Very beautiful works are produced
without her aid to this extent. We may be sure of this without asking M.
Rodin to admit it. He would not do his own work so well were he prepared
to; as Millet pointed out when asked to write a criticism of some other
painter's canvas, in estimating the production of his fellows an artist
is inevitably handicapped by the feeling that he would 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.
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