Koehler, An Eminent Artist, Allowed Us To See A Clever Painting On His Easel, In A State Of Considerable Forwardness, Representing The Rejoicings Of The Hebrew Maidens At The Victory Of David Over Goliath.

At Lessing's - a painter whose name stands in the first rank, and whom we did not find at home - we saw a sketch on which he was engaged, representing the burning of John Huss; yet it was but a sketch, a painting in embryo.

But I am wandering from the American artists. At Cologne, whither we were accompanied by Leutze, he procured us the sight of his picture of Columbus before the Council of Salamanca, one of his best. Leutze ranks high in Germany, as a young man of promise, devoting himself with great energy and earnestness to his art.

At Florence we found Greenough just returned from a year's residence at Graefenberg, whence he had brought back his wife, a patient of Priessnitz and the water cure, in florid health. He is now applying himself to the completion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and her infant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them. Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms, holding them back, in such a manner that he has no command of their muscles, even for the purpose of freeing himself. Besides the particular incident represented by the group, it may pass for an image of the aboriginal race of America overpowered and rendered helpless by the civilized race. Greenough's statue of Washington is not as popular as it deserves to be; but the work on which he is now engaged I am very sure will meet with a different reception.

In a letter from London, I spoke of the beautiful figure of the Greek slave, by Powers. At Florence I saw in his studio, the original model, from which his workmen were cutting two copies in marble. At the same place I saw his Proserpine, an ideal bust of great sweetness and beauty, the fair chest swelling out from a circle of leaves of the acanthus. About this also the workmen were busy, and I learned that seven copies of it had been recently ordered from the hand of the artist. By its side stood the unfinished statue of Eve, with the fatal apple in her hand, an earlier work, which the world has just begun to admire. I find that connoisseurs are divided in opinion concerning the merit of Powers as a sculptor.

All allow him the highest degree of skill in execution, but some deny that he has shown equal ability in his conceptions. "He is confessedly," said one of them to me, who, however, had not seen his Greek slave, "the greatest sculptor of busts in the world - equal, in fact, to any that the world ever saw; the finest heads of antiquity are not of a higher order than his." He then went on to express his regret that Powers had not confined his labors to a department in which he was so pre-eminent.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 108 of 206
Words from 55566 to 56137 of 107287