The Rest Appeared To Me Decidedly Bad;
Wretched Landscapes; Portraits, Some Of Which Were Absolutely Hideous,
Stiff, Ill-Colored, And Full Of Grimace.
Here at Rome, we have an American sculptor of great ability, Henry K.
Brown, who is just beginning to be talked about.
He is executing a statue
of Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, of which the model has been ready
for some months, and is also modelling a figure of Rebecca at the Well.
When I first saw his Ruth I was greatly struck with it, but after visiting
the studios of Wyatt and Gibson, and observing their sleek imitations of
Grecian art, their learned and faultless statues, nymphs or goddesses or
gods of the Greek mythology, it was with infinite pleasure that my eyes
rested again on the figure and face of Ruth, perhaps not inferior in
perfection of form, but certainly informed with a deep human feeling which
I found not in their elaborate works. The artist has chosen the moment in
which Ruth is addressed by Boaz as she stands among the gleaners. He
quoted to me the lines of Keats, on the song of the nightingale -
"Perchance the self-same song that found a path
To the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien's corn."
She is not in tears, but her aspect is that of one who listens in sadness;
her eyes are cast down, and her thoughts are of the home of her youth, in
the land of Moab.
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