Page:Woman in Art.djvu/282

WOMAN IN ART of study. "One cannot emphasize too strongly the inestimable value of constant study of the classic in the arts."

"During three winters in New York I studied dissection and anatomy. My work under Rodin in Paris consisted chiefly in the study of marble carving and modeling of innumerable clay studies and compositions for groups. He also insisted upon my drawing from models at least two or three hours daily. His keen admiration for all the beauty of what he called 'La Nature de Dieu' drove him to making thousands of drawings, a few dozen of which are on exhibition in his museum. Sculpture as a profession is not by nature well suited to a woman's life. The hours of work are naturally no longer than those of other arts, but the sculptor does his work standing, climbing ladders, or banging away pretty strenuously with mallet and chisel. The physical labor of building a really strong armature of iron and wire and wood, then the manipulation of clay and construction of a figure demands a rather unusual amount of strength and fitness. If the sculptor carries through his work into the realms of stone, marble or wood carving, this demands far more patience and dogged perseverance than is generally supposed to be necessary.

"In the art of sculpture, constant study of forms and the practice of committing these forms to memory is certainly the main road to progress. Every sculptor should work a certain amount in all materials, for each has its own limitations and demands. The treatment, for example, of a figure a foot high would never be adequate for a life-size one, and often the faults of the latter are mechanically enlarged to a colossal proportion by machinery and the final monument suffers from just this lack of appropriate treatment for its proportion, or out-door silhouette and setting. Bronze demands another treatment entirely from stone."

Only last winter Miss Hoffman was in Jugo-Slavia where she visited the Academy of Arts in Zagreb directed by Ivan Mestrovic, and was very much struck by the thorough and practical methods enforced there. Her own relation of it throws direct light on the sculptural branch of art, that seems worth while to an appreciation of a finished production, in whatever medium.

"When a student graduates from this academy after four or five years he must be able to draw from life and classic casts, and from memory, enlarge or reduce drawings or clay models, model and cast his own work in plaster, carve in wood or stone, be equipped to understand all the processes 222