In the context of Pennsylvania State Capitol sculpture groups, discuss the 1908 Boston exhibition of the History.
Five heroic-size plaster sculptures for the Pennsylvania Capitol groups – The Prodigal Son, Brothers, The Young Parents, Kneeling Youth, Forsaken Mother – were part of an exhibition of Barnard's work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in October–November 1908. Also exhibited were his plaster scale models of the complete sculpture groups. In a review in The International Studio, critic J. Nilsen Laurvik compared Barnard to Auguste Rodin and the recently deceased Augustus Saint-Gaudens, concluding: "[H]e is the one man most needed in the art life of our country; his work is like an invigorating breath of fresh sea air that must surely have its influence in giving a more vital and higher meaning to both life and art. ... [H]e is a unique personality in the art life of our country and one of the few truly great sculptors of our time." Critic William Howe Downes also enthusiastically praised his work:Wherever Mr. Barnard touches humanity in his work, it is with the desire and the power to glorify it, to show its greatness, to bring out all that is heroic and tender and lovable in it. Nothing is more certain than that this is understood, that the appeal has met with an instant response.
The understanding thus established between the artist and his public is the more to be welcomed because, up to a quite recent period, it had been felt by many observers that the modern school of sculpture was a hollow sort of survival, without much reason for being. Saint-Gaudens did much to modify such an impression in this country by uniting in a serious and touching way the strands of national consciousness with aesthetic sensibility. It remained for Mr. Barnard to create a still more universal artistic language for still more universal ideas, and to place before us the nude human being transformed into new shapes of undying beauty and majesty.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens scale model Auguste Rodin Museum of Fine Arts, Boston