Abroad in New York
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Madison Square is a remarkable museum of public sculpture of the last quarter of the 19th century. Several important men in our national and local history are commemorated in works by prominent American sculptors. One may well feel there is nothing better in a city.
The most important of the works is the Admiral Farragut Monument, in from 26th Street midway between Fifth and Madison Avenues. In the extensive and largely successful refurbishment (and partial redesign) of the park in the early 2000s by a public-private partnership that evolved into today’s Madison Square Park Conservancy, the Farragut Monument, which had been restored under the Municipal Art Society’s Adopt-a-Monument program, was isolated at the top of a broad plaza with a new reflecting pool. I am not a big reflecting-pool guy, and I think this new arrangement works best at Christmastime, when the conservancy places its lovely Christmas tree in the pool.
That said, the Farragut is now splendidly visible, as well it ought to be, given that it was the first public commission (dedicated in 1881) by one of America’s most important sculptors, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. I love the bronze statue of the admiral, especially his face, an image of self-possessed fortitude that bears comparison with Holbein’s portrait of Sir Thomas More in the Frick Collection.
As much as I love the Farragut Monument, I actually enjoy the statue of Roscoe Conkling more.This is at the opposite end of the park, just in from the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and 23rd Street, and rather obscured in the warm months by the throngs attracted to Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack. Conkling was one of those fascinating post-bellum politicians, a U.S. senator whose capabilities suggested he might have accomplished great things. But he placed his talents almost entirely in the service of perpetuating a spoils system of party patronage, while essentially leaving the country to be run by big industrialists.
The 1893 statue, by the outstanding John Quincy Adams Ward, has an esprit that is very rare in simple stand ing figures, which are too often leaden. Conkling isn’t leaden.Ward brilliantly handled the limbs, body mass, frock coat, and beard, in the sort of studied way that seems like it was casually dashed off. It’s one of the best statues in New York.
Best of all for me is Thomas Hastings and Paul Wayland Bartlett’s Eternal Light Monument, dedicated in 1923, a World War I memorial on the west side of the park just below the dog run (the proximity of which unfortunately dishonors the memorial). The monument consists of a granite plinth, inscribed with the names of significant battles. Surmounting it is an extraordinary bronze flagpole base, in which corner-bearing ram’s heads frame great swaths of stylized floral forms.
An essential delight of great cities is beautiful flagpole bases, a form of public art like no other that allows the artist the free elaboration of classical forms. Often overlooked (see, too, the beauties on the terrace of the New York Public Library), they repay scrutiny as much as any of our statues do.
