Art: Lincoln Nude

Abraham Lincoln in the nude appeared last week as a statuette at the Ainslie Galleries, Manhattan. Rough blobs of bronze compose a gaunt, strong figure of a rail splitter leaning on the haft of his axe, his head thrown backward in revery. The sculptor is Merton Clivette.

Said Galleryman George H. Ainslie: “Some will condemn it on the ground that it is undraped . . . that is unessential criticism . . . only by stripping the figure could the artist tell the story he has told … it expresses the inward idealism of the emancipator in terms of the physical —in the torso emaciated by labor but muscularly overdeveloped by the same toil. The crossed feet seem to grow out of the earth and the strange pose, at once naïve and striking, suggests ancient statues of Christ.”