II
Chapu, who died a year or two ago, is perhaps the only eminent sculptor
of the time whose inspiration is clearly the antique, and when I add
that his work appears to me for this reason none the less original, it
will be immediately perceived that I share imperfectly the French
objection to the antique. Indeed, nowadays to have the antique
inspiration is to be original _ex vi termini_; nothing is farther
removed from contemporary conventions. But this is true in a much more
integral sense. The pre-eminent fact of Greek sculpture, for example,
is, from one point of view, the directness with which it concerns itself
with the ideal--the slight temporary or personal element with which it
is alloyed. When one calls an artist or a work Greek, this is what is
really meant; it is the sense in which Raphael is Greek. Chapu is Greek
in this way, and thus individualized among his contemporaries, not only
by having a different inspiration from them, but by depending for his
interest on no convention fixed or fleeting and on no indirect support
of accentuated personal characteristics.
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