Lorado Taft: sculptor

              1924

Figure

LORADO TAFT Sculptor

Mr. Taft at work in his studio


REDRATH

Studio Photo by Courtesy of Clara Sipprell



LORADO TAFT—LECTURES ON SCULPTURAL ART
LORADO TAFT was born at Elmwood, Ill., in 1860.  He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, at Urbana, where his father was professor of Geology.  His interest in sculpture began when, a boy of thirteen, he was permitted to help a Belgium plaster-worker repair a collection of plaster casts which had reached the University of Illinois badly damaged in transit.  In 1880, after his graduation from the University, Mr. Taft went to Paris where he studied for five years in the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  Since 1885 he has resided in Chicago, with occasional trips to Europe, including Italy and Greece.

He has been connected with the Art Institute of Chicago for more than thirty years, as instructor in modeling and as lecturer.  He is professorial lecturer on the History of Art at the University of Chicago and non-resident professor of Art at the University of Illinois.  He is a member of the National Sculpture Society, of the National Academy, of the American Institute of Arts and Letters, an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects and is one of the Board of Art Advisors for the state of Illinois.  He received a silver medal at Buffalo in 1901, and a gold medal at the exposition in St. Louis, in 1904.

Mr. Taft's recent professional works include: The Blind, a group inspired by Maeterlinck's drama of the same name; the Columbus Memorial Fountain, at Washington, D. C.; the Solitude of the Soul, at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Fountain of the Great Lakes, adjoining; the Washington Monument, at Seattle, Wash.; Blackhawk and Ogle County Soldiers' Memorial, at Oregon, Ill.; the Thatcher Memorial Fountain, at Denver, Colo., and—recently set up—the vast Fountain of Time, on the Midway Plaisance, Chicago.

As an author, Mr. Taft has published a History of American Sculpture, and another work, six lectures on Recent Tendencies in Sculpture, is ready for the press.  Also, in 1919, he lectured for six months to members of the A. E. F. at Beaune and Bellevue, France.


MR. TAFT'S FOUNTAIN OF TIME, ON THE MIDWAY, CHICAGO


Mr. Taft's Chicago studio is situated on the Midway, in the immediate vicinity of the University of Chicago.  His summer residence and studio are on the Rock River bluffs, near Oregon, Ill., where for years, he has been the head of an artists' camp and where he has erected his colossal statue of Blackhawk, in commemoration of the former inhabitants of the beautiful Rock River valley.

Mr. Taft is an easy and fluent speaker, full of spontaneity, alive with humor, interesting his audience as he carries them through an evening of the highest educational value.

His lectures, as shown from the accompanying synopsis, are full of information and thoroughly illustrated either by actual processes of modeling or by the stereopticon.  In the first lecture noted below an artist's studio is reproduced upon the stage.


Lecture I
A GLIMPSE OF A SCULPTOR'S STUDIO
or How Statues are Made
The materials—clay, plaster, marble, bronze.  The tools.  Building up a bust from life.  The problem of features, proportion and expression.  The big skull.  The muscular mask.  Rapid changes in the shape of the head.  The portrait of the Princess of Lamballe.  From youth to old age, with occasional digressions.  Building up a figure; pose and proportions.  Expression in lines.  Draping a statue.  The plaster cast.  Piece molds and lost molds.  Chopping out a cast.  The marble.  The pointing instrument.  Trials and perplexities of marble cutting.  Triumphs of the sculptor's art.  Illustrated fully at each step by the actual process upon the stage.



Lecture II
AMERICAN SCULPTORS AND SCULPTURE
From Greenough, Powers and Crawford to Ward, St. Gaudens, French, MacMonnies, Bartlett, Barnard and the younger men.  With 150 beautiful illustrations of their representative works.





Lorado Taft's Fountain of Time
(From the Chicago Evening Post)
It is not many months less than a decade since Mr. Taft first exhibited a small model which was to be part of the larger sculptural scheme of decoration for the Midway in the vicinity of the University of Chicago.  Under the auspices of the Ferguson fund for sculpture he was given an opportunity to execute The Fountain of Time on a colossal scale in plaster, the work taking a period of years.  Then came the war and its interruptions, and Mr. Taft went abroad for six months, and finally in spite of labor difficulties the gigantic plaster model arches to the west of a basin, leaving to the imagination the accessories of the larger scheme.  Whether it will be cast in bronze or executed in marble as a permanent work will depend on its acceptance by the public.

The sculptured procession of over four score colossal figures, men, women and children, appears to move across an arching bridge, which rises from surging waters at the right and curves to meet engulfing waves at the left.  The figures representing humanity lift themselves bewildered from the unknown sea to gain the bridge and having crossed it shrink aghast at the awful depths and mystery before them.  The groups of the procession symbolize society in the family, the church, education, the arts, peace and war, the latter represented by a conqueror and his warriors dominating the arch and giving height to the design.  The details are carefully considered, every figure and every group being dramatic and vital in itself and in its relation to the entire scheme.  The female figures are hauntingly lovely with a lofty dignity of one possessed with sibylline powers.  The male figures are noble and typify strength, while representing various ideals of life, and graceful children, from infancy to later years, impart a lighter poetry to the composition.

The reverse side of the procession is fully as interesting as the view facing the fountain.  It is likely Mr. Taft can tell anecdotes of certain heads and portraits.  It is known that the three hooded young women on the front are in a sense portraits of the three Misses Taft, and the standing figure of the scupltor appears in a group at the back.  This is following a precedent set by the masters of sculpture of long ago, who appeared in their own compositions.

The variety of plane surfaces in the sculptured monument permits a play of light and shadow.  It is interesting to note the accents and to discover the rhythmic lines having their source in the mighty curving waves at the right, moving across the design to its completion at the left.

As a whole the composition is austerely concentrated and in being so emphasizes the dread message that humanity emerges from mystery and crossing the span of existence descends into mystery.  Were the figures wider-spaced and the movement in a lighter vein, the symbolism of the procession would have been less significant.



A TYPICAL PRESS COMMENT
(By Esther Griffin White in the Richmond Item, Richmond, Ind.)
Mr. Taft made a profound impression on his hearers last evening with his simplicity, his humanity, his clear exposition of the sculptor's art, his kindly humor and his serene philosophy expressed through his running commentary as he moulded and shaped his clay into human presentment. … To have a man like this, appear before a mixed audience as was that of last night and, in simple language with elemental illustrations explain his art so that little children understood him was an event to be remembered.