Paul Wayland Bartlett was an American sculptor working in the Beaux-Arts tradition of heroic realism.
Career
His animal studies proved immediately rewarding. Early thrown on his own resources, he was able to earn something as "animal specialist" in the studios of sculptors versed merely in the human form and its trappings. Bits of his youthful work are to be found to-day in important sculptural groups abroad. Gardet, the well-known animaliste, often employed him as assistant. His skill in the various handicrafts connected with sculpture was not unlike that displayed in youth by Rodin, a master whose influence he later felt.
This early and entire consecration to art gives the key to Bartlett's career. At fourteen, he exhibited in the Salon a bust of his grandmother. A few years later his "Bear Tamer, " a man standing over two cubs, now a favorite bronze of young visitors at the Metropolitan Museum, received mention honorable at the Salon of 1887. With the "Bear Tamer" may be classed the "Dying Lion, " as well as the "Ghost Dancer, " a lithe savage performing a tribal rite, a figure admired for its anatomy in the Chicago Exposition of 1893, and now in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
At the Paris Exposition of 1895 was a collection of small bronzes, cast by Bartlett himself, a la cire perdue. The subjects were ethnographic whimseys of fishes and serpents, of batrachians, crustaceans, and the like. To the artists who hung over this display, its radiant gemlike colors were even more alluring than its forms. Sculptors who had experimented arduously in alloys and patines were the first to acclaim Bartlett's success. His name still brings to many minds a vision of rainbow hues such as they had never before dreamed of associating with the dark stuff they knew as bronze. Jean Carriès declared that Bartlett's patines vied with those of the classic Japanese school. These "essays, " as the author called them, express his delight in craftsmanship. Even during the last summer of his life, he was eagerly working with pottery and glazes.
In 1895, he received from France the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. But between his native and adoptive countries, his allegiance was never divided. As his position in art became more secure, he visited America more frequently, called home by commissions enthusiastically offered. The Rotunda of the Library of Congress holds twelve heroic bronze statues, two of which, the Columbus and the Michelangelo, are by Bartlett. The architect had naturally given all the sculptors a definite scale for their models. Bartlett remarked, after the placing of his two heroes, "Yes, I made my figures larger than the others. I wanted them to dominate" (personal recollection). A highly unsound principle! His figures not only dominate in spirit, they domineer in size. Aside from this fault, these two romantic portrait-statues are among the best of their kind. The worldmap of the great seeker and the leather apron of the great interpreter play their proud parts in dramatic light-and-dark. The Columbus and Michelangelo stand at the portal of Bartlett's great period in his art. He had already acquired the grand style. It now remained for him not to subdue this, but to enhance it by bringing it into noble relationship with architecture.
Later, a more harmonious visualization of sculpture as an element in an architectural ensemble reveals itself in his six decorative figures in marble, for the attic story of the New York Public Library, designed by Carrère and Hastings. The first studies were accepted in 1910. Male figures of "History" and "Philosophy" occupy the end spaces, while between these, and in pairs, are female figures of "Romance" and "Religion, " "Poetry" and "Drama. " Save only "Drama, " with her mask, all might have had other names, since the sculptor has not perturbed them with too much symbolism. They are a happy family of beings from a timeless Golden Age, ample enough to hold something both of Greek beauty and Gothic earnestness. The men are stately, the women gracious, and all their vestments are of that noble nondescript dear to poets but disconcerting to modistes. The marble draperies of the four women suggest music, dancing, flowers.
During one of Bartlett's many visits to his native land, he collaborated (1908 - 09) with the veteran sculptor Ward in the sculpture for the pediment of the New York Stock Exchange building. The design of the gigantic sculpture, a high relief centering about the "Genius of Integrity, " is from the elder master, but we are assured by Lorado Taft that the modeling was Bartlett's. Shortly afterward, this initial experience in pedimental sculpture became of value to Bartlett in his own now untrammeled creation of the sculpture for the pediment of the House wing of the national Capitol. In Roosevelt's administration, the joint committee of the Senate and the House having such matters in charge wrote to the National Sculpture Society asking for ten names of sculptors best fitted to decorate this long-vacant space. As Bartlett's name headed the list, the commission was awarded to him (1909). The plaster models were finished in 1914. The work was carved in marble, in place; it was unveiled in 1916. The problem was to enrich, without disturbing architectural lines, a huge triangle generally seen from below and sidewise. Bartlett's first vision of the work took shape as "Peace Protecting the Arts, " with expressive groups leading up to the central figure. His gradually evolved revision created something finer. The central figure, nine feet high, became "Democracy Protecting the Arts of Peace, " which are shown on the left by foundryman, printer, textile worker, fisherman; on the right by a Lincoln-like reaper, the husbandman with his ox, the woman in her home, and an idyllic episode of a cherub with a ram. All these groups, each with its special appeal to human sympathy, are bound together in rhythmic unity. The theme is somewhat less magnificent than that chosen by Crawford for the Senate pediment, but it naturally received an ampler treatment than the earlier sculptor could command, out of the meager resources of his time. The two pediments, taken together, are an object lesson in artistic progress during two generations.
Another instance of Bartlett's mature conception of his art as related to the architect's was his so-called "Quadriga of Victory" brilliantly executed to rise above New York's Victory Arch, designed by Thomas Hastings in 1919 to honor Gen. Pershing's troops on their return from the World War. Bartlett's enthusiasm summoned to his Chariot of Victory six horses instead of the customary four. But all who were working for the arch were too busy in that hour of exaltation to be pedantic about the name of this group. It was a work of immense vigor and style, but was not made permanent, the arch itself having been destroyed. At this time Bartlett was chairman of New York's committee on war memorials. As president of the National Sculpture Society (1918), he protested to some purpose against the government's poor designs for military medals and insignia. Throughout the war, he used his gift of literary expression in both French and English, for the comfort and support of France. His war-time messages to that country are models of vigorous prose. Equally fine in literary form is his essay on American Sculpture and French Influence upon Its Development, an address which he delivered in Paris under the auspices of the Comité France-Amérique, expounding his theme with brilliant acumen, and with appreciation of his American fellow sculptors. This paper was translated into English, and published in the New York Times, February 9, 1913. To academic circles in France, he already spoke with authority. He had been promoted to the grade of Officer in the Legion of Honor in 1908, and elected corresponding member of the Institute of France in 1911, the same year in which he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Because he loved America, and desired her progress in the arts, he was always eloquent in pointing out to American students the advantage, indeed, the necessity, of study abroad. Worthy art movements here received his stanch support, while "freak schools, " both here and abroad, "studios where they draw with closed eyes" and "cultivate mental aberration" had his vehemently expressed abhorrence. "One has no idea, " he writes, "of the swiftness in propagation and the penetrating power of artistic sophisms, when they flatter human fatuity. "
Chronologically and artistically, the central work of Bartlett's career is the bronze equestrian statue of Lafayette, in the court of the Louvre. This position in itself would have been a mark of honor to a sculptor of France, a Dubois or a Frémiet. At the turn of the century, a citizen of Chicago had conceived a plan of having American schoolchildren contribute a cent or a nickel or a dime each toward an American salute to France in the form of an equestrian statue of Lafayette, to be made by an American sculptor. Karl Bitter was approached; and Bitter, rightly feeling that such an offering ought to be the handiwork of a sculptor with French affiliations, successfully urged the obvious fitness of Bartlett. The opportunity moved Bartlett deeply, and held him long. His first sketches were approved by the architect of the Louvre, in New York, July 4, 1899, the plan being to set up the full-size plaster model just a year later, in Paris, in honor of the French Exposition. Bartlett retired to the little French village of St. Leu, where, with a beautiful horse at his command, he worked in solitude and at white heat, returning to Paris to mobilize the various skilled artisans necessary to the conclusion of what was an extraordinary feat. The model when seen in the court of the Louvre was voted a success (1900), but the artist himself was not satisfied. Many months it remained in place, under his criticism. Experience had taught him the value of serene contemplation as well as fierce concentration. Starting anew, he devoted to the work every resource of his art. He made frequent changes, which, as not always happens, were of ultimate advantage. The three-cornered hat of the first study was doffed, the gay coat was exchanged for a severer habit, the action of the hand holding aloft the sword was made more decisive. A different type of horse was used, less flamboyant in movement and in caparison. Every alteration in detail was an improvement in ensemble. With head and sword and spirit uplifted, the young Marquis rides to a victory that will change the world. There is austerity and splendor in the sculpture as in the thought. In 1908, the completed bronze was set up, a signal honor to the soldier, the sculptor, and the two countries they loved. Long studied by the artist, the monument makes an instant appeal to the spectator, whether he views it from the court, or from the Louvre windows. When signing his masterpiece, Bartlett added a tortoise in playful comment. In 1920, the American Knights of Columbus presented to France a bronze replica, which was placed in the city of Metz, where Lafayette was stationed when he dedicated himself to the American cause.
Bartlett's own phrase, "as a fact and as a symbol, " used by him to describe his Lafayette, applies fitly to all his statues; to his marble "Puritans" for the Capitol at Hartford, to his Robert Morris in Philadelphia, his Benjamin Franklin in Waterbury, Connecticut As facts and as symbols the citizens of Boston look upon their statues of Alexander Agassiz and of General Joseph Warren. Bartlett's penetrating studies of each subject's psychology were not snap judgments. They resulted from that wise reading which implies constant sifting and choosing. On the whole, he was at his best quite as much in showing real beings whose lives were poetic, or philosophic, or patriotic, as in presenting such abstractions as Poetry, Philosophy, Patriotism. As a fact and as a symbol, therefore, the seated bronze Franklin at Waterbury, completed in 1921, suggests both by its handsome pyramidal composition and its keen characterization the firm basis of common sense from which this apostle of American liberty took his flights into the regions of science and political philosophy. As a fact and as a symbol, Robert Morris, patriot financier of the Revolution, paces his pedestal in front of the Custom House in Philadelphia, studying as of yore the fiscal weather, for which he needs his three-cornered hat, his greatcoat, and his staff. This was the last of Bartlett's statues to be placed in this country (1924).
Reviewing these works, we note that the sculptor was very lucky in one thing, namely, that he was not called upon to celebrate contemporary frock coat and trousers. He appreciated this immunity. His romanticism abhorred the prosaic, and refused to come to grips with it. Yet the poetry of man at his work appealed to him deeply, as his Capitol pediment shows. Aside from a number of portrait busts such as the Elizabeth Cady Stanton of 1887, the Walter Shirlaw owned by the National Academy of Design, and the Walter Griffin of recent date, contemporary subjects did not greatly engage him. His vein led toward the historic. His realm was heroic portraiture, imaginatively conceived, historically documented, and monumentally presented. Yet Taft devotes a page of appreciation to the "logical decorative syntheses" of fishes, sea horses, and the like, shown in Bartlett's fountain, "The Genius of Man, " a feature of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, at which he received a gold medal. Later, in the Capitol pediment, the ox, ram, lamb, and fish, used in perfect harmony with the draped and partly draped human figures, added much to the appeal of the whole.
Wherever his workshop was, there was his home, whether in Washington, New York, or Paris. At the time of his death, he had a beautifully appointed studio in Washington, as well as that celebrated Paris studio and garden where in an earlier generation the French sculptor Bartholdi had created the enormous symbolic "Liberty" now in New York harbor. Bartlett's purchase from France of this studio, and his bequest of it back to France, were in line with his ardor for French-American amity. Welcomed in Belgium, he was made an associate of the Royal Academy. His last important work was the statue of Blackstone, presented by the American Bar Association to the British Bar Association, to be placed in the Royal Law Courts, London. Never had the sculptor developed his teeming ideas with greater zest than in this tribute to British jurisprudence. A successful statue, yet a difficult one, since in less capable hands the subject's greatness might have been smothered under circumstantial wig and robe. Bartlett had also in hand at this time portrait busts of Washington and Franklin for St. Paul's Church in New York. He had just finished his Independence Pilgrimage medal, to be given to those young Americans who having worked best toward making Monticello, Jefferson's home, a shrine, had earned a trip abroad. In the spring of 1925, he came to New York, bringing a copy of the medal. With his customary friendliness, he planned in both countries for the reception, diversion, and enlightenment of those youthful summer pilgrims to France.
In the full tide of a creative power unusual at sixty years, his life was ended by an accident of the everyday kind, in appearance trivial. A misstep in the dark on a steep terrace near a friend's house in the Ardennes, a wrist slightly cut by a jagged rock, that was all. Care was taken in treating the wound, yet within a month, he died of septicemia, in Paris.
Personality
Bartlett's figure was well-knit. He carried himself gallantly, and his years lay lightly on him. His head was striking. He had abundant bright hair, scarcely touched by time; a broad, full brow; brilliant, wide-set blue eyes, with uncommonly large pupils; a ruddy, expressive countenance, the traditional Vandyke mustache and beard, and a strong aquiline nose, a harmonious variant of the type Nature often supplies to her children of genius - witness Saint-Gaudens, Rodin, Anatole France. It was the head of a dreamer, a doer, an enthusiast, a diplomat; a head with a Nordic beginning and a Gallic finish, each noble after its own kind. In short, Paul Bartlett looked what he was, an American citizen whose artistic achievement honors two republics, and is in turn honored by both. The Yankee was born, but the Commandeur was made. Frenchmen speak of him as formed by the "solide Frémiet, " the "illustre Rodin, " but what he had from these and other masters was fused and transfigured by his own spirit.
