Arts: Ugly Negroes

Herbert Ward was a wanderer in the heart of the Congo jungles. As he went, he collected things—anything that reflected the life and thought of primitive races. There were queer barbaric ornaments; shining, murderous weapons; primitive carvings. Also, he saw strange sights, saw battle and death, saw human beings stripped to aboriginal essentials of life and passion. For his own amusement, he liked to take a stub of pencil and stray sheet of paper and sketch roughly the things that interested him.

He came, finally, to London, loaded with souvenirs and memories of his travels. One ‘day, he started to model the head of a Negro such as those he had known in darkest Africa. In 1901, it was shown in the Paris Salon. It is now in the Luxembourg Museum.

Ward’s inruption into the world of sculpture was spectacular. Its result is a series of bronzes—fierce, elemental figures, full of the mystery and terror and power of the jungle. A warrior, armed and tense, snarling; a chieftain, peering at one from under lowering brow; a nude woman and two children fleeing some grim jungle peril; a sorcerer dancing a mad dance.

All are executed with a sure, skilful hand, with an ever-fresh touch, unhampered by schooling. Said Herbert Wafd: “But even if a man does ugly Negroes and knows what he is doing and manages to get his soul into it, there will some day come along the men who understand.”

Ward’s whole collection, bronzes included, has come into the possession of the Smithsonian Institution and may be seen at the National Museum, Washington. If one cannot visit them there, an interesting appreciation of his work by W. H. Holmes, illustrated by photographs, appeared in the September issue of Art and Archaeology.