S

CULPTURE from mathematics" does not sound alluring. It sounds scarcely less bald and brutally materialistic to take refuge in Latin euphemism and say, "Ex mathematica sculptura." Happily, in the case before us, the fact belies the promise of the terms. In analyzing the work of R. Tait McKenzie, mathematical veracity and exactitude must be reckoned among the basic factors that materially contribute to the worth of many of the most forceful and most agreeable of his creations.

Impelled by conviction, he did not hesitate at the very outset of his sculptural career to hark back to a long-disused method of mechanical guidance employed by some of the old Greeks-to follow in his modeling, despite opposition and some ridicule, an exactly averaged set of measurements taken from life. The results have fully justified the decision he made sixteen years ago. It is not too much to say that this incorporation of composite measurements was a significant part of the

ideal that actuated Dr. McKenzie. Indeed, his devotion to exact measurements had much to do with the very inception of his modeling activity.

From the beginning he aimed to realize the esthetically perfect by working up to it from absolute physical accuracy. His preference for this self-imposed limitation of mathematical veracity in the portrayal of the human figure, rather than for the easy license of mere effect, was a matter of principle. But to reduce "theoretical figures to plastic fact," as Dr. McKenzie has successfully done, requires not only technical knowledge and manual dexterity, but also the vitalizing forces of imaginative vision and genius as well. To the end that we may clearly appreciate the character of his work and appraise its true value in the field of modern sculpture, we must take a brief survey of Dr. McKenzie's career and note the events that preceded and followed his initial endeavors in modeling.

Tait McKenzie was born in 1867 in Almonte, Ontario, Canada. When he was

a lad of nine, the death of his father, a minister of the Scottish Kirk, left the family in straitened circumstances, and thenceforward his own exertions were necessary to carry on his education. Like all good Like all good Scottish mothers, Mrs. McKenzie was intent that her three sons should win their college degrees. Heartened by her earnest wishes and efforts toward this object, and the sterling aid given by a devoted elder sister, as well as spurred on by native vigor and ambition, young McKenzie faithfully discharged the duties laid upon him, surmounted all obstacles, and made his way through McGill University with the characteristic determination and resourcefulness that have often stood him in good stead since those early years of adversity.

During one of his college vacations he eked out his finances by filling a double job on the Montreal docks, by day as a checker of stevedores, by night as a watchman. Two other watchmen, employed by different organizations, covered the same ground. At McKenzie's suggestion, a tripartite agreement was concluded by which each stood watch a third of the night while the other two got the rest necessary to keep them fit for their work by day. His keen interest in athletic

training even at this period of exacting duty led him at odd moments to practice jumping over the bales of cotton piled on the dock awaiting removal, a bit of exercise that afterward helped him to carry off several first prizes. The university authorities, however, soon opened the way to more lucrative and less burdensome means of livelihood.

In 1889 he took his bachelor's degree in arts, and thereupon entered the medical school, from which he was graduated in 1892. He was successively intern, ship's surgeon, assistant demonstrator in anatomy, demonstrator, and lecturer in anatomy at McGill University, and house physician to the Earl of Aberdeen, then Governor-General of Canada, while incidentally he built up a considerable private practice as a specialist in the physical treatment of deformities. In 1904 he became professor of physical therapy in the medical school and director of the Department of Physical Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

All this workaday chronicle of strenuous exertion and busy medical pursuits seems quite foreign to the fostering of any kind of art expression, even taken as an occasional diversion. As a matter of fact,

however, from his early boyhood McKenzie had always cherished a passion for drawing and painting. He had inherited from both parents their fine sense of appreciation. More than that, he had yielded to the promptings of esthetic instinct and encouraged it-an instinct that generations of his forebears had stoically repressed as an inconvenient distraction from the more serious concerns of the spirit. The tacit assumption, too often made, that the Scots as a race are deficient in artistic perception and creative ability is without real justification in fact. The silent testimony of the Scottish tartans alone is evidence enough of a refined popular taste in color. It is far truer to say that the fires of artistic inspiration have been banked for centuries under a thick covering of religious and philosophical preoccupation. Given half a chance and the slightest sign of encouragement, these slumbering fires have always been ready to spring into flame whenever the individual Scot of susceptible temperament was willing to hearken to the urgings of native aptitude and the creative art instinct pent within him.

So was it with Tait McKenzie. The impulse of latent hereditary genius flared up. All through his youth and early manhood he drew and painted at every leisure moment, thus acquiring by constant practice more and more facility with pencil and brush. By this experience, and through the chance suggestions and criticisms of artist associates, he gained no mean mastery of composition and line, as his sketches and water-colors attest; but in the art of modeling he was utterly without training, beyond the meager insight afforded by making plaster casts in his medical and surgical work and the casual bits of practical information picked up from sculptor friends,

whose studios he frequented whenever opportunity permitted.

In 1902, being then assistant demonstrator in anatomy in the Medical School of McGill University, and deeply interested in the types produced, or susceptible of being produced, by athletic training, Dr. McKenzie was minded to have constructed the model figure of a sprinter whose physical proportions should embody the averaged measurements of a given number of champion sprinters. For this theoretically perfect figure he got from Dr. Paul Phillips of Amherst the full measurements of eighty-nine such track athletes. After averaging their points, he successively tried to induce several sculptors to incoporate the results in a figure. which would thus prove "a visible table of facts for reference." The sculptors he

"BLIGHTY"

approached only laughed at him. Thereupon he set up his armatures, got his clay, and fell to work himself, unalterably determined to realize his purpose, cost what effort it might. Once the armatures collapsed because he did n't know how to set them up; a second time they stuck out from the clay when he began to model; the third attempt was successful. Up to this time the sum total of his modeling experience was the fashioning of four masques showing "The Progress of Fatigue" masques he has since corrected in the light of broader knowledge. The result of this more ambitious attempt, achieved, indeed, not without much travail of spirit and endless toil of correction, was "The Sprinter," a work the finished excellence of which at once proclaimed its maker a sculptor of parts.

This overnight genesis of a sculptor, this unforeseen advent of a new force in the field of modern plastic art, bursting into the light of day as suddenly as Athene springing full armed from the head of Zeus, astonished every one. Nor, perhaps, was Dr. McKenzie himself the least surprised at a revelation of powers of which hitherto he had been only imperfectly aware. Extraordinary and wellnigh incredible as this rapid development may seem, yet there is "The Sprinter," a work accomplished in very fact, a tangible realization of an ideal, a complete vindication of its author's theory, a work of art of which any sculptor might justly feel proud, and which few could hope to excel.

It is a stooping figure of a runner, one quarter life-size, with toes and fingers on the ground, ready set, with muscles tense, awaiting only the signal to flash into action. As a conception of plastic art expression and well-considered composition, its merit is more than reminiscent of the golden age of classic performance; as a faithful anatomical study, the marshaling of masses and the play of muscles are so instinct with verisimilitude to life that every lineament bespeaks the touch of a master anatomist. With eyes trained to see certain physical phenomena, the author saw them, and translated what he

saw into a permanent sculptured record. Therein alone lies one proof of genius.

The creation of this statuette was a logical evolution proceeding from given premises to an inevitable conclusion: from accurate anatomical knowledge and the firm purpose to give it visible expression, creative ambition, coupled with sensitive and sympathetic artistic perception, a steadfast will to conquer the difficulties of technic in an unaccustomed medium-all combining to produce a final incorporation of ideal and theory in plastic form. Scrupulous fidelity to exact measurement gave the work its intended scientific value; its esthetic merit must be ascribed to the author's felicitous sense of composition.

"The Sprinter" at once ranked Dr. McKenzie as a sculptor and committed him to a congenial sphere of activity, henceforth to be pursued as an issue of equal importance with his medical vocation, the two callings progressing pari passu and each helping the other. The first merely opened the door for the second, and the second equaled the first almost immediately; for this initial venture in serious plastic work in 1902 proved the foundation-stone of an international reputation. It was exhibited before the Society of American Artists in 1903, at the Royal Academy in the same year, at the Salon of 1904, and was eventually acquired by the Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge, England.

"The Athlete," Dr. McKenzie's next work in the round, which was finished and exhibited at the Salon of 1903, closely approximates the classic type in its facile. poise and the flowing symmetry of its proportions. In the figures that followed there may be discerned a departure from the conception that dominated the modeling of "The Athlete" and, to some extent, the treatment of "The Sprinter." The change may be set down partly, perhaps, to a ripening facility of technic, but chiefly to the growing conviction of an inherent difference between the Greek type of athlete, perpetuated by the Hellenic sculptors, and the modern American type, from which current inspiration is to be

drawn. Both types are clean-cut and trenchant, but the Greek contour is usually mellow and well rounded, with flowing lines, while the American type, whether considered in the individual instance or determined by composite measurements, is commonly more nervous and angular, one might almost say. in some cases rawboned and even gristly.

Coincident with the recognition of this difference, the aim that had fascinated Dr. McKenzie for a long time previously now passed quite beyond the experimental stage and took its direction toward a definite goal. To immortalize the American athlete was the ideal he now set before him. Here was a task of almost unlimited scope, rich in invitation and in opportunity of fulfil

ment.

Modern sentiment in favor of athletics and outdoor sports in general, and enthusiastic practice in accord with that

it is everywhere and always in evidence. Compared with our modern revival of the Olympic Games, held at London, Paris, St. Louis, and Stockholm, or compared even with our annual relay meets, the greatest of the old Greek athletic gatherings were parochial affairs. Naturally, therefore, the op

sentiment, have combined to bring about at fine physical type in our young manhood no whit inferior to the ancient Greek types. Schools and colleges throughout the length and breadth of the land all aid in multiplying that type, divers extra-collegiate organizations exist solely to maintain it in fitness, and countless athletic contests put a premium upon its attainment. Numerically, in various degrees of excellence, the type is tremendously strong;

portunities for observation and selection of fine developments are far ampler with us than among the Greeks. And now Dr. McKenzie

was about to become physical director in a great university where

every year between three thousand and four thousand students, many of them in the prime of physical fitness, would come directly under his supervision. Since 1904, when he arrived at the University of Pennsylvania, both in the gymnasium and on the track he has had "the nude almost as constantly before him as in Hellenic life." Nor has he failed to profit fully by his unsur

passed opportunity for the close study of muscular development and action in all their aspects.

Of a strongly analytical bent, and predisposed as he is to scientific exactitude, Dr. McKenzie's adherence to anatomically perfect types as models, and to anatomical verity in presenting them, as essential steps toward realizing his ideal, can be readily understood. But over and above that, his insistence upon anatomical verity