Arts and Letters

The first time I saw James Fraser he stood on a windy New Hampshire hillside, showing Augustus Saint-Gaudens how to hit a golf ball. He was a pleasant wind-blown figure; his fine head sat firmly upon his powerful shoulders, and he moved with the relaxed ease of an athlete. His manner was quiet and self-assured, open and friendly. He had been living abroad for three years, studying sculpture, and pitching for the American baseball team in Paris, coached by "Pop" Farrar of the Giants, the father of Geraldine.

One day in Paris, Saint-Gaudens saw at the American Art Club a small statue which he thought was very good. It was called "The End of the Trail" and represented an exhausted Indian crouching over his tired pony. Every line of the composition expressed the limitless fatigue of defeat. It was signed "J. E. Fraser." Saint-Gaudens searched out the young man and invited him to work with him; and here now in 1901 they were both back in America, finishing the older sculptor's statue of General Sherman. At this time Fraser was twenty-five and "the Saint" was fifty years old.

"The Trail" later became one of Fraser's most popular works, and if we follow the trail backwards we come to Fraser's beginnings. He was born in 1876, the year of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His father, a railroad builder and engineer, laid out a railroad across the Dakotas, and as the road pushed ever further across the plains the Fraser family moved with it. There were still many Indians in Dakota, some hostile, some friendly, herds of buffalo and abundance of good hunting. On a pony he had obtained from an Indian boy in trade for the glittering spring of an old watch, Fraser wandered the plains, and grew to know the Indian life intimately. These early impressions were indelible and planted the seed of future work. "The End of the Trail," the "Buffalo Nickel," "The Prayer to the Great Spirit," and the "Pioneer Woman" reflect this early source. The "Pioneer Woman" was inspired by the memory of his aunt Dora, snatching up her gun and baby at the rumor of an Indian raid.

Three or four years after that day in New Hampshire, Theodore Roosevelt asked Saint-Gaudens to make his portrait. Saint-Gaudens, enfeebled by illness, recommended that Fraser do it in his place. At first the President doubted the ability of "so young a man" to do a proper job, doubts that vanished as the bust progressed, while the two men talked of their experiences in Dakota, and of their common love of the West. From the sittings given to that robust portrait a friendship developed, and from them came years later the masterly equestrian statue of Roosevelt, now riding the steps of our Museum of Natural History.

Theodore Roosevelt was only one of Fraser's clients who became a staunch friend. Fraser had a manly friendliness which created confidence. His character was like a good piece of Scotch tweed, handsome, durable, warm. It was eminent for its solidity and well-adjusted balance. It had no eccentricity of surface brilliance. It did not deal in paradox. His reliable memory, accurate observation and early experiences enabled him to talk well on many subjects. He talked railroad building with E. H. Harriman, wild nature with John Muir, sport with Long Island friends, boxing with his Negro model, and literature with Edwin Arlington Robinson. When Robinson and Fraser tired of poetry they played poker. There was always a room kept ready for Robinson in Fraser's house.

Fraser worked long hours with fire and diligence, but he took time out, and in his early days in New York I recollect many evenings spent with him at theatres, fights, and wrestling bouts, and one night in the peanut gallery of the Metropolitan, hearing by accident Caruso's American debut.

Fraser taught, and fulfilled the other routine duties of the artist. He was generous with his time and advice to younger men. In his criticism of their work he strove to gauge their capacities and to develop their powers along their natural lines without imposing his own point of view. For this help and for other kindnesses I owe Fraser a debt that is impayable, and the recent end of our friendship, which lasted for more than fifty years, comes as a great personal sorrow.

For many years Fraser divided his activities between a New York studio and one in Westport, Connecticut. Gradually he centered all his work in the country studio, which was large and suited to his needs. Here he had ample space, and every convenience for work, hydraulic lifts for raising and lowering heavy sculpture, and two pairs of immense doors at either end of the studio that opened upon stone platforms, and through which he could push his statues and study them in the sunlight. Two smaller studios opened off the main workshop, and one of them led to an outdoor swimming pool. In these surroundings Fraser and Laura Gardin, his gifted and well-loved wife, spent long quiet days of work, each on individual commissions. He worked in the northern end of the eighty-foot studio, she in the southern.

His day began by shooting a hole of golf from the dwelling house to the open field beside the studio. Then at lunch time he drove the ball back and repeated the routine in the afternoon. This exercise kept him in good condition for his work.

On entering the studio you were greeted by the barks and swift onrush of the cocker spaniels, Thor and Commando; then you might glimpse Fraser high on a ladder, working on a horse whose head almost touched the roof; or again he might be sitting down, bent over a tiny medal, or making a drawing for the pedestal of a statue. He seemed undisturbed by interruptions, and as he worked was ready to talk with anyone who came in. The air was full of radio, giving forth baseball scores, or the mighty notes of a symphony orchestra. All about were great white shapes in plaster, pale and mountainous, completed figures ready for the bronze-caster, others still to be worked on.

If Fraser at first sight was not visible, you searched for him through a labyrinth of generals, statesmen, and scientists, a maze of robust form and human drama. Here was merry Franklin, brooding Edison, crisp Harvey Firestone, and the twin figures of the brothers Mayo. At one time when Mrs. Fraser was working on her Lee-Jackson group, the workshop was the stable for five monumental horses. Against this colossal background the Frasers looked diminutive, small as children. This fantastic world of theirs was fundamentally well-ordered. There was room for all the groups to revolve on their pedestals without interference, and the means for working upon them were handy and abundant. The only confusion was in the mind of the visitor.

The ideal in sculpture for which Fraser strove was to express in outward form the inner spiritual force which animated his subject. That he often achieved his goal is clear if we look at his busts and portrait statues. When we compare the bust of Elihu Root, sunk deep in thought, with quizzical Jack Garner, or the rugged head of Theodore Roosevelt with the brooding expression of the young painter Olaf Olsen, we begin to grasp the range and power of Fraser's art. In each case he strikes the just note of personality with exciting precision and with full-toned truth.

The same excellent virtues inhabit his portrait statues. The figures of the two great secretaries, Hamilton and Gallatin, stand at either end of the Treasury Building in Washington, both alike in their elegance and intellectual pride, both most unlike in the nice discrimination with which the sculptor has emphasized the salient traits in which they differed. In the General Patton at West Point there is no elegance. Here stands a grim intelligent bulldog of war, intent upon his mission, battle-grimed, arrogant, an epitome of energy. The Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia is a man who also can fight but whose weapons are persuasion and humor. The genial obese old man sits his chair in careless comfort while the shrewdness, benevolence, and wisdom in his eyes dominate the beholder. This comfortable, portly Franklin is a worthy companion as well as physical antithesis to Houdon's bright-eyed emaciated old Voltaire in the Théâtre Français. Indeed Houdon often comes to mind when we consider Fraser's ability to render character, for both sculptors had the same uncanny authority to impose on us a belief in the truth of their vision.

It is not necessary here to make a more complete catalogue of Fraser's work, nor is the time ripe to assess his relative place among American sculptors. One distinction he already shares with older sculptors of assured position. The people of America have taken to their hearts and accepted as national symbols a small number of works in sculpture. The list is brief, and to it belong Ward's Washington on the steps of the sub-Treasury of this city, Saint-Gaudens' standing Lincoln in Chicago, French's "Minute Man" by the bridge at Concord, and "The End of the Trail" by James Earle Fraser.

That is good enough for any man, and there we leave him.