Aube is another sculptor of acknowledged eminence who ranges himself
with M. Rodin in his opposition to the Institute. His figures of
"Bailly" and "Dante" are very fine, full of a most impressive dignity in
the _ensemble_, and marked by the most vigorous kind of modelling. One
may easily like his "Gambetta" less. But for years Rodin's only eminent
fellow sculptor was Dalou. Perhaps his protestantism has been less
pronounced than M. Rodin's. It was certainly long more successful in
winning both the connoisseur and the public. The state itself, which is
now and then even more conservative than the Institute, has charged him
with important works, and the Salon has given him its highest medal. And
he was thus recognized long before M. Rodin's works had risen out of the
turmoil of critical contention to their present envied if not cordially
approved eminence. But for being less energetic, less absorbed, less
intense than M. Rodin's, M. Dalou's enthusiasm for nature involves a
scarcely less uncompromising dislike of convention. He had no success at
the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Unlike Rodin, he entered those precincts and
worked long within them, but never sympathetically or felicitously. The
rigor of academic precept was from the first excessively distasteful to
his essentially and eminently romantic nature. He chafed incessantly.
The training doubtless stood him in good stead when he found himself
driven by hard necessity into commercial sculpture, into that class of
work which is on a very high plane for its kind in Paris, but for which
the manufacturer rather than the designer receives the credit. But he
probably felt no gratitude to it for this, persuaded that but for its
despotic prevalence there would have been a clearer field for his
spontaneous and agreeable effort to win distinction in. He greatly
preferred at this time the artistic anarchy of England, whither he
betook himself after the Commune--not altogether upon compulsion, but by
prudence perhaps; for like Rodin, his birth, his training, his
disposition, his ideas, have always been as liberal and popular in
politics as in art, and in France a man of any sincerity and dignity of
character has profound political convictions, even though his profession
be purely aesthetic. In England he was very successful both at the
Academy and with the amateurs of the aristocracy, of many of whom he
made portraits, besides finding ready purchasers among them for his
imaginative works