In short,
he objected to the practice wholly, and said that a letter of his on the
subject had been published in the London "Athenaeum," and had given great
offence to some of Mr. Gibson's friends. It appeared to me, however,
that his arguments did not apply quite fairly to the case, for he seems
to think Gibson aims at producing an illusion of life in the statue,
whereas I think his object is merely to give warmth and softness to the
snowy marble, and so bring it a little nearer to our hearts and
sympathies. Even so far, nevertheless, I doubt whether the practice is
defensible, and I was glad to see that Powers scorned, at all events, the
argument drawn from the use of color by the antique sculptors, on which
Gibson relies so much. It might almost be implied, from the contemptuous
way in which Powers spoke of color, that he considers it an impertinence
on the face of visible nature, and would rather the world had been made
without it; for he said that everything in intellect or feeling can be
expressed as perfectly, or more so, by the sculptor in colorless marble,
as by the painter with all the resources of his palette.
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