The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1879-03-24

cent cause of some of the earliest at
tempts at sculpture made on this conti-
Fnent. The writer has in his possession
an Indian pipe carved out of flint which
represents man sitting with hands
clasped across his knees. Simple as it is,
it indicates good skill in stone-carving,
| and considerable observation of race
characteristics and anatomy.
Before the Revolution, however, ex-
cepting in the carving of figure-heads,
the plastic art, unlike painting, seems to
have been quite unknown in the United
States. And so little sign was tLere of
its dawn that John Trumbull declared to
Frazee, as late as 1916, that sculpture
would not be wanted here for a cen
tury." But even then the careful OBJ
server might have noticed that q genius
in the glyptic art was awakening in the
new republic. William Rush, who was
born some twenty years before the Revo-
luton, had already shown that even in
ship-carving the sculptor may find scope
for fancy and skill Rush was undoubt-
edly a man of genius, for although all
the art education he ever had was con-
fined to an apprenticeship with ship
carver, his fgure-heads of Indians or
naval heroes added singular merit to
the beauty of the merchant marine which
first carried our flag to the farthest seas,
and the men-of-war that wrested victory
in so many hard-fought battle. Rush
worked only in wood or clay; but original
strength and talent, which under better
circumstances might have achieved
greater results, are evident in some of his
portrait busts, and in a statne of anymph
at Fairmount. A bust of himself, carved
out of block of pine, is remarkable for
a force and character that entitle it to q
permanent place in the records OF Ameri-
can sculpture.
Sculpture, however, was much more
backward in gaining a foothod in the
country than the sister arts, for it was
not until 1924 that the first portrait in
marble by a native was executed-that
of John Wells, by John Frazee, stone
cutter, whose sole art education was OBJ
tained during an apprenticeship in a yard
where rude monumental work was turned
out for the bleak cemeteriesin in use before
such sumptuQus retreats as Greenwood
and Mount Auburn were planned. There
was feeling after the ideal in the nature
of this unassisted artist which enabled
him to be potential in influencing young
er artists, while his opportunities were
unfavorable to the just development of
his own abilities.
Rush began to model in clay in 1889,
and at that time not one of the artists
who has given celebrity to our native
sculpture had seen the light. Frazee was
born in 1890, and Hezekiah Augur, of
New Haven, in 1871. The latter was en-
gagged in the grocery trade, and failing in
that, took up modelling and wood-earving,
without any guide except his natural in
stincts. Like many of our first sculp-
tors, his efforts are interesting rather as
evidences of what talent entirely unin-
structed and unframed can accomplish,
than for any intrinsic value in his work
Many of the artists who have succeeded
him have also begun life in some trade or
profession altogether at variance with the
art to which they afterwards consecrated
their lives.