The spirited equestrian statue of General John A. Logan, in a waste
space by Michigan Avenue, which I could see from my bedroom window, was
my first and by no means the least satisfying experience of American
sculpture on its native soil--to be face to face with St. Gaudens'
figure of "Grief" in Rock Creek Cemetery, at Washington, having long
been a desire. In time I came to see that beautiful conception, and I
saw also the fine Shaw monument in Boston, fine both in idea and in
execution; and the Sheridan, by the Plaza Hotel in New York; and the
Farragut in Madison Square; and the Pilgrim in Philadelphia--all the
work of the same firm, sensitive hand, a replica of whose Lincoln is now
to be seen at Westminster.
The statue seems almost as natural a part of civic ornament in America
as it is in France, and is not in England; and the standard as a rule is
high. In particular I like the many horsemen--Anthony Wayne dominating
the landscape at Valley Forge; and George Washington again and again,
and not least in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia (where there is also a
bronze roughrider realistically set on a cliff--as though from Ambrose
Bierce's famous story--by Frederic Remington). American painters can too
often suggest predecessors, usually French, but the sculptors have a
strength and directness of their own, and it would not surprise me if
some of the best statues of the future came from their country.
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