ANDROMEDA, A STATUE IN BRONZE.

therefore, in English sculpture, the refinement of Greek art may be occasionally wanting, we are never chilledby the presence of a perfection which we know does not exist in nature: and thus it is satisfactory toobserve that, although occasionally defective in their embodiments of ideal force and grandeur, our nativesculptors rarely fail to delight us by a sweetness and elegance of outline and modelling, which constitute thegreat charm of their productions.

When we recur in memory to the great names by which English sculpture has been dignified, andthrough whose influence its school has been formed, we perceive among them, even at the outset, the elementsof remarkable originality. The genius of Evelyn, tutored as it had been, by long residence in Italy , to afashionable admiration of the frittered graces of the school of Bernini , could yet recognise the freedom and talentdisplayed in the earliest works of Grinling Gibbons . Although the scope of this artist’s efforts was, to a greatextent, confined to works of a cabinet character, we still find so marked and independent a style in everythingwhich he touched, that, so far as we have been enabled to observe, there does not exist in any other countrya series of productions at all assimilating to those of Gibbons .

Through the influence of Cibber the gods and goddesses of Rome were imported into the stiff and statelygardens of the middle and latter part of the seventeenth century. When, however, that artist emancipatedhimself from the traditions of Lower Roman art, he manifested a genius and power of expression which hasrarely been surpassed. In his two celebrated figures of Madness and Melancholy, he evinced a power whichwas never attained by his more skilful successor, Roubiliac . The latter, although perhaps seldom excelled inhandling the chisel, has a certain dramatic mannerism, which impairs the effect of his most ambitious composi-tions. Thus, although some portions of his celebrated monument to Mrs. Nightingale exhibit the mostconsummate skill, the whole of that work is characterised by a frantic action, which it would transcend thepower of the most accomplished artist to realise in a dignified manner. It was in his busts that the greatestsuccess of Roubiliac was attained.

Wilton, who occupied a prominent position in the profession after the middle of the eighteenth century,was rather a skilful manufacturer than an able artist. Facility rather than excellence stamps the character ofhis works.

In William Banks we perceive the germ of that poetic taste which was afterwards carried to suchremarkable perfection by the immortal Flaxman. Though by no means a prolific artist, still in his bas-reliefs,and in several of his statues, Banks displays a tenderness of fancy and a beauty of execution which werescarcely equalled by any contemporary sculptor in Europe . There can be no doubt that his exquisite monu-ment to the only daughter of Sir Brooke Boothby, in Ashbourne Church, Derbyshire , suggested those gracefulmonuments of a somewhat similar character which, at a later period, reflected so high a degree of credit onthe reputation of Stothard and of Chan trey.

It was, however, rather to the genius of Joseph Nollekens, than of Banks , that Chantrey was indebtedfor a model and an instructor. Few men understood better than Nollekens the conventionalities which werenecessary to insure a lively expression of vitality in his busts; and it would be difficult to find, among the

most celebrated works of antiquity, any representations of an iconic character more replete with life and

intelligence than the works of this artist.

In the more ornamental departments of the art John Bacon occupied an important position. Hisnumerous monuments to our English worthies display versatility of mind and a ready hand. It is rarely,however, that we can find in his works any marked departure from the traditions of commonplace. It wasunfortunate for Bacon that the allegorical style in sculpture was so popular during the latter part of theeighteenth century. Had the public taste led him to adopt a severer style of composition, it is probable thathis talents as a ready modeller might have produced more valuable memorials.

Notorious as the notices of Horace Walpole and of Allan Cunningham have made the reputation ofMrs. Darner, we fear that their pens have carved for her a more worthy and enduring monument than herown chisel could ever have produced. There is, however, manifested in her works, as in those of thevarious masters we have enumerated, a marked originality, which distinguishes English productions in

sculpture from those of the contemporary French and Italian schools.

In a succeeding article it will be our pleasing duty to trace still farther the developement of thisoriginality, in the works of the various artists whose precept and practice may be regarded as the professionof faith of the English sculptors of the present day.