Even in his free and charming little "St.
John Baptist" of the Luxembourg, and his admirable bust of Baudry one
feels like asking for more freedom still, for more "swing." Dubois
certainly is the last artist who needs to be on his guard against
"letting himself go." Why is it that in varying so agreeably Renaissance
themes--compare the "Military Courage" and Michael Angelo's "Pensiero,"
or the "Charity" and the same group in Della Quercia's fountain at
Sienna--it is restraint, rather than audacity, that governs him? Is it
caution or perversity? In a word, imaginativeness is what permanently
interests and attaches, the imaginativeness to which in sculpture the
ordinary conventions of form are mere conditions, and the ordinary
conventions of idea mere material. One can hardly apply generalities of
the kind to M. Dubois without saying too much, but it is nevertheless
true that one may illustrate the grand style and yet fail of being
intimately and acutely sympathetic; and M. Dubois, to whose largeness of
treatment and nobility of conception no one will deny something truly
suggestive of the grand style, does thus fail.
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