There had always been
individual sculptors of power and originality in France, but the
movement of the French school of sculpture, as a whole, away from the
pseudo classicism which had long dominated it was really inaugurated by
Paul Dubois only a few years before Saint-Gaudens's arrival in Paris.
Many of the men destined to a brilliant part in the history of modern
sculpture were trained in the _atelier_ of Jouffroy. Falguiere and
Saint-Marceau had but just left that studio when the young American
entered it, and Mercie was his fellow student there. Dalou and Rodin
have since made these men seem old-fashioned and academic, but they
were then, and for many years afterward, the heads of the new school;
and of this new school, so different from anything he had known in
America, Saint-Gaudens inevitably became a part. His own pronounced
individuality, and perhaps his comparative isolation during the years of
his greatest productivity, gave his art a character of its own, unlike
any other, but to the French school of sculpture of the third quarter of
the nineteenth century he essentially belonged.
Of course, his style was not formed in a moment. His "Hiawatha" seems,
to-day, much such a piece of neo-classicism as was being produced by
other men in the Rome of that time, and the "Silence," though somewhat
more modern in accent, is an academic work such as might have been
expected from a docile pupil of his master.
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