THE HAIG STATUE [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR, ---This
controversy is alleged to lie between a Represen- tational figure and an Expressionist work of art. But is it accurate to say so ? Certain existing statues in the ordinary convention are cast in our teeth. We are asked to compare the Ilepresentationalism of some indifferent statues with the unrepresentational beauty of Charles the First's statue at Charing Cross, and to say that here is proof enough that no
sculptor can achieve a work of art unless he casts aside realism.
But no one can suppose that Le Sueur had any doubt at all that he had made a close likeness of Charles and of the kind of horse that the King would ride. He would have been amazed and annoyed if he had been told that either horse or rider was quite unlike reality, and would eventually be held up as an example of the superiority of the unreal.
It is true that the king is riding with a seventeenth-century seat, posed with contemporary artifice, and rides a horse that is satisfactorily unlike a horse as we see it to-day. But one need not labour the point that the type of horseflesh has changed, nor that, so far as Le Sueur's horse is un-horselike, it represents a horse as seventeenth-century eyes saw it.
Now, if Le Sueur was Representational, so in fact is Mr. Hardiman's first model. It is just as Representational as, say, the Foch statue, except that it goes back to a Represen- tationalism that is out of date—the Representationalism of the fifteenth-century Italy instead of that of twentieth-century England. For this there seems no justification and it is a serious objection to the model. . ,
Verrocchio's " Colleoni" leaps to mind immediately and has been bandied about as freely as Le. Sueur's Charles the First. But although Verrocchio may have idealized Colleoni-7- and a comparison with the portraits shows that he did—the horse is absolutely Representational. It is an exact likeness of a war-horse of the period, and is even correct in its action, as very few horses are in sculpture.
We may be sure that if Verrocchio or Le Sueur were living to-day and were to make an equestrian statue, either of them would give us a lifelike representation of a thoroughbred horse as seen by the eyes of to-day, not of the past. As for the figure of Lord Haig, it is equally certain that Verrocchio would give us a close likeness of the handsome Field Marshal. There would be no need to improve Lord Haig, as he improved the elongated nose and rather short legs of Colleoni.
The real charge against Mr. Hardiman's first model is not that it is an artistic impression instead of an exact likeness, but that it is overlaid by the dead hand of the past, and as such is meaningless and uninspired.
So much for the first model, which many people would prefer to the second. At all events, the horse had merits as a repro- duction of the spirit of the Italian Quattrocento. As for the second model, we seem to have an example of artistic perver- sity. The portrait of Lord Haig is said to be fairly satisfactory. But his seat smacks of the riding school and gives little indica- tion of a man at home in the saddle. The ballooning breeches are unnecessarily ridiculous. Now, it is all very well to say that a statue is not an advertisement for Lord Haig's breeches- maker. That is merely flippant. The retort is that Verrocchio did not give Colleoni vambraces that would have made an armourer laugh. Art has always found its inspiration in the imaginative treatment of actualities, not in the invention of unrealities.
The horse seems to be a wilful attempt to create something which shall be untrue to nature. There are conventions in art, childlike and naive expressions, that are honest and un- conscious. They seem to convey a beauty and dignity that may be lacking in more sophisticated creations ; the Italian Primitives are a striking example of this. But wilful and perverse untruth or a bygone mode is an affectation.—I am,
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