The 'Resignation' represents the refined voluptuousness of riper womanhood. The features are exquisitely cut, and represent a type of beauty fit for angelic spheres. The head, so finely proportioned, and crowned with luxuriant, waving hair, inclines gracefully to one side, as in submission to the chastenings of Providence. But in the downcast, sorrowful eyes, there is an expression of mingled hope and patient endurance such as Mary might have worn at the foot of the cross. The marble is eloquent of that Christian sentiment: 'He doeth all things well.' The religious feeling of the sixteenth century, which gave to art both its inspiration and theme, never found so fair a mould as in this bust of 'Resignation.'
Both of these works are entirely free from all explanatory accessories, and interpret themselves to the most sluggish soul.
Another of Palmer's compositions, and one of the most purely ideal, is the 'Dream of the Spirit's Flight.' This is a large bas-relief, executed in medallion style. To give any idea by mere words of the spirit of this performance is impossible. It is the half figure of a peri-like girl, with tresses swaying in the higher air, with butterfly wings, arms and drapery gracefully disposed, and all the parts uniting to impress you with a sense of upward, soaring motion! There is a divine beauty about the face reflected from a brighter world. Sculptured in pure white marble, it seems a very soul just escaped from its prison house of clay, and, listening to those 'sounds seraphic,' bearing away to the great Beyond.
While gazing on this airy sprite, the beholder feels an exhilarating influence steal over him, and involuntarily there goes up from his heart, like incense, that yearning prayer:
'So grant me, God, from every care,
And stain of passion free,
Aloft through virtue's purer air
To hold my course to Thee!'
We cannot speak separately of his 'Morning and Evening,' 'Immortality,' 'Sleeping Peri,' his statue and bas-relief of 'Faith,' busts, and other works, which are grouped in odd companionship about his studio. But the 'Indian Girl' and 'White Captive,' the crowning achievements of Palmer's genius, and the ones that give a thoroughly American character to his reputation, demand an elaborate considerationnot to explain their merits, but to show what materials for art exist in our history, when appropriated by the master's hand.
Romance and poetry have not often been successful in treating of the character and customs of our aborigines, for the elements of true heroism in the savage nature are so exceptional and few, that the red man is a very poor subject for the higher manifestations of art. Cooper and Longfellow alone have come back from this field with the trophies of praise. But Palmer, with a striking originality and a subtle perception of spiritual influences, sees in the effect of Christianity on the 'untutored mind' of the Indian, a theme to inspire his plastic clay. So from this idea he evolves the 'Indian Girl,' standing in an attitude of perfect repose, holding in her right hand a crucifix, on which her eyes are bent pensively in a sweet, absorbing reverie, which shuts out the consciousness of the external world. In the other hand, which hangs listlessly by her side, she barely touches rather than holds a bunch of feathers, evidently gathered to adorn her person, and which she forgets in the contemplation of the story of the Cross. The artist supposes she has found this crucifix, which the early Catholic missionaries were wont to attach to the forest trees, and having heard from some of these zealous teachers an exposition of Christ's mission, the better life has already begun to dawn in her soul, and her whole aspect tells that this mysterious influence is upon her.
The features are Indian, fair and comelywe do not say beautiful, because this term expresses the highest excellence, and ought as a descriptive phrase to be more sparingly used. The face is idealized, as the rules of true art always require, but still preserves its fidelity to the natural type. The form is nude to the waist, the drapery arranged with unrivalled grace, the hair is clubbed so as to reveal the neck and shoulders, while the perfection of contour and the completeness of development satisfy the most critical eye for the study of detail. The 'Indian Girl' forms one of the landmarks in the history of American sculpture.
But Palmer's grand, characteristic work, in which his genius seems to have reached its noblest expression, is the 'White Captive,' which we believe to be one of the most perfect creations of ancient or modern art. It is something more than the nude figure of a surpassingly beautiful woman, bound to the stake, and defying the gaze of her barbarous captorsit is not merely an exciting incident in pioneer life, but it has a grand symbolical meaning that reaches beyond a literal interpretation of the situation.
We see in this statue the contact of civilization with savage instinct, and in the expression of the 'White Captive,' peering through maiden timidity, and rising triumphant above physical fear in a look of intellectual and religious strength, before which the swarthy warrior feels himself in the presence of a superior powera ruler! As we gaze on in mute admiration, we behold the race of the red man receding westward before that same power pictured in this wonderful face: now the Indian tribes pass the Rocky mountains, they come within the roar of the Pacific, and, growing less and less, they at last vanish away into the uncertain mists of the oceana lost people, who have served the purpose for which they were created, and disappeared from our continent to make room for a nobler humanity. It is this melancholy fate, this glorious triumph, that Palmer has recorded in a language more forcible than history, more eloquent than song, more ravishing than the lyre! To define how the statue spreads before you this great vision, eludes the acutest analysis; but there it is, told just as plainly as the Falls of Niagara or the eternal stars tell the omnipotence of God.
The longer one studies this marvellous work, the more he sees to admire, to reflect upon. There is something in the general effect that makes the beholder forget the perfect nudity of the figure, which necessarily grows out of the circumstances of the case, and which is entirely unfelt by the captive in her terrible realization of the peril which surrounds her. Thus two great difficulties that embarrass the execution of undraped statuary are entirely overcome:
1. The nudity is only incidental to the general effect, and the subject seems entirely unconscious of the fact.
2. The nudity is accounted for by the situationthe captive is tied unclad to a tree, to be burned alive, according to Indian custom.
Thus a criticism that has been frequently made (and not unjustly) on the morale of certain works of art, has no application to this.
Of the details of this ideal creationits matchless finish, the graceful undulations of the perfect form, the firmness expressed in the clenched fingers, the instinctive shudder gathered on the fair brow, the lofty defiance of the eyes and half-parted lips, the radiant beauty of the facewe can only say they live in our memory, but too deep for words. We believe the truth of the artist's conception, that the revengeful savages acknowledged the divinity of her beauty and Christian reliance, and the 'White Captive' went freethe spirit of civilization triumphed!
As a man's character is always more or less associated with his achievements, the reader may wish to learn something of Mr. Palmer as a man. In all kinds of soul-work, there is ever perceptible a certain flavor of the mind which produces it, and the things thus created usually suggest the qualities of the creator. So the works of the sculptor are to some degree the exponents of his character, the expressions of his inner life.
Therefore in Mr. Palmer we should expect moral and intellectual worth of a high order, added to the purest and most exalted motives. He is in spirit a reformer, taking an interest in every measure for the improvement of our race, and sympathizing with every struggle of our aspiring manhood.
The eccentricities, excuses, and conventional affectations of many real and pretended geniuses he entirely eschews, feeling himself one of the people, and laboring for their elevation.
Neither does he deem it any part of genius to neglect his family, forget to pay his butcher's bill, and ignore the claim of his tailor. His ample house and neat atelier, at the north end of Eagle street, in the city of Albany, are the fruit of his patient and inspiring toilhis chisel has won him moderate fortune as well as world-wide fame.
Photographs of the 'Palmer Marbles' are seen in the show windows of Paris, London, and Berlin, while in this country they help to fill the portfolios of the virtuoso, adorning the walls of the parlor and the private gallery.
Though in youth Palmer did not receive an average common-school education, he converses like a man of liberal culture, showing that he belongs to the class of self-made men.
He has never visited the interminable art palaces of Europe, nor studied, in the sense in which that term is used, the 'old masters;' still he has appropriated all the valuable hints to be obtained from the classic models, without regarding them as the ne plus ultra of artistic execution, and therefore to be only imitated, to the exclusion of the higher ideals of an advanced civilization.
He has an intelligible and correct theory in regard to the fidelity of art to nature. For instance, he insists that he should represent, not imitate; and in making a bust of a man, the sculptor should express the higher moods of his subject, and show him with his better qualities brought to the surface. So the forms of nature should be idealized in the direction of their primitive tendency, and thus art help to express that ineffable longing of the soul, that reaching upward for a perfection that is approximated on earth, but never attained. This idealization is like the humor of Dickens, something more than nature in its grotesqueness, yet a stimulated growth of the natural quality. Palmer always takes nature for his model, and then assimilates it to that ideal beauty which dwells in his imagination and sheds a spiritual halo over the creation of his chisel.
Like every true disciple of genius, he feels that he has a mission to perform, and that he is responsible for the influence he exerts on the tastes and æsthetic culture of the people. As you chat with him in his studio, dressed in his blouse and cap, his dark eye glowing with enthusiasm for his art, or sparkling with playful humor, standing before you tall and vigorous, you see in him one of the earnest workers for the elevation of our humanity.
The utilities of the world will take care of themselves: let us foster the beautiful, because, like all divine attributes, man reaches it through striving, and is made better by its contemplation.
Palmer does not look older than forty, and has perhaps not yet attained the fulness of his powers, but has in him the elements of a healthy growth.
Work on, thou almoner of sweetest joys, thou pilgrim in that fairy realm whence come the high ideals of life; work on, striver for the perfect type of beauty and of truth, and in thy progress let the people trace our human nature rising to diviner heightsexpanding to sublimer bounds!
CLOUDS
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO PROFESSOR GUYOTHigh and fathomless above us vaults the pure aerial sky,
Solemn bends its arch of Beauty round a world where all things die.
On the dome through which Earth's swinging, spun of palpitating air,
Angel artists fresco vapors into pictures passing fair.
No cold canvas of dead color has the Mighty Master given:
Trembles with His Infinity the azure vault of Heaven.
On and in the lucent background float the ever-changeful forms,
Sometimes glowing into glory, sometimes glooming into storms.
God's blest seal is on creation; signs and symbols throng the sky,
Though too dull to read their meaning droops the stolid human eye.
Over mountain, over valley throng the clouds to soothe the sight;
Through the dim walls of the city gleam they buoyant, fleeting, bright.
Gentle, dreadful, or fantasticnearer, farther as we gaze;
Varied, spiritual, tender, forms and melts the surging haze.
'Heavenly secrets' breathe around uslowly flowers on the sod,
Cloudland's curves and grading colors veil the Infinite of God.
The Infinitewe shudder! but wild longings through us steal
As we vainly strive to grasp It till our failing senses reel.
Ever longing, never grasping, though in tenderness It stoop
To shade the scented cups of flowers, to bend them as they droop.
For through infinite gradations pass the changeful hues of light,
That the infinite through color may send greetings to the sight.
Through ne'er-returning, endless curves, flowers, trees, clouds, mountains pass,
That man may see the Infinite through nature's magic glass.
Oh, tender stooping! soothing! Infinite Love must be
The cause, aim, end, the burning heart of everything we see.
Earth may cover deep her dying, parted hearts chant weary dirge,
But we feel death is but seeming in the Cloudland's evening surge.
Floating high above the mountains, in the fields of upper air,
Multitudinous throng the Cirri, ranged in order, heavenly fair.
Rank upon rank in glory lie the transverse, plumy bars;
Tranquil beauty rules the union which disorder never mars.
Perfect symmetry, obedience, mark their finely chiselled lines
In the highest sphere of being flexile grace with law combines.
Now they break in fleecy ripples as innumerably they press;
Shines the blue of Heaven between them as they fly the Wind's caress.
Millions fleck the face of Heaven, but no two alike are ever:
Restless mirror of the Infinite, form seems exhausted never.
Are they lambs 'mid Heaven's blue pastures? are they swans with downy breast
Floating through that azure ocean round the region of the Blest?
Are they snowy wings of Cherubs gathering round the Throne above,
As the vesper hymn of Heaven rises to the Eternal Love?
Gazing on their wavy ripples, they seem mingling with the sky,
Yet the heavenly little islets still innumerable lie.
How the fleecy cloudlets glitter as they sail so clear and high!
Is light curdling into snowflakes as it streams athwart the sky?
Freezing? Nowarm and glowing, ambient, changeful, feathery, bright,
Rather seem the floating vapors melting into roseate light.
With the white flame in their bosoms, and the pure blue depths above,
When the sunset rays dart kisses, how they kindle into love!
See, with every shaft electric flash the bright hues deeper, higher,
Till the chaste and snowy cloudlets fleck the Blue of Heaven with fire.
How they flush and how they quiver! how the virgin drifts of snow
Drink the sunset's dying passion, catch his ardent parting glow!
Love weaves close in chords harmonic all the finely fretted dome,
Blue, white, purple, gold, and crimson, fringe, melt, ripple into foam.
Thus the angels drape God's footstool with soft vapor, wind, and sun:
Does His smile rest on the artists when their pleasant work is done?
Do they see Him bend the Heavens, riding swiftly on the clouds,
Heat His Heart, and Light the shadow which His inner Glory shrouds?
Seraphs, cherubs, thronging round Him, shall our hearts no raptures move?
Shall we prove dull links reluctant in the chain of endless love?
No. We feel the electric secret flashing through the Perfect Whole,
'Bliss eternal' telegraphing upon every faithful soul.
Leave we now the upper regions
With their wonders pure and high,
Gone the barred and fleecy Cirri
Mountain Cumuli storm the sky.
High the calmness floats above us,
Tears and rain lie far below,
As we sail the middle Cloudland,
Where the vapors come and go.
Throbs a wilder pulse of passion,
Stronger individual life,
Rapid, energetic motion
Tells of elemental strife.
Nearer seem they to the human,
Rearing dizzy forms on high,
Than the order-loving Cirri
Barring the translucent sky.
Lovingly they crest our mountains,
Hovering o'er them all the day,
Copying all the soaring outlines
In artistic, skilful play;
Following close on the horizon,
Dip, break, gap, and lofty peak,
As to build Earth into Heaven
Would the haunting vapors seek.
Drifting swiftly through the azure,
Chase they shadows over Earth:
Flying footsteps, soft and silent,
Flit o'er grassy graves in mirth.
Shudder notthe bearded harvest
Quivers not, so light the tread:
Let it glide o'er moss and violet
Would its touch could wake our dead!
Piling now, the tossing vapors,
With a wild exultant power,
Rise in turrets, towers, mountains,
Changing with the changing hour.
Glittering, gleaming, dazzling, snowy,
Heart-tossed shadows in them lie;
Broken, scattered, wind-torn, foamy,
Haunt they through Earth's panting sky.
Luminous jets of boiling vapor
Topple into sudden rifts,
Open into yawning chasms,
Break in tortured whirling drifts,
Panting, surging, rocking, reeling,
Cradling in their hearts the storm,
Spirit, power, passion flashing,
Lightning bares each secret form.
Banding now in groups colossal,
Piling o'er the mountain crest,
Sweeping down his rocky summit,
Crashing through his wooded breast,
Shattering fall his pines and larches,
Rain, hail, tumult onward swell,
Lightning scathes the shuddering forest,
Thunder frights the leafy dell.
Sunset fires the whirling vapors,
Now they sway and rock in light,
Toppling crests fling back the radiance,
Through the rifts it glitters bright,
Gloomy clouds are ruby kindling,
Rippling fringed with molten gold,
Rosy streams of color pouring,
Through the tempest's blackness rolled.
Surging weird in fitful beauty,
Every moment fraught with change,
Every break and mystic chasm
Opening up a Heaven-range:
Now the eastern peaks are kindling
Glow as though the Morning's heart
Throbbed against them, while the formless
Clouds to phantom being start.
Thus through storm-tost human bosoms
God oft sends His rays divine;
Passionate errors, when forgiven,
Lead us on to trust sublime.
God rays light through moral tempests,
Brings repentance out of crime;
'Much forgiven' ploughs the spirit,
Former faults as beacons shine.
Through our ruins Love is gleaming,
Rippling o'er in molten gold,
Rosy streams of life are pouring
Through our tempest's blackness rolled.
Glittering thus in growing beauty,
Every moment fraught with change,
Through each rift and shattered chasm
We may see the Heaven-range.
Thus the angels build the pictures
In the vext or tranquil skies,
Of our changeful human passions,
Stormful fall and heaven-won rise.
Thus they write in love and pity,
Radiant with their heaven-dyes,
Lessons for the lost, the erring,
Hope for weary, dying eyes.
High float the Cirri,
Passionless, pure;
Wild pile the Cumuli,
Never secure;
Low sweep the Rain Clouds
Over the sky,
Glooming the sunshine,
Slow trailing by.
Mystical region
Typifies Earth
Light in the bosom
Of darkness has birth;
Magical mingling
Of beauty and gloom,
Calm follows tempest
As Heaven the tomb.
Shrouding the distance,
Legions of mist
Glide down the river
Joining the list
Of the shadowy army
Hurrying on
Over wide waters
To welcome the sun.
Catching his gleaming,
Faster they run,
Roseate surging,
Roll into one;
Filling the valley,
Luminous haze,
Heavenward soaring,
Rocks as we gaze;
Lifting strange columns
Of light in the air,
Weaves golden sunshine
Fitful and fair
Through the cloud pillars
Thrown to the sky,
Like the Dream-ladder
Jacob slept by.
Trailing o'er treetops,
Shadowing graves,
Gloomily weeping
While the wind raves,
Blurring the landscape
Rain clouds press on,
Lowering on nature
With leaden-hued frown.
Sulphurous, lurid,
Thunder is near;
Sobbings and mutterings
Fill us with fear.
Palls with wild fringes
Stream on behind
Death may be riding
The wings of the wind.
Jagged clouds hanging
Formless and black,
Hurtle the whirlwind
Fast o'er their track;
Fiery flashes
Scathe the green plain;
Cataracts falling
In torrents of rain.
Thunder and lightning
Crash through the sky;
Whirlwinds are carding
The clouds as they fly!
Nature is reeling,
Sin at our heart,
Heaven is angered
Well may we start!
God throws His shadow
Into the gloom;
The raindrops have caught it,
And break into bloom!
His light on Earth's teardrops
Gems Bliss on her clouds,
His rainbow of color
Paints Hope on her shrouds.
Tender and lovely,
Luminous, fair,
Infinite Beauty
Is bending through air,
Breathing through color,
Through Order, through Form,
That infinite Love
Rules the heart of the storm.
Caught in soft meshes,
Fractions the light,
Gold, green, or ruby,
Tremblingly bright.
Through the torn chasms
Smiles the lost blue
The wilder the drifting,
The deeper the hue.
Beauty above us,
Beauty around,
Clouds, stars gem the heavens,
Trees, flowers paint the ground.
Rapturous meaning
Illumines the whole:
God gives us Beauty,
For Love is His Soul!
High-floating Cirri,
Passionless, pure;
Wild-piling Cumuli,
Never secure;
Low-trailing Rain Clouds
With rainbow-lit pall
Softly ye whisper
That Love ruleth all!