Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 | Page 2

one who, having been subjected to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the ability to recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead of his hands. But if, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of the divine nature of the errand to which he seems appointed, he reach the law of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes the sign of life; if the impulse bear him no farther than rules, then all he produces goes forth as a proclamation of death. There is no middle path. Art is high or low: high, if it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself in the _real_, even though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all accepted methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all Art-science. There can be no other way. The life is in the man, and not in the stone; and no affectation of vitality can atone for the absence of that soul which should have been breathed into existence from his own divine life.
As was said, possession of self is the only condition under which the quantity and quality of the Art-impulse may be determined. It is only when a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of his own inner world, that his possibilities become apparent; and it is only when conscious of these, and inspired by a just sense of their dignity, that he can achieve that which shall be genuine success. Once he must be lifted away and isolated from worldly surroundings, relieved from all objective influences, from the pressure of all human relations; once the very memory of all these must be blotted out; once he must be alone. This is possible to a Mendelssohn in the awful solitude of Beethoven's "Sonate Pathétique," to a painter in the presence of Leonardo's "Last Supper," and to a sculptor in the hushed halls of the Vatican.
But that which lifts the true artist above externals, the externals of his own individual being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the paint are in themselves the ultimate.
This train of thought has been suggested by the fact of the dominion which classic Art has acquired over sculptors, and by the influence of the sixteenth and seventeenth century schools upon painters. It is due, however, to our sculptors in Italy that credit should be given them for having resisted the influence of forms, of the mere letter of the classic, to a greater extent than the students of any other nation. Whether or not they have been receptive of the spirit of the antique remains to be seen.
American painters have been less fortunate. Too often the lessons of the old masters, and especially those of the earliest, the Puritan Fathers of Art, have been unheeded; or the rules and practices which served them temporarily, subject to the phase of the ideal for the time uppermost, have passed into permanent laws, to be obeyed under all conditions of Art-utterance.
The United States have had within the last twenty years as many as thirty sculptors and painters resident in Italy. At the beginning of the present year ten sculpture studios in Rome and Florence were occupied by Americans. We will speak of these artists in the order in which they entered the profession of an art which they have served to develop in this first period of its history in America. The eldest bears the honored name of Hiram Powers.
Three parties have been remarkably unjust to this man,--namely, his friends, his enemies, and himself.
Neither the artist nor his friends need feel solicitude for his fame. The exact value of his excellence shall be estimated, and the height of his genius fully recognized, when the right man comes. Other award than that from an age on a level with his own life can be of small worth to one who has attained to the true level of Art. Fame must come to him of that vision which can pierce the external of his work and penetrate to the presence of his very soul. His action must be traced to its finest ideal motive,--as chemist-philosophers pursue the steps of analysis until opaque matter is resolved to pure, ethereal elements. His fame must be from such vision, and it will approach the universal just in proportion as his pulse beats in unison with the heart of mankind. Whatever may be an artist's plans, or those of his friends, in regard to his valuation by the world, while he is living, ultimately he himself, divested of all save his own individuality, must stand revealed.
Those who in other departments of action are necessarily