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<b>THOMAS-SOYER, MME. MATHILDE.</b> Honorable mention, 1880; third-class medal, 1881; bronze medal, Exposition, 1889. Born at Troyes, 1859. Pupil of Chapu and Cain.
At this juncture the British fleet sailed northwards, capturing Amoy and Ningpo, and occupying the island of Chusan. The further capture of Chapu, where munitions of war in huge quantities were destroyed, was followed by similar successes at Shanghai and Chinkiang.
Chapu, who died a year or two ago, is perhaps the only eminent sculptor of the time whose inspiration is clearly the antique, and when I add that his work appears to me for this reason none the less original, it will be immediately perceived that I share imperfectly the French objection to the antique.
After graduating from the State Normal School of Massachusetts, he went to Paris, where he studied under Chapu of the Julian Academy, and two years under Falguiere of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He came home and soon answered a call to Cornell, where he remained three years. Then three years were spent in teaching art at the Chicago Art Institute.
Born at Gefle, Sweden. Pupil of the Technical School, Stockholm, and of H. Chapu, A. Mercie, and D. Puech at Paris. Among the works of this artist are "Mama!" a statue in marble; "Loké," a statue; "Dans les Vagues," a marble bust; "Funeral Monument," in bronze, in Gefle, Sweden; and a great number of portrait busts and various subjects in bas-relief.
Everywhere else of great distinction even in the execution of so perfunctory a task as a commission for a figure of "Mechanical Art" in the Tribunal de Commerce at the great Triennial Exposition of 1883 Chapu was simply insignificant.
M. Rodin's work, especially, is so novel that one's first impression in its presence is of its implied criticism of the Institute. One thinks first of its attitude, its point of view, its end, aim, and means, and of the utter contrast of these with those of the accepted contemporary masters in his art of Dubois and Chapu, Mercié and Saint-Marceaux.
The reader will say at once here that I am cavilling at M. Dubois for what I praised in Chapu. But let us distinguish. The two artists belong to wholly different categories. Chapu's inspiration is the antique spirit. M. Dubois, is, like all academic French sculptors, except Chapu indeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured of the Renaissance.
When one calls an artist or a work Greek, this is what is really meant; it is the sense in which Raphael is Greek. Chapu is Greek in this way, and thus individualized among his contemporaries, not only by having a different inspiration from them, but by depending for his interest on no convention fixed or fleeting and on no indirect support of accentuated personal characteristics.
It is admitted that he is a man of talent, but that he is not considered a great sculptor in his own country is equally beyond doubt. He would not be compared, for instance, with such men as Chapu, Dubois, Falguiere, Clesinger, Mercie, Fremiet, men who stand in the front rank of their profession. The list of his works is not long.
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