correspondent Russo-Turkish war,
1877-78; director of decorations World's Columbian Exposition, 1892-93.

ABBEY, EDWIN AUSTIN. Born at Philadelphia, April 1, 1852; educated at
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; went to England, 1878, and has since
made that his home.

SARGENT, JOHN SINGER. Born at Florence, Italy, 1856; studied under
Carolus Duran; has made England his home; Royal Academician, 1891;
National Academician, 1897.

CHAPTER V

SCULPTORS

If background and tradition are needed for painting, how much more are
they needed for sculpture! America was settled by a people entirely
without sculptural tradition, for, in the early seventeenth century,
British sculpture did not exist. More than that, to most of the
settlers, art, in whatever form, was an invention of the devil, to be
avoided and discouraged. So it is not surprising that two centuries
elapsed before the first American statue made its shy and awkward
appearance.

In considering the achievements of American sculpture, we must remember
that it is still an infant. That it is a lusty infant none will deny,
though some may find it lacking in that grace and charm which come only
with maturity.

The first man born in America who was foolhardy enough deliberately to
choose sculpture as a profession was Horatio Greenough, born in 1805, of
well-to-do parents, and carefully educated. It is difficult to say just
what it was that turned the boy to this difficult and exacting art--an
unknown art, too, so far as America was concerned. But he seems to have
begun woodcarving at an early age, and to have progressed from that to
chalk and on to plaster of Paris. The American national habit of
whittling was perhaps responsible for the development of more than one
sculptor.

At any rate, by the time he was twelve years old, Horatio Greenough had
produced some portrait busts in chalk, and, after having tried
unsuccessfully to learn clay-modelling from directions in an old
encyclopedia, took some lessons from an artist who chanced to be in
Boston, and from a maker of tombstones, got a little insight into the
method of carving marble.

These lessons, elementary as they must have been, were very valuable to
the boy, and his work showed such promise that his father finally
consented to his adopting this strange profession, insisting only that
he first graduate from Harvard, on the ground that a college education
would be of value, whatever his vocation. So h