It is full of expression--arrested just before it ceases to be
suggestive; of individuality restrained on the hither side of
peculiarity. The "Maid" is hearing her "voices" as distinctly as
Bastien-Lepage's figure is, but the fact is not forced upon the sense,
but is rather disclosed to the mind with great delicacy and the dignity
becoming sculpture. No one could, of course, mistake this work for an
antique--an error that might possibly be made, supposing the conditions
favorable, in the case of Chapu's "Mercury;" but it presents,
nevertheless, an excellent illustration of a modern working naturally
and freely in the antique spirit. It is as affecting, as full of direct
appeal, as a modern work essays to be; but its appeal is to the sense of
beauty, to the imagination, and its effect is wrought in virtue of its
art and not of its reality. No, individuality is no more inconsistent
with the antique spirit than it is with eccentricity, with the
extravagances of personal expression. Is there more individuality in a
thirteenth-century grotesque than in the "Faun" of the Capitol? For
sculpture especially, art is eminently, as it has been termed, "the
discipline of genius," and it is only after the sculptor's genius has
submitted to the discipline of culture that it evinces an individuality
which really counts, which is really thrown out in relief on the
background of crude personality.
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