No
accurate survey has been made of his abilities, no definite plan of
his artist-nature. Often a place has been demanded for his name in the
history of Art, and the first place too, because of his fine frank eye,
or the simplicity of his manners,--because his workmen cut the chain of
the Greek slave out of one piece of stone, or the marble of the statue
itself had no spot as big as a pin-head,--because he himself chooses to
rasp and scrape plaster, rather than model in plastic clay,--because he
tinkered up the "infernal regions" of the Cincinnati Museum years ago,
or spends his time now in making perforating-machines and perforated
files; in fine, for _any_ reason rather than for the right legitimate
one of artistic merit, they have demanded room for their favorite.
Even those who look deeper than this, appreciating Mr. Powers as
a gentleman, an ingenious mechanic, and a skillful manipulator in
sculpture, have been content or constrained to urge his claims to
attention upon false considerations. We have heard it gravely remarked,
as a matter of astonishment, that there were individuals--refined men,
apparently--who looked upon the Venus de' Medici as a finer work than
the Greek Slave.
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