The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-07-13

Raphael takes up the well-known
theme and clothes it with all the ldyl:-
lie grace and charm of his gentle ma
ture. The womanly ideal finds new
utterance, the note struck is gentler
one. as the age in which he lived
reached to the humanities. And that
womaniy ideal has gone on flndlng
newer utterances in the centuries tnat
have elapsed since the Renaissance.
Here in our own country sculptor
of no mean talent has long been
haunted by the ambition to material.
ize in marble his own conception OF
the ideal Eve. An order from John
ID. Rockefeller for group of Adam
and Eve, in heroic size, to adorn his
estate at Pocantico Hills, has given
him this opportunity. The sculptor IS
George Gray Barnard, whose much
discussed statue of Lincoln now stands
in the city of Manchester, IN Eng
land.
Barnard's Adam.
Mr. Barnard's figure of Adam is
practically finished now. The pro-
genitor of our race lies in sleep on a
cloud. with clouds rising behind it, IN
character and pose much like Michel
angeles painted one. From his SIDE
Eve is to arise, waited upward, as 1t
were. bv a little cloud, symbolizing
Gods creative impetus. Her limbs
and torso will be erect as flame In
still air, but her arms will be folded
up shiedingly to her bowed face, as
is the natural way with the new born;
1t has been said that Mr.. Barnard
is about to give the world an entirely
new ideal Eve, slim girl-woman in
stead of the usual mature mother OF
all living things" and this is indeed
his purpose; he knows of no other
Ewes in art as youthful as the one OF
his vision. But the cheap, too often
repeated. assertion that he was going
to set a new fashion in feminine beau
tv and make the modistes discard the
perfect thirty-six" in favor of any
other measurement whatever makes
him very angry.
Naturally / am Influenced by my
time and the types of it," says this
foremost American sculptor. Every
artist is subject to such influences.
All the great artists of the past nave
been pronouncedly so. They saw the
types around them and interpreted
them with a difference. 1t IS this oil
ference that makes the Individuality
of the artist. We artists must have
a reality to hang our dreams on, or,
better still, to aid in pouring our alb
stract vision into concrete form. Inc
women of Rubens are not here now,
though they were typical of that great
artists age and country. Were | to
attempt a Rubenesque Eve should
rightly fail; | should be guilty of an
artistic anachronism. / am an Ameri-
can artist of the early twentieth CEN
turv. and that is why, among other
things. my Eve will be what she Will
be-"
Mr.. Barnard has no quarrel with
other fashioners of Eve, of this or
any other generation, who have seen
their ideal of Eve in a full grown
woman, a matrOn or mother, or as
Rodin did when he limned her, the
mother of all the living on whom long
since the curse has fallen IMPLYING
that verse of Genesis where it is writ
ten. 81 will greatly multiply thy sor-
row and thy conception: in sorrow
thou shalt bring forth children" But
he defends his own vision of Eve log
ically.
II take Eve" he says, eat the very
moment of her creation, as she leaves
the side of her mate at the Lords
command. Adam is still in the deep
sleep God caused to fall on him, and
his comrade and spouse has not yet
been given>unto him. | see the wom-
an at that moment as a rosebud about
to unfold. as a perfect newborn Great
ure, untouched but ready to unfold
at the touch of her mate. She is in
deed the mother of all life, poten-
TALLY but not yet actually. Hence my
girl-woman."
Daughter of Indian as Model.
"And have you found the model for
,her-the type of this perfect being!
he was asked.
"Mv model? Well, l have found
something unusual and suggestive for
nv work. She is the daughter OF
Spanish sculptor of talent who has
settled in Colorado. Her mother IS
an American Indian. This young girl
is not a professional model, but it is
not without interest to realize that
the child of a Spaniard and of a red
Indian is helping me to materialize
nv vision of the ideal Eve. l have,
if YOU care to put it that way, ended
nv worldwide quest of years for the
ideal Eve, though that quest will go
on as long as artists exist among the
children of men. But it is not the
model that. matters: it is the vision"
Among those considered by Mr.
Barnard as model for his Eve was
- Ioa4if,,I Miss Nirpinia lee of