Certainly M. Dalou is far more nearly in the current of contemporary art
than his friend Rodin, who stands with his master Barye rather defiantly
apart from the regular evolution of French sculpture, whereas one can
easily trace the derivation of M. Dalou and his relations to the present
and the immediate past of his art in his country. His work certainly has
its Fragonard, its Clodion, its Carpeaux side. Like every temperament
that is strongly attracted by the decorative as well as the significant
and the expressive, pure style in and for itself has its fascinations,
its temptations for him. Of course it does not succeed in getting the
complete possession of him that it has of the Institute. And there is,
as I have suggested, an important difference, disclosed in the fact that
M. Dalou uses his faculty for style in a personal rather than in the
conventional way. His decoration is distinctly Dalou, and not
arrangements after classic formulae. It is full of zest, of ardor, of
audacity. So that if his work has what one may call its national side,
it is because the author's temperament is thoroughly national at bottom,
and not because this temperament is feeble or has been academically
repressed.
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