"Whatever may be the criticism of art upon her work, no one can deny
that she is above the average artist.
"But she is herself, as a woman, very much above herself in art. If
there came to any struggling artist in Rome the need of a friend,--and
of the thousand artists in Rome very few are successful,--Harriet Hosmer
was that friend.
"I knew her to stretch out a helping hand to an unfortunate artist, a
poor, uneducated, unattractive American, against whom the other
Americans in Rome shut their houses and their hearts. When the other
Americans turned from the unsuccessful artist, Harriet Hosmer reached
forth the helping hand.
"When Harriet Hosmer knew herself to be a sculptor, she knew also that
in all America was no school for her. She must leave home, she must live
where art could live. She might model her busts in the clay of her own
soil, but who should follow out in marble the delicate thought which the
clay expressed? The workmen of Massachusetts tended the looms, built the
railroads, and read the newspapers. The hard-handed men of Italy worked
in marble from the designs put before them; one copied the leaves which
the sculptor threw into the wreaths around the brows of his heroes;
another turned with his tool the folds of the drapery; another wrought
up the delicate tissues of the flesh; none of them dreamed of ideas:
they were copyists,--the very hand-work that her head needed.
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