Urbana union. [volume] (Urbana, Ohio) 1862-1872, 1865-12-06
UNION.
Czrx AND COUNTY,.


Wards Indian Hunter.
THE New York correspondent Of the Gin
cinnati Gazette has the following:
Saturday went into Soresacor's gallery tc
see the plaster model of Quincy Wards group
of The Indian Hunting with His Dog, and
and since I saw the Apollo Belyidere al
Rome, 1 think have not looked on anything
in sculpture so simple and so great. The
work has been cordially praised by the New
York critics, but their praise seems timid and
lukewartn in the presence Of the group, and
you feel that the critic who would do justice
to it has to cast away from him his fine phras-
es Of compliment and disquisition, and pom
der it humbly and reverenuy. It is worth
such study as Lessing and Goethe bestowed
upon the LAGOON; but unhappiIy we have
no Lessing nor Goethe to study it, For me,
as recall its savage beauty and most authen-
tic grandeur, I am so proud an Ohio man did
it that scarcely dare trust my enthusiasm
to words.
Figure to yourself an Indian, naked but
for the skin of wild beast that eneircles his
lOins, half clinging to the 1.-THE, strong body,
half fallen from it, He moves furtively for
ward with a tread so lightthat twig would
not snap under it nor dry Leaf rustic; one
elastic foot leaves the earth far behind the
body, the other sustains the trunk that from
the launches stretch eagerly forward. In his
left hand, advanced, with the instinct Of pur-
suit, is the bow, with two or three arrows;
while the right hand knots itself firmly and
unconsciously in the thong about the neck of
the savage dog at his side. This is the group
80 simple, and so loyal to all the facts Of
Indian life, and to the great truth Of art,
which is above all facts. You bring away
with you the image Of it which the first
glance gave you. The work does its Office
of impression at once, and does not ask that
you give it time to grow upon you any more
than Michael Angeles Moses or Lorenso does,
or flash of lightning. It's pure absolute
result. You may Inger over it certainly, and
find more and more in it; but the increase is
of kind, not Of variety; and in the end the
sum, though vaster, is as at frst-merely the
magui6cence Of savage manhood, inspired by
the feeling that moves savage men most
strongly.
It is the figure OF Hunter. The keen in
stinct of the chase thrills every fiber of chat
stout knit frame, and the man has wild Joy
in the pursuit, such as the tiger feels. It is
the figure of an Indian. Every fiber ex-
presses that hunting is the mans work and
vocation, and his pastime alone; that he con-
ceives OF nothing higher nor better, and that
if he ceased to be a hunter, he would fall
from bis own ideal Of usefulness and honor
His body is as well educated as his brain, and
the muscles of his legs and arms as intelli-
gent as the features OF his face, which, sullen-
ly fierce and rapt, with rude shags and points
of Lair tossed from the low forehead, holds
your gaze Ior a moment and then let's it fall
to the head of the dog, This dog is to be
the dog of civilization, what the savage is to
US; and like his master he is full of pitiless
sagacity. The sympathy between the two
brutes, and their conscious equality, are Won
deriully expressed. The man assumes to be
nothing more than the dog, though he con-
trolls him the dog confesses no inferiority
though he submits. Indeed, he is all mute
assertion to the effect that he is as wise as
the Indian, but that the Indian has momen-
tary advantage in seeing the game, and it is
better for both that he command at present
Beyond this, the dog is not dog to do bom-
age to any Indian of his acquaintance.
The group not only expresses the charac-
ter of an individual Indian, but also the sen
timent of sylvan life, about which we have
had so mnch sentimental;ty. As you look
at it, the woods grow up around you and the
wind roars through the heads of the pines,
between the poles of which crouch the wig
vans; the prairie expands and stretches
away; the water birds fly up from the sedgy
creeks; the wild thing that the wild man fol-
lows, leaps into,th tangle of the swamp.
TIE sculptor's boyhood on an Ohio farm
gave him that love of primitive nature which
meu of cities vainly affect and he studied
Indian life in the further West, while per
fecting his ideal for this group. Consequent
his Indian is not fine gentleman savage, not
a Greek Sioux with Roman nose, but a syl-
van creature, untainted by the vices Of ciYili-
zation, as Boone or Kenton might have seen
him. War, and its image, the chase, are his
passions, and from their impulse comes his
sole intellectual beauty, which, indeed, is
scarcely higher, as 7 hinted, than that Of the
dog at his side.
I cannot speak technically of tine excel
Ience Of the sculptor's execution of this group,
but it is visible in every part of the mans
figure. Though indispensable to the feeling,
it is of secondary value, and must chiefly in
terest alone. But no one who has seen the
works Of antique art, and their tame repeti-
tons in modern art, can help recognirons of
the originality Of this group, which is as good
as Greek, without having borrowed anything
from the Greek. The posture and movement
of Wards Indian are as of great and anthem
tic value as an absolu ely new plot IN Itera-
ture would be.
A CoLD WMrBR.-Farmers and others pre-
IL -, oorIv7 v-iotar opd q cc1J Cro m, II