Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/435

 THOEVALDSEN

TIECK

THORYALDSEN, Bertel, Danish sculptor. B. Nov. 19, 1770. Thorvaldsen was the son of an Iceland wood-carver, and as a boy he worked at the same trade. At the age of eleven he began to study at the Copenhagen Art Academy. He won many prizes, and in 1796 the Government awarded him a travelling pension for study at Rome. He developed a passion for classic art, and at the same time exchanged Christian for classic ideas. In 1798 he sent his first work, &quot; Bacchus and Ariadne,&quot; to the Copenhagen Academy ; hut Sir T. Hope, who recognized his genius, persuaded him to remain at Rome. He became a member of the Copenhagen Academy, and honorary member of the Bologna Academy in 1805 ; and fourteen years later, when he visited Denmark, lie was appointed Coun cillor of State. Thorvaldsen was now recognized as one of the greatest artists of the time, and his work was almost entirely classical. After 1820, when he returned to Rome, he executed a number of ecclesiastical commissions, including the statue of Paul VII in the Clementine Chapel, and he did a good deal of religious work after his final return to Denmark. But Thorvaldsen himself explained that this work was done in a purely artistic spirit. &quot; Neither do I believe in the gods of the Greeks,&quot; he said, &quot; yet for all that I can represent them.&quot; His Christian biographer, J. M. Thiele, says, apropos of these religious pieces : &quot; Even his greatest admirers failed to find in him that kindred spirit to Christianity which is deemed essential to the happy delineation of holy and sacred subjects &quot; (Life of Thorvaldsen, Eng. trans., 1865). At his death the great sculptor left his works of art and 75,000 thalers to the city of Copenhagen, which constructed therewith the Thorvaldsen Museum. D. Mar. 24, 1844.

THRESH, William Henry, teacher and lecturer. B. May 3, 1868. Ed. York Academy, Wakefield, and private tutor. Mr. Thresh engaged in the popularization of science, and he estimates that in the 797

last twenty-five years he has delivered two thousand lectures with that aim, and has contributed frequently to scholastic jour nals. Convinced that &quot; Christianity is opposed to progress,&quot; he opened a school (Ruskin House) at Southend-on-Sea in 1903 for the education of children on Rationalist lines. Of this he was Principal until, in 1916, the abnormal conditions set up by the War compelled him to close it. His school was often commended to Rationalists in the Literary Guide and Freethinker.

THULIE, Jean Baptiste Henri, M.D.,

French physician and anthropologist. B. 1832. Ed. Paris. Thulie practised at Paris, where he also took an active part in public affairs. In 1856 he founded a periodical which lie called Bealisme, and he wrote various medico-social works. In 1885 his La femme attracted much atten tion. He was a Materialist, and contributed to the Rationalist journal, La Pensee Noti- velle. He was the first President of the new Paris Municipal Council in 1874, and in 1878 he delivered a remarkable oration

on Voltaire at the centenary celebration.

I

TIECK, Johann Ludwig, German poet and philologist. B. May 31, 1773. Ed. Friedrichswerden Gymnasium (Berlin) and Halle, Gottingen, and Erlangen Univer sities. He devoted himself to letters, and published a number of successful novels. Tieck, though a personal friend of Goethe and Schiller, and a Rationalist, joined the Romantic movement, in opposition to the Aufklarung. He was a medievalist in his artistic nature, but a thinker on the lines of heterodoxy in the eighteenth century. His poems, stories, and tragedies gave him a position in the front rank of German writers of the time, and he was one of the early German enthusiasts for Shakespeare. He edited Schlegel s translation of Shake speare (9 vols., 1825-33), translated some of the plays himself, and began a great work on the English poet. He published also a German translation of Don Quixote 798