Identifier: criticismmo00chil (find matches)
Title: Art and criticism : monographs and studies
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Child, Theodore
Subjects: Art criticism
Publisher: Harper
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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mous are two statues, David before the Combat with Goli-ath, David after the Combat, the high relief of the Geniedes Arts on the facade of the Louvre, the group GloriaVictis, the statue of Renown on the summit of the Tro-cadero Palace, the tomb of Michelet, the magnificent tomb ofKing Louis Philippe, and a high relief executed for the tombof a beautiful young lady, which was the success of the Salonof 1885. M. Mercies works are so well known that it is need-less to reproduce them in engraving. Our illustration of acharming silver bust of a boy suffices to bring into evidencetwo characteristics of Mercies genius, namely, intensity of feel-ing and unerring sentiment of beauty in form. I use the word genius expressly, for M. Mercie, of all contemporary Frenchsculptors, seems the most gifted by nature and the most fa-vored by mysterious and inexplicable inspiration, to employtraditional words which express vaguely what we vaguely ap-prehend. M. Mercie is a man who lives outside of contem-
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THE FIRST KISS—DOUBLE BUST.—By M. Rene de Saint-Marceaux. MODERN FRENCH SCULPTURE. 251 porary life, reading neither books nor newspapers, taking nopart in civic or patriotic business, frequenting but rarely thesociety of a few friends, and being, in fact, a sort of artistichermit isolated in the studio. And yet M. Mercie at the op-portune moment created that famous group Gloria Victis,which symbolized with thrilling intensity the moral state ofpatriotic France in 1874, vanquished, but conscious of heroicdeeds and noble resolves, grateful to her fallen sons, and moreo-lorious in her defeat than was the Teuton foe in his brutalvictory. But how did M. Mercie conceive this group ? Whydid the clay assume this form ? How came the sculptor toexpress so vividly the latent thought of a whole nation ? Thesimple fact is that the clay which became ultimately the modelof Gloria Victis assumed successively the forms of Samsonand Delilah and Judith and Holofernes, but being satisfiedwith neither

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