have done it very
differently himself. It is easy not to share M. Rodin's gloomy
vaticinations as to French sculpture based on the continued triumph of
the Institute style and suavity. The Institute sculpture is too good for
anyone not himself engaged in the struggle to avoid being impressed
chiefly by its qualities to the neglect of its defects. At the same time
it is clear that no art can long survive in undiminished vigor that does
not from time to time renew its vitality by resteeping itself in the
influences of nature. And so M. Rodin's service to French sculpture
becomes, at the present moment, especially signal and salutary because
French sculpture, however refined and delightful, shows, just now, very
plainly the tendency toward the conventional which has always proved so
dangerous, and because M. Rodin's work is a conspicuous, a shining
example of the return to nature on the part not of a mere realist,
naturalist, or other variety of "mediocre artist," but of a profoundly
poetic and imaginative temperament.

This is why, one immediately perceives in studying his works, Rodin's
treatment, while exhausting every contributary detail to the end of
complete expression, is never permitted to fritter away its energy
either in the mystifications of optical illusion, or in the infantine
idealization of what is essentially subordinate and ancillary. This is
why he devotes three months to the study of a leg, for example--not to
copy, but to "possess" it. Indeed, no sculptor of our time has made such
a sincere and, in general, successful, effort to sink the sense of the
material in the conception, the actual object in the artistic idea. One
loses all sense of bronze or marble, as the case may be, not only
because the artistic significance is so overmastering that one is
exclusively occupied in apprehending it, but because there are none of
those superficial graces, those felicities of surface modelling, which,
however they may delight, infallibly distract as well. Such excellences
have assuredly their place. When the motive is conventional or otherwise
insipid, or even when its character is distinctly light without being
trivial, they are legitimately enough agreeable. And because, in our
day, sculptural motives have generally been of this order we have become
accustomed to look for such excellences, and, very justly, to miss them
when they are absent. Grace of pose, suavity of outline, pleasing
disposition of mass, smooth