The English sculptors who are claiming attention to-day are men influenced largely by the spirit of "modernity." They are giving us works which appeal to our sentiment as well as to our sense of beauty. Look, for instance, at the charming group by Mr. Alfred Gilbert, R.A., which is illustrated on page 345. One wishes that the original could be placed in position where people could see it every day. It is a simple subject, but what greater lesson can be enforced upon us than that of the holiness and purity of a mother's love and solicitude for her child? There is in one of the public squares of Paris a group very similar to this by Delaplanche. A mother is again giving her child its first lesson in reading. Tender and pure in sentiment, it is an object lesson to all who behold it.
The nobleness and dignity of labour provide our sculptors with a manifold variety of subjects, but there are not many English artists who have availed themselves of it. Among these, however, is the distinguished Royal Academician, Mr. Hamo Thornycroft. "The Sower Scattering Seed" is but the representation of an English farm "hand," but it would be difficult to find a piece of work among English sculptures to excel it in grace and beauty of line. The artist has executed another work of "A Mower"--again an English farm-labourer, leaning on his scythe--which is another example of his skill in the adaptation of a subject which can be understood and appreciated by every man, down to him who actually wields the scythe.
Biblical subjects have found exponents in sculpture to a very large extent from the days of the Renaissance downwards. The old Italians decorated their churches with such to almost as great an extent as the painters of their time did; and many sculptors to-day find their inspiration in Scripture in like manner. We have chosen some for illustration in this paper--two by living artists, and one by Warrington Woods, a sculptor who lived some years ago, when "classic" style and subject were deemed necessary by the workers in the sculpturesque arts. "The Sisters of Bethany" is infected by this spirit, but is, nevertheless, pleasing to a certain extent. The "Faith" of Mr. Alfred Drury, is, on the other hand, distinctly pictorial and frankly illustrative of the subject. The "St. John the Baptist," by Mr. Goscombe John, another of our rising sculptors, is a beautiful figure which belongs to the Marquis of Bute, and stands in the centre of a fountain basin in the garden of St. John's Lodge, Regent's Park.