The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-01-14

first wife, who was an illiterate woman, and
married lady of rank but no great fortune.
Thomas Balls colossal Webster, presented to
the New York Central Park by Gordon W.
Burnham, is now being cast at the Munich
foundry The group of Abraham Lincoln
emancipating the slave, given by the freedmen
to the city of Washington, is also about to go
into bronze, and will be in Washington next
April, on the anniversary of Lincon's death.
j. A. Jackson is modelling in clay bison,
drinking, which be designs for park orna
ment.
Two plays have just been performed for the
first time in London, new fairy comedy by
W. S. Gilbert, similar in form and in senti-
ment to his "Pygmalon and Galatea" and
"The Wicked World" and called "Broken
Heart" and comedy in one act by the late
Mr.. Robertson, called dublin Bay" The
former was made rarity successful by excel
lent acting; the latter is said to be in no way
worthy of its authors fame, and was probably
an adaptation from the French
Bronzes and water-coloTs by the late sculptor
Barge have been the most remarkable recent
art show in Paris. Barge had an early career
of constant disappointment, and later life OF
renown. He was a specialist, and produced
wild beasts of wonderful reality. AS Henry
James, Jr., writes to the Tribune, in his works
for the first time ''the unclean, prowling, mus
cular beast of the jangles and deserts made his
entrance into sculpture" Mr. James says it
was his his "Lion at Rest which he exhibited
in 1888, and which began his fortune. This is
perhaps an instance of "heterophemy" on Mr.
James's part, as B trye's fame is generally dated
from the ''Lion and Serpent, which was exhib-
tied that year, and which the Duke of Orleans
persuaded the state to purchase. 1t was placed
near the Seine gate of the Tuileres gardens,
where it made the natty conventional sculptor
Ingres sDeeringly ask, "How long since the
Tuieries has been turned into menagerie?"
1t is curious circumstance that, painting his
beasts with realism and force unexampled
before, he should yet never have seen them in
their native wilds, but studied them solely in
the Jardin des Plantes,-for he was Partisan
of the ParisiaEs. In his paintings he never en-
deavored to present desert or jungle which he
had never seer, but boldly located his lions,
tigers, elephants and bears in the old forest of
Fontainebleau, where the great oaks, the gray
granite powders, the purple heath and the
sandy wastes gave him range enough. Mr.
James says this collection might be called "the
works of NJ Barge; or the plastic beauty of
ferocity." Particularly as to The feline race:
Everything in these creatures is admirable
the moving, palpable curve of back and tail,
the strong soft football, the irresistible sense of
the perfect mechanism within. Barge modelled
the leonine countenance in all its beautiful
hideousness. Some Of his animals throwing
back their heads from the carcass in their paws,
while they swallow peculiarly tender morsel,
have an extraordinary truth to nature; you
seem to see the fattening of the head, and con
traction of the yellow eyes, and to hear tht
comfortable snarl and gurgle of the throat."
There is complete collection of these bronzes
in the Corcoran gallery at Washington.