VALENTINE’S LEE.
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HIS STUDIO CROWDED WITH ADMIRING VISITORS.
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Origin, Progress, and Completion of the Great Work.
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The announcement that Valentine’s studio would be opened for the reception of visitors on yesterday excited great interest, and attracted a constant stream of visitors from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. The Governor, a large number of members of the Legislature, judges, clergymen, old soldiers, representatives of all the professions, our solid business-men, and visitors from a distance mingled with the ladies, and the studio was crowded during the whole day.
The room had been very tastefully arranged, and was adorned by the various works of our young artist, which were greatly admired. But, of course, the chief attraction was the marble, recumbent figure of Lee, which has just been completed.
ORIGIN OF THE MONUMENT.
The idea of a monument over the grave of Lee originated the very day on which he died at a meeting of such of his old soldiers as were able to gather in Lexington to pay their tribute to his honored memory. A committee was appointed, a plan of organization adopted, and a short time afterwards a charter was obtained under the name of “Lee Memorial Association.” The committee consulted with Mrs. Lee, who cordially approved of their plans, and without hesitation suggested Mr. Edward V. Valentine as the artist to undertake the work.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF MR. VALENTINE.
The artist was fitly chosen. A Virginian by birth, education, and sympathies, he had received just the preparation needed to qualify him for the great work of putting into the life-speaking marble the form of the great Virginia soldier.
Edward Virginius Valentine was born in Richmond on the 12th of November, 1838, and was reared amid the happy influences of the ante-bellum days in our fair city. At a very early age he exhibited decided taste and talent for the fine arts, and studied under Oswalt Heinrich, and Hubard, who was widely known through his beautiful copies in bronze of Houdon’s Washington, and whose death from an explosion of fulminating powder which he was engaged in manufacturing for the Confederate Government was so deeply lamented.
In 1859 Mr. Valentine went to Europe to complete his studies. He studied for a year under Couture at Paris, went to Florence and took a course of private instruction in drawing under Banaiuli, lingered for a time among the principal galleries in Italy, and then crossed the Alps into Germany for the purpose of entering the studio of Rietschel. Disappointed in the latter purpose by the death of this great artist, our enthusiastic young student finally succeeded in gaining a place, in the autumn of 1861, in the studio of the great Berlin artist Kiss, where he remained for four years (taking also a course of drawing with Holbein, private lessons in art-history under Professor Eggers, and other studies bearing upon his art), and became a great favorite with his distinguished master.
In 1865 he returned home, and resisting tempting offers to locate in New York, he established himself in his native city.
His special talent for the portrait department of sculpture—in which he had distinguished himself abroad—found appropriate vent in modelling busts of Davis, Beauregard, Mosby, Stuart, Jackson, Maury, Mahone, Wise, and other distinguished Confederates, while his Burns, “Nation’s Ward,” “Knowledge is Power,” “Uncle Henry,” Washington in Masonic regalia, &c., have given him a reputation as wide as the continent.
In June, 1870, just three months before General Lee’s death, Valentine when to Lexington, and succeeded in making a bust of him which was pronounced by the most competent critics (including Mrs. Lee) a striking likeness and a well-nigh perfect model. (This bust was made from actual measurements, which the General kindly permitted the artist to make, and these were extended also to his entire person, so that when hypercritical visitors object to the size of any particular part of his figure the artist has only to produce his original measurements, about which there can be no mistake.)
The committee did not hesitate, therefore, to commit to Virginia’s gifted young sculptor the work of putting into marble his beautiful conception of the sarcophagus, and he has worked on it from time to time until it is now completed.
THE MARBLE.
The committee waited for a long time on an effort to obtain a suitable block of Virginia marble from which to cut the figure, but failing to secure one they finally acted on the suggestion of one of their number that, “though found in the hills of Vermont, the marble was not made by the manufacturers of wooden nutmegs, but was placed there by the God whom Lee served so devoutly, and might therefore be appropriately selected to deck his tomb.” The block has proven to be a splendid one, not a single flaw having been found in any part of it, and the artist and the experienced workman who has done the cutting do not hesitate to pronounce it equal to any piece of Italian marble they have ever seen, and a conclusive demonstration of the fact that we need not cross the ocean for our finest varieties of statuary marble.
THE CUTTING
was begun in October last, and has been done by Mr. Caspar Burberl, a native of Bohemia, who has had twenty years’ experience in New York, and has proven himself a most skilful workman. The curiosity of visitors as to how the plaster model can be so exactly reproduced in the marble is answered by the statement that a beautiful piece of machinery called the “pointing machine” measures off the work, so that it really requires only mechanical skill to put the counterpart of the plaster into the marble. But it requires a very skilful workman, and he has thus been found in Mr. Buberl, as the following letter will attest:
809 LEIGH STREET, RICHMOND, VA.,
March 25th, 1875.
Dear Sir,—The skill, accuracy, and feeling with which you have reproduced my figure of General Lee in marble gives me pleasure and satisfaction.
With kind wishes for your future success in you profession, I am
Very respectfully yours,
EEDWARD V. VALENTINE.
To Mr. Caspar Buberl.
THE COMPLETED FIGURE.
The completed figure is a life-size representation of General Lee reposing upon a couch. The figure and couch are of one piece of exquisitely white marble, unmarred by a flaw and equal to the finest Parian. The artist represents the hero dressed in Confederate uniform, and lying in calm, half-sleeping, half-conscious repose. The right arm is thrown across the breast, while the left lies by his side and rests lightly upon his sword. In selecting a recumbent posture Mr. Valentine had the sanction of such renowned works of art as Rauch’s King William and Queen Louise, of Prussia; Hoffgarden’s Duchess of Nassau at Wiesebaden, and Kiss’s Countess Henekel von Donnersmark.
The faithfulness of the portrait is most remarkable. All who knew the General in civil or military life are struck with the exactness of the likeness, and its suggestiveness of the mental and moral characteristics of the subject. The attitude is full of ease. There is a most noticeable absence of the stiffness and hardness which are thought by some to be inseparable from sculpture, and which are oppressive in some of the figures in Westminster Abbey and St. Denis. Every line and feature glow with truth, purity, and expressiveness. While so much is realized, to the imagination is suggested that matchless, unapproachable elevation which is ascribed preeminently to our great leader.
In minute attention to details the modest genius of Mr. Valentine shines forth. The folds and texture of the drapery, the veins of the hand, the delicate tracery in the carving of the sword and feathers, show exquisite skill and taste. The lines shade into each other so softly as to elude detection.
It is difficult to strike a proper mean when writing of the genius and work of a citizen of whom Virginia is so proud, but what we have known to be a dream of our fellow-citizen is now a creation—an embodied, immortal fact. Mr. Valentine is full of invention and poetry, has original creative power, is not imprisoned in his conceptions by what is ancient, and his present triumph is only the prophecy and assurance of grander successes.
It is understood that the monument can be seen again during to-morrow and for several days before it is boxed up and sent to Lexington.
The Committee of the “Lee Memorial Association” there are preparing to construct for its reception a beautiful
MAUSOLEUM,
which will show it to the greatest advantage. Surely Richmond, Va., and the whole South will esteem it a privilege to aid in the completion of this noble work.
