If a modern sculptor were to come and say, 'Very well, but where
can one find subjects for sculpture out of men who wear frock-coats
and chimney-pot hats?' I would tell him to go to the docks of a
great city and watch the men loading or unloading the stately
ships, working at wheel or windlass, hauling at rope or gangway. I
have never watched a man do anything useful who has not been
graceful at some moment of his labour: it is only the loafer and
the idle saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to the
artist as he is to himself. I would ask the sculptor to go with me
to any of your schools or universities, to the running ground and
gymnasium, to watch the young men start for a race, hurling quoit
or club, kneeling to tie their shoes before leaping, stepping from
the boat or bending to the oar, and to carve them; and when he was
weary of cities I would ask him to come to your fields and meadows
to watch the reaper with his sickle and the cattle-driver with
lifted lasso. For if a man cannot find the noblest motives for his
art in such simple daily things as a woman drawing water from the
well or a man leaning with his scythe, he will not find them
anywhere at all.
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