eBooks Base 2000

He seems to think the faculty of making a
bust an extremely rare one. Canova put his own likeness into all the
busts he made. Greenough could not make a good one; nor Crawford, nor
Gibson. Mr. Harte, he observed,--an American sculptor, now a resident in
Florence,--is the best man of the day for making busts. Of course, it is
to be presumed that he excepts himself; but I would not do Powers the
great injustice to imply that there is the slightest professional
jealousy in his estimate of what others have done, or are now doing, in
his own art. If he saw a better man than himself, he would recognize him
at once, and tell the world of him; but he knows well enough that, in
this line, there is no better, and probably none so good. It would not
accord with the simplicity of his character to blink a fact that stands
so broadly before him.
We asked him what he thought, of Mr. Gibson's practice of coloring his
statues, and he quietly and slyly said that he himself had made wax
figures in his earlier days, but had left off making them now.


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