good lines, and did not for a moment attempt to repress or warp his ideas. In Rome the frigid influences predominating did the young sculptor no harm. The classical tradition fertilized his taste, but it did not lure him into imitation of classical forms. The style which SaintGaudens brought back with him on his return to this country was remarkable for its blending of polish with freedom. Here was an American who could remain long in contact with the forces of European art and only take from them that which suited him.

The special note of the medallions which are conspicuous among his first productions is one of delicacy, and in the character of that delicacy lies a source of strength which was from first to last of immense service to SaintGaudens. It is a delicacy that leaves the door open, so to say, for the raciest realistic impression. The medallions of the modern French school are apt to be over-polished. Even so brilliant a master as Chaplain could not quite divest himself of the notion that a small work in low relief must necessarily have something of the character of a minted coin, with no single detail stated at less than its highest value. He and other Frenchmen strangely misread the lesson of the Italian Renaissance, which is that the complicated web of super-subtle light and shade, legitimate in a large Madonna by Mino, say, is better ex

changed, in a medallion, for the strong simplicity of those medals in which Pisano and his followers proved that art on a small scale need not be minute in feeling. There is a medallion of Bastien-Lepage by Saint-Gaudens, made just after the brilliant young Frenchman had finished his "Joan of Arc," in which the sculptor ranks himself with the older workers in this province.

The touch is at once caressing and bold; nothing essential is slurred, but neither is anything unduly emphasized. In this, and in certain medallions of other artists who were comrades of his in Paris, Frank Millet, Maitland Armstrong, and George W. Maynard, the sculptor makes us feel that in the manipulation of surface he can be as subtle as anybody, but has no intention of sacrificing vitality to the nuance. On the contrary, he delights in giving a clear, even forcible, impression of the personality before him. It is portraiture for the sake of truth and beauty, not for the sake of technique. He was faithful to the same principle in other works of a similar character which he executed in later years, steadily gaining in strength, but never losing the spontaneity which be longs to his earliest essays. His work in the round is, in a sense, more important; but his medallions alone would serve to make him known as a great artist. In them, and `in his upright or oblong panels in low relief, he allowed

BASTIEN LEPAGE

Modelled in Paris about 1879. It was done immediately after Bastien Lepage had finished painting his "Joan of Arc." He made, in exchange, a sketch of Saint-Gaudens.