported 
stoneware to make an Italian garden. The 
Italian composition has a certain formalit}’ 
that W’e cannot yet regard as quite natural or 
convincing. The average American who sees 
and feels this, prefers to put his trust in the 
average kind of American yard, tame, unin¬ 
teresting and banal though it often is. He 
may err on the side of conservatism, but his 
instinct, on the whole, is probably right. 
The great gardens of Europe, often so full 
of mason work and sculpture, w'ere designed 
by architects in a very different spirit from 
that of our average suburban or country place. 
They were compositions whose bone and sinew 
were architecture of clipped foliage, masonry 
and sculpture. Sometimes there w^ere flowers, 
sometimes not, for they were not indispensable. 
They added color and gaiety but not structure 
A garden, according to modern United 
States notions, is somewdiat different. It is 
primarily a place to grow shrubs or flower-. 
and this is probably a controlling cause of the 
multitudes of aimless and more or less futile 
gardens to be seen in all directions. People 
insist on growing such and so many varieties 
and Garden Clubs spend an undue proportion 
of their time in discussing the merits or the 
cultivation of individual species, in acquiring 
and forgetting information that could be 
gained much quicker and easier from florists’ 
catalogs. They seem forgetful of the real 
quality that gives a garden its charm—its lay¬ 
out, its setting and permanent features. The 
temperate zones have been ransacked for plant¬ 
ing material, and endless skill and patience 
have been spent on the production of new va¬ 
rieties; our lawns and gardens are dedicated 
to their worship and exploitation. So it is easy 
to see how a white marble goddess or gladiator 
may strike a false note in such surroundings. 
There is a vast difference between the settings 
we provide and those of the Villa Lante Gas¬ 
tello or Versailles, which were made for the 
An unusual sundial by Paul Manship stands along the wall in the garden of Edwin 0. Halter’s 
farm at Mt. Kisco, N. Y. A mixed planting of shrubs and perennials surrounds it, with an 
evergreen background—altogether an excellent setting 
