PREFACE

IN writing this book I have constantly had in mind, as one of my purposes, the desire to supply the need of a history of the sculpture of our own era that could be put into the hands of students for collateral reading outside of the lecture-room. This need I have experienced in my own classes, and I shall feel that my labor has not been in vain if the two volumes prove to be of any assistance to others in solving one of the many difficult problems that at the present day still confront teachers of the Fine Arts. For the realization of such a purpose it was found necessary to exceed the limits of an ordinary textbook in the length of the introductory discussions of each period and in the detailed treatment of the important sculptural movements and personalities. My intent has been not only to give a comprehensive idea of the various epochs, but also to produce a book of reference in which should be traced the evolution of the several national schools and of the secondary as well as the principal sculptors in those schools and in which their chief works should be catalogued and described. But while I have thus sought to aid the student and to provide even the expert with a convenient companion to his studies, I have never been consciously neglectful of the demands of the general interested public. I have endeavored to make the book readable. It is as elementary and as non-technical as was feasible without boring the serious student; all but a few indispensable notes have been avoided; and the preliminary summaries of each period and of the art of each country in that period have been the objects of hard and special effort. It is not only because I have not wished to prejudice the student at first in favor of one period or another, that I have attempted to approach each school and sculptor sympathetically. I have thought also of the general reader, who is likely to be unduly influenced by the quantity of books that are brought out at the present day with the aim of rehabilitating or exalting one age or artist above another. The writers of such books exaggerate the virtues of the subjects that happen to be their special interests, and emphasize the vices of rival eppchs or personalities. It has been my honest desire to eradicate any pljreferences th#1: I may have formed, to study each period with the same open mind, and to discover the absolute esthetic merits, as well as the faults, in whatever has at any time appealed to a large group of human beings....