His imagination has all the vivacity and
tumultuousness of Rubens's, but its images, if not better understood,
which would perhaps be impossible, are more compact and their evolution
more orderly. And they are furthermore one and all vivified by a wholly
remarkable feeling for beauty. In spite of all his knowledge of the
external world, no artist of our time is more completely mastered by
sentiment. In the very circumstance of being free from such conventions
as the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith's
work characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin's
things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity
and sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean"
that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, but
compared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former is even
more remarkable for sentiment than for its structural sapience and
general physical interest. How perfectly insignificant beside its moral
impressiveness are the graceful works whose sentiment does not result
from the expression of the form, but is conveyed in some convention of
pose, of gesture, of physiognomy! It is like the contrast between a
great and a graceful actor.
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