Less than a year and a half ago, our country suffered the loss of its best contemporary sculptor. He had hardly entered on middle life and, with superb work behind him, had given us every right to expect more important things from his later development. His past has recently been reviewed by a memorial exhibition, and now that his art is vividly present before the minds of many of us, we want to know more about his life and, perhaps especially, his death—which came by his own hand.
It is doubtful whether any eye is keen enough to see in the art of John B. Flannagan the elements which made his life what it was; and even less does his work show any cause for his bringing it to its tragic end. The man’s love of nature, of animals, of a certain type of art among the masters, may readily be deduced from his sculpture, but not the sufferings or the doubts which led him to suicide. Another matter of compelling interest, one which will need but little discussion, is his orienting our course toward a vision representative of the American continent as a whole. This is apparent from the moment that we think of numbers of his sculptures (monkeys, alligators, insects, etc.) beside those of the ancient artists of Mexico—or of Ohio.
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