DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

Randolph Rogers, Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1859, photo #2 by Fred Hatt

Sculpture practice involves working in the round.  A traditional figurative sculpture studio has rotating platforms for the work and for the model, so both can be observed from all angles.  A sculptor must also consider the work from an engineering standpoint, analyzing weight distribution, compression, tension, torque and shear, especially when the work is large.  Looking at a figurative sculpture from different angles helps us understand the expressive qualities of a pose in three dimensions.  The human body is a dynamic structure, achieving stability through adaptive movement.  A sculptor gives the illusion of life by suggesting movement in a stable structure.

In this post I’ll look at two neoclassical works, both made in the middle of the 19th century, when the art of sculpture was still defined by the combination of technical excellence and emotional connection, before modernist innovation took the art in a thousand different directions.  Both of these pieces are based on literary sources.  Randolph Rogers’ Nydia illustrates a scene from Edward Bulwer-Lytton‘s best-selling 1834 historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii.  Carpeaux’ Ugolino is based on an episode from Dante’s Inferno.  Like Bulwer-Lytton’s turgid Victorian prose, this kind of artwork is completely out of fashion today, and from a modern perspective, both of these works are pure kitsch, but taken in their own context they’re beautiful and complex.  Both are on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I took these photographs.

Randolph Rogers, Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1859, photo #3 by Fred Hatt

Randolph Rogers was an american sculptor based in Rome.  This particular work was extremely popular in its time, and Rogers’ atelier made many commissioned copies of it.  It depicts a scene in which the blind girl Nydia has been separated from her friends during the eruption of the volcano that buried the ancient city of Pompeii.  The face shows a great deal of emotion while remaining youthful and innocent.  The side view above shows the forward lean of the pose.  The center of gravity of the body is above the right foot, so this is a pose that a model could hold at least briefly without external support (unlike the leaping poses in some later sculptures also seen in the sculpture court of the American Wing of the Met such as MacMonnies’ Bacchante and Infant Faun or Frishmuth’s The Vine).  But it has a strong forward lunge, with the upper body curving forward even more, giving a sense of urgency.

Randolph Rogers, Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1859, photo #4 by Fred Hatt

Much of the impression of movement is imparted by the swirling folds of Nydia’s dress.  Real fabric would not hold this form in a state of repose, so this makes the body appear to be in motion even though it is in a stable position.  The drapery creates a helical swirl around the body that makes Nydia appear to be turning towards the sound she hears in the distance.  The crossing of the arm to the ear and the drapery whipping around the walking stick reinforce this overall sense of twisting.

Randolph Rogers, Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1859, photo #5 by Fred Hatt

Randolph Rogers, Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1859, photo #1 by Fred Hatt

You might know Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux‘ famous group La Danse, which adorns the Paris Opera, a work whose exuberant orgiastic nudes caused scandal in their time.  His other famous work is Ugolino and His Sons, which imagines a story told in Dante’s Inferno.  Count Ugolino is imprisoned in a tower with his children and starving to death.  The sons beg the father to devour their bodies.  Even more than Nydia, this work exemplifies the 19th century style of marrying classical technique to emotionally extreme subject matter.  This can be partly attributed to the influence of the ancient Greek sculpture Laocoön and His Sons, with which Carpeaux’ piece bears many similarities.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1860, photo #1 by Fred Hatt

The pose of Ugolino is similar to Rodin’s iconic Thinker, a piece that embodies stillness and concentration.  Here, though, the pose is full of anguish and tension.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1860, photo #2 by Fred Hatt

The central figure of Ugolino is surrounded by four children.  Oddly, these figures all look to me like young adult male figures, varying in size but not proportion or development.  Even the youngest figure, lying at the left side of Ugolino’s feet, appears to be a boy’s head grafted onto a man’s torso.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1860, photo #3 by Fred Hatt

In the view above, note how the hands of the son wrapped around the father’s knee echo the form of Ugolino’s own large hands as he chews his fingers.  The hands and feet of the five figures, limp or tense, carry much of the emotional stress of the composition.  The toes gripping the toes, shown below, is particularly masterful, a gesture that creates an instinctive gripping within the viewer.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1860, photo #4 by Fred Hatt

Many sculptors have discovered the possibilities of enlarged, gnarled hands and feet to convey anguish.  Here it’s combined with a tormented facial expression.  Because the figure of Ugolino is larger than life size and elevated on a pedestal, his face is seen from a lower angle when approaching closer to the sculpture.  The expression is greatly intensified by viewing from below.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1860, photo #5 by Fred Hatt

Many compositions of this type, that have such a clear front and back, are displayed near a wall so it’s hard to see the back side.  At the Met, Ugolino is not against a wall, so one can get the very different view of the piece shown below.  From this side, spared the overbearing emotionalism, we can appreciate Carpeaux’ obsessive attention to anatomical detail and the way the differently sized figures are clustered.

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons, 1860, photo #6 by Fred Hatt