16 SEPTEMBER 1837, Page 20

CLOTHING Or STATUES.

" How ought statues to be clothed ?" is a quostio ve.rata with modern sculptors ; and one that the community are more interested in being rightly determined than most abstract points connected with fine art. Statues of public men, erected in public situations, are prominent objects of admiration or of ridicule ; moreover, they are among the most enduring

as well as the most interesting productions of art ; and it is of impor- tance to the credit of the age to consider how they will look in the eyes of posterity as well as of our contemporaries. A communication from

a correspondent, signing himself " SCULPTOR," suggests a few remarks on this subject. We will first let him state the case as nearly as pos- sible in his own words. We do not print his letter entire ; for though

he writes with a strong feeling for and knowledge of his subject, he has not aoquired the art of arranging and expressing his ideas clearly and

concisely. SCULPTOR sets out with lamenting the degraded state of his art- " The noble and divine art of sculpture is contemned and trampled under foot by the ignorance of the age and the example of its professors. # A survey of our exhibitions proves the almost total exclusion of high aim in the exertions of our artiste. • • " • A mercantile, worldly spirit, characterizes the nation ; and the artists, being tainted with the same narruw-minded spirit, pro- duce what will bring most money. • * • • This is particularly apparent among sculptors: a system of manufacture characterizes the profession, to the disgrace of English sculpture. Public works, which alone can be beneficial to the mass as a means of improvement, are of the lowest class. • • • • The few sculptors who have hitherto enjoyed the advantages of displaying their works in public have acted either from ignorance of the true principles of scalp- ture, or unworthily sacrificed them at the shrine of gain and self-ease. • 4 " Artists allow themselves to be governed by the prevailing taste of the age for the representation of inferior objects, which are thus made principal. Statues are executed in coat, breeches, stockings, and low-heeled shoes : the beauties of the form are concealed from observation by the works of the tailor and shoe- maker. An eye and judgment alive to the truth and harmony existing through- out nature cannot fail of being shocked at the want of keeping between the cha- racter of the head and the rest of the figure evinced in almost every statue of modern times in this country. • • • " Our sculptors put clothes upon a statue to hide the form—to conceal the works of nature; and then they cover up as much of the clothes as they can to conceal the works of the tailor. They do not even imitate coats, such as they are, but attempt to show as much of the form as possible,—dressing the figure in lower garments fitting like the skin, a few wrinkles at the joints indicating to the spectator that be is to suppose a pea

of breeches." • • • •

This will be recognized as a faithful description of what our corre- spondent calls " the coat and breeches school of sculpture." Now for his notions of what statuary ought to be-

" Nature, true to herself, proves by the character of the whole structure what she asserts in the face. Thus, a soldier—whose countenance expresses &maw, decision, and energy, his features indurated and bronzed by the operation of those qualities, and the activity and hardihood of his career 'should b• represented nude ; as every part of his body will exemplify his stern and Vigorous *character : the breast, the abdomen, and every limb, all serve' to illus- trate his mind and character. To cover up a form so capable of expression wi" • h trumpery trapping., is disgusting. In the representation of youth also, ill: nu:le shouid be generally used ; as displaying the characteristics of the im- mature form in a manner unattainable by such means as coats and trousers. es representing philosophers and those whose lives are sedentary, and whose strength lies in the brain, drapery becomes assistant ; not a conventional cos- tume, as Of the Greeks or Romans, according to vulgar prejudice, but a simple

of no particular fashion in itself, [so we interpret the somewhat vague drapery,

phraseology of the writer,] that from its capability of infinite variety may be disposed so as to assist the development of character, form, and expression in nature, by the breadth and greatness of its folds, the harshness or softness of the material, and the grand, negligent, elegaut, or graceful arrangement of the rows. • • • • The triumph of the statuary is to produce such a result as this—that. supposing the head of a statue to be knocked off, the intention and characteristics of the whole would be distinctly pronuunced from what remains; the different characters of warriors from the characteristics of their bodies and limbs; the different character of statesmen and philosophers from the arrauge- meet of their respective draperies. • • • • Knock off the heads of half of Chautrey's statues in sitting postures, and they are the same men in slightly different attitudes."

The test proposed is a severe, and hardly a fair one ; and assuredly

CHANTkEi's statues would not abide it ; but neither would a statue modelled on the principle laid down by SCULPTOR, though it were from the chisel of Pumas or PRAXITELES. The physical character of the form, whether it were strength or activity, would be evident ; but no moral or intellectual characteristic would be deducible : whether the person represented were a common soldier or a commander, noble or ignoble, would not appear. In the case of a statesman or philosopher, unless the drapery were a costume of the age, we do not see how the pursuit or office, much less the character of the individual, would be apparent. Scument, in his anxiety to exalt the dignity and power of his art, requires it to do too much. The head alone can express the imellectual character of the man, the body and limbs the animal part ; and as the latter can be of no importance except in the case of an athlete, it follows, that to convey a knowledge of the calling, station, and country of a man, he should be represented in his ordinary or offi-

cial costume. Then, indeed, if the head were off, the figure would tell

its own story. But let us, for argument sake, assume that the display of the character of the form is a primary object in sculpture : to represent an individual of the present day in purls naturalibus, would be to show him as be never appears but when he is bathing. The state of nudity is revolting to our ideas of decoruin and comfort : we could never get over the idea of coldness and indecency in connexion with a person of ourown time. Dr. Johnson, in St. Paul's, looks like a melancholy Ai

c-o.y ON. , and there is a naked soldier there with his hair carefully combed into a brutus, who looks as if he were vain of his nakedness. No nude figure can be pleasing that looks conscious of its nudity. Now if this fault be observable in the nymphs of some of our modern sculptors, (arising from their inability to conceive a state where the absence of clothing was habitual,) how would they get over the difficulty in the figure of a mortal and a contemporary ?

fi n

But we do not d nudity the rule even in the antique, in the repre-

sentation of individual persons. Phocion wears the helmet and chlamy s of the soldier ; Aristides is attired as he appeared in the streets of Athens; many of the soldiers in the frieze of the Parthenon are clothed in drapery and armour. Only gods, or heroes regarded as demigods, were represented naked by the Greeks The Antinous is a specimen of manly beauty of form, and therefore undraped. In the Boman period the statues are almost invariably clothed, divinities and the

athletic excepted. Now if the Greeks, as appears from the few . portrait statues that have come down to us, clothed their figures, how absurd it is to contend for nudity in the representation of persons in the nineteenth century ! The Greeks, living in a warm climate, where the dress was loose and slight, and where nakedness was not indecency, might have sculptured individuals undraped without impropriety ; but the rule of good sense prevailed in the arts of the antique world, as it should now. The Greek sculptors took every allowable opportunity of displaying the beauties of the human form, but in their portrait statues they represented the man in his habit as he lived." We ought to do the same. True, our clothing is artificial, unpicturesque, and ill suited to sculpture • but the sculptors must exert their skill and taste to overcome the ugliness, as the ancients did. Because Mr. WYATT has made George the Third in coat and boots with cocked-hat and pig- tail look ridiculous, does it follow that every statue of a man with a cocked-hat must be so? Look at the statue of Bonaparte, with a great- coat, jack-boots, and cocked-!tat, that crowns the column in the Place Vendome : is there any thing ridiculous in that ? and which is the more appropriate, CANOVA'S, which respresents him naked, or this, which shows him as he headed his armies ? It is pedantry or effeminacy to quarrel with modern dress : let our artists help to reform it. Who sees any thing ridiculous in the effigy of Lord Bacon, at St. Alban's, in doublet and trunk-hose, with hat, ruff, and square-toed shoes ? Is it not more characteristic than a statue of him with a voluminous drapery wound round his figure ? Who did not feel that PARK'S statue of Sadler, in the Exhibition, with a sheet over the naked form, was inelegant as well as unnatural ?—yet that was only carrying out the principles con- tended for by "Scusreolt."

The difficulty of treating modern costume so as to make it be- coming, we allOw is great ; and it has been rather evaded than fairly met and overcome by modern sculptors. We do not approve of the nondescript costume adopted by some statuaries of the present day, any more than our correspondent : the sameness of CHANTREY'S figures, however, belongs as much to the attitude as the attire. CHARTBEY'S bronze statue of Pitt, in Hanover Square, and WESTMACOTT'S of Can- ning, in Palace Yard, will puzzle future antiquaries to determine their ceiling or profession. Clue:rime's marble statues of Watt and Dalton we see no objection to : the modern costume is shrouded, and properly so ; enough is visible to indicate coat, breeches, and shoes ; and the pro- lessor's gown is appropriate and graceful. The coat and breeches are more distinctly represented in the graceful statue of Homer in West- minster Abbey ; the college gown being just thrown over the shoulders ; nor would it be less elegant bad the coat cuffs and the shoes ties. If

the ancients took the licence of indicating the muscles of the body through the coat of mail, surely the moderns may be allowed to mark the muscles of the limbs underneath kerseymere breeches and silk stockings. The loose morning-gown is a good substitute for the pro- fessor's robe, where the latter would be inappropriate : but who would not rather see Dr. Johnson in his bush wig and heavy square-skirted coat than stripped? His figure in that dress might be made to look picturesque—ay, and grand too, by a sculptor of genius. Judge Mans- field in his wig and ermine, by FLAXMAN, in the Abbey, bas a much nobler air than Fox nearly naked, in WEsretecorr's cumbrous group opposite ; and his figure of Abercromby in uniform, in St. Paul's, looks quite as well as Wolfe in the Abbey, who is stripped. How far more interesting are the quaint recumbent statues in armour, and even in the unnatural costume of ELIZABETH'S reign, than any unmeaning drapery, however elegant. Every line of the chisel is a document of history.

As regards monumental sculpture, we would even have the effigies of gentlemen attired in cloaks, with Wellington boots, and holding the round hat in the hand ; and ladies in pelisses or gowns, with bonnets or caps. However ugly or grotesque the costume of the time may be, we contend that it is preferable to nudity, and even to nudity veiled with fancy drapery,—because it is more characteristic ; and in the hands of a skilful artist it might be made picturesque. See the quaint but spirited and effective figures in the niches that surround Henry the Seventh's Chapel, passim. It is not so easy a matter to deal with coats and shoes as may be supposed ; for it is not enough to imitate them, as Thom the Scottish mason did : they must be represented to sculpturesque effect—that is, to tell at a distance by means of light and shade, according to the principle that we contended for in the notice of the Sculpture at the Academy Exhibition.• Suppose AloottE, the sculptor who produced that capital likeness of O'Connell, were re- quired to make a statue from his bust : what would the "pisantry " think if the Liberator, instead of being represented in his frock-coat and trousers, with a cloak over it, and his cap in his band, or in his counsellor's wig and gown, were stuck up naked with a blanket round him ?—Solong asSpanish Cloaks, or morning coats, professional gowns, and robes of office are worn, sculptors never need be at a loss for loose drapery to dress their statues in ; but if even these were wanting, a common coat, or that unsightly garment a 4, Mackintosh " frock, would be preferable to nudity, whether veiled or not, for portrait sculpture. We speak not of busts, but of statues ; for the bust is an arbitrary licence of art, where what little of the body is shown may be either uncovered or draped fancifully : it is a likeness of the head only, the shoulders forming a base, and serving to convey an idea of the size of the indivi- dual.

• Spectator, No. 467,