Page:Charles Grafly, Sculptor, an appreciatiative note, Trask, 1910.djvu/5

86 of Dr. Joseph Price, the surgeon, and of the former president of the Pennsylvania Academy, Edward H. Coates, to name a few at random, reveal him a master more subtle than Houdon, more sculpturesque than St. Gaudens, rivalling Rodin, at his best, in delicacy, and adding to the sensitive surface modeling of the great French master remarkably vigorous and powerfully truthful appreciation of the underlying logic of nature.

It is precisely this habit of going to the very bottom of things, of knowing and valuing the genesis of form which makes possible the surface qualities in his work which excite the admiration of the lay audience and the wonder of his professional brothers.

Like most master-workmen, he is swift in accomplishment upon occasion. His portrait bust, which won the Ward Prize of the National Sculpture Society two or three years ago, was begun and completed within the limits of a single day. Yet, at his best he works with the eager watchfulness of the earnest student and with the poet's profound disregard for time. If untrammeled by contract or promise, he rejoices in prolonged reaching for perfection and, holding himself always to a rising standard, he views his vision from increasing altitudes of beauty.

Amazing in virtuosity as are the works he has shown in the last few years, two busts even now in the hands of the bronze founder mark still a forward step. Portraits, both of men, these were vacation recreations. In them, to the truth of portraiture, the revelation of character, is added a quality unique. Paxton, the painter, Viereck, the entomologist, one dark, one light, are contrastingly presented with searching knowledge and consummate skill in the modeling of minute muscular individualities, where muscle and flesh are nervously alive. So vibrant are these busts with subtle differences that together they seem to set new limitations upon the artist's power to express color by form alone.

Much of his increasing accession of power Mr. Grafly himself attributes to a series of experiments so interesting in their possibilities and so happy in already accomplished result as to invite more comment than is here possible.

Spending his summers on Cape Ann entails for him necessarily an interest in fish. A casual desire to preserve record of an unusual catch led him one day to cast in plaster a specimen of unusual proportions. The result was interesting but unsatisfactory. The cast was lacking in qualities which aroused admiration in the original. Nor had these qualities to do with edible availability, though it is a family tradition that the original was later served as chowder. Somehow, had escaped the charm. More fish were caught and more were cast with increasing effort to hold in the plaster enticing flow of form. Such accessories as seaweed and rocks were introduced and the trial was