Arts and Letters

All the circumstances of Paul Wayland Bartlett's birth and upbringing were favorable to his development as an artist. His father, Truman H. Bartlett, was dedicated both to art and to art criticism, he was both a sculptor and a writer. When Paul was born at New Haven in 1865 he breathed, literally in his cradle, the atmosphere which was to be his all his life. He was taken to Paris as a boy and was only fifteen when he entered the École des Beaux-Arts. From that moment his career was fixed, that of a sculptor whose natural aptitudes were to draw from environment and opportunity exactly the stimulus needed to make them effective.

He studied at various times under Cavelier, Frémiet, and Rodin. They taught him much but he was possessed of an individuality which saved him from the imitative drift which any of them, and especially Rodin, might have promoted in a weaker type. The most interesting thing about Bartlett is that from beginning to end he was his own man. He was that by virtue of character and technique. Doubtless his surroundings in Paris fostered his inclinations but the latter had deep roots and would have grown anywhere. I remember talking with him once about the little bronzes of fish, serpents, and so on which he had cast himself à cire perdue. The impression he left on me was of the very spirit of plastic art. His way of taking up one of the bronzes and fondling it as he turned it about and about for my inspection was indescribably the way of a sculptor. He talked patinas as a painter might talk colors. Bronze was to him an ineffably ductile and even sensuous medium. Its genius had entered his soul.

He was a born craftsman, a modeler, and chiseller by favor of the gods. I was always delighted, and a little puzzled, by his escape from the influence of Rodin. The latter so often seems to have modelled just for the fun of modelling. The young American had the same gusto, but he would not deviate into mere virtuosity. He had a sense of organic structure saving him from that. One trait he had in common both with Rodin and with that distinguished animalier Frémiet, a faculty for the picturesque. A figure by Bartlett is bound to seize the attention, it is vivid, sharply defined, significant not only of form but of movement. He had a seeing eye and his statues are extraordinarily vitalized characterizations.

There are many of them for he was a devoted workman, ceaselessly active down to the time of his death on September 20th, 1925. I do not pretend to survey them all in detail. But one or two of these achievements of his I must signalize, notably the "Michael Angelo" and the "Columbus" in the Congressional Library, and the "Lafayette" in Paris. The "Michael Angelo" is a really brilliant evocation of personality. There is something about the head to suggest, faintly, the seer, but chiefly I think Bartlett summons up the mundane presence of the great master, his originality and his terrific power. The note of power, above all, is struck with splendid precision. I cite the "Lafayette" for its grace, its delicate distinction. The horse and its rider are bodied forth with exactly the elegance that belongs to the eighteenth century tradition.

He had, indeed, the light touch in inspiring measure. He knew how to be monumental, as is shown by numerous heroic figures of his. He did not know how to be heavy-handed or dull. Vivacity rather than depth is the mark of his art. Yet he was penetrating enough to be always sure of the merit I have mentioned, the merit of seeing his subject truthfully and sympathetically. If he was vivacious he was in no wise shallow. It was rather that art meant, for Bartlett, the nervous force, the kindling interest, of life. He simply couldn't lapse into convention. Each work of his was a fresh, ebullient conception. In the best sense of the phrase he energized his sculpture. He was elected to the Academy on May 18th, 1911.