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And yet how many common-place artists, who have consumed the most valuable portion of their lives in drawing from plaster-casts, call these insufferably vacant faces and forms genuine art, and affect to look down upon the master-spirits who have immortalised themselves by matchless portraits of the great men and beautiful women of their own times!"
Crawford and Powers did very well by the side of the other, disciples of the antique, their chief opposition coming from some indifferent plaster-casts of Thorwaldsen's Twelve Apostles. In point of popularity, Kiss's spirited melodramatic group of the Amazon and Tiger threw them all into the shade.
When you transfer these sketches, many times enlarged, to a broad surface, you will learn more than in years of copying plaster-casts. A man must have talent, courage and industry; everything else comes of its own accord, and thank Heaven, you're a lucky fellow!
I let my eyes glide over the curious apparatus, skeletons of animals, stuffed birds, globes, plaster-casts, with which his room was heaped full, until by chance my glance remained fixed on a picture which I had seen often enough before. But to-day, under the reflected red glow of the fire, it made an indescribable impression on me.
When you transfer these sketches, many times enlarged, to a broad surface, you will learn more than in years of copying plaster-casts. A man must have talent, courage and industry; everything else comes of its own accord, and thank Heaven, you're a lucky fellow!
The bitterness of this jest will only be understood by those who remember the deluge of engravings, screens, clocks, bronzes, and plaster-casts produced by the idea of the Soldier-laborer, a splendid image of Napoleon and his heroes, which afterwards made its appearance on the stage in vaudevilles.
Could you perhaps tell me why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to see it rising out of the plain?" "Some enemy has been talking to you...." A little red-haired boy from Lucca, carrying for sale a trayful of those detestable plaster-casts, then accosted me. Who bought such abominations, I inquired? Nobody. Business was bad. Bad? I could well believe it.
Where the lights are quite glaring and the photography is bad, many of the figures are as hard in their impact on the eye as lime-white plaster-casts, no matter what the clothing. There are several passages of this sort in the otherwise beautiful Enoch Arden, where the shipwrecked sailor is depicted on his desert island in the glaring sun. What materials should the photoplay figures suggest?
The studio in which they stood was littered with things strange to him; an easel, bearing a half-finished drawing; a black-polished cabinet; a table-desk against the window, on it slips of paper thrown carelessly about, the ink-well open, a file full of letters, a handful of cigarettes, a tray of tobacco ash, a bespattered palette, pens, coloured crayons, a medley of things; a revolving office chair with a worn crimson footrug before it; a many-shelved glass case against the blank wall, crammed to overflowing with shells and coral and strange grasses, with specimens of ore, with Chinese carvings, with curious lacquer-work; a large brass-bound portfolio stand; on the painted walls plaster-casts of hands and arms and feet, boxing gloves, fencing foils, a glaring tiger's head, a group of photographs; in the corner, a suit of antique armour stood sentinel over a heap of dumb-bells and Indian clubs.
"Ah!" replied the other, "she is a lover of the fine arts, as you well know. Only think! at the last exhibition she went with her brother into the great hall where all the plaster-casts stand, and looked at them! the Hercules, as well as the other indecent figures! they were excellent, she said. That is being so natural; otherwise she is a nice girl." "It is a pity she is a little awry."
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