Candid Masks

When the Marquis de Lafayette paid his final visit to the U. S. in 1825, the hawk-nosed old hero was persuaded to sit for a new type of life mask, the invention of a young New York sculptor named John Henri Isaac Browere. From the mask Sculptor Browere made a widely .acclaimed bust. That gave him a grand idea: do the same by every American great and near great, get Congress to house his busts in a national gallery. Till he died of cholera nine years later, Browere worked busily toward his goal. But Congress never, built the gallery and Browere never got the money to turn his plasters to bronze. Discouraged, he left deathbed instructions that his busts should be stored for 40 years, until the nation learned to appreciate them. Ever since, with brief intervals, they have been weathering in a Catskill barn.

Last week, neatly dusted off, 20 of Sculptor Browere's busts were exhibited in Manhattan's plushy Knoedler Galleries. Their realism predates the candid camera by a century. Browere's exact method died with his son Alburtus, differed markedly from the usual life mask's heavy layer of plaster or clay applied while the subject is flat on his back. Like a modern lace-pack beauty treatment, it consisted of a series of light, quick-drying layers that could be put on while the subject sat at his ease. Thus beplastered for posterity were Thomas Jefferson's stern idealism, the Othello glare of youthful Tragedian Edwin Forrest (Orson Welles of his day), Dolly Madison's smile, the pinched, toothless jaws of 90-year-old John Adams, many another.

Naval Hero David Porter thought the process gave "a sensation both harmless and agreeable, producing a pleasant glow or heat somewhat similar to that which is felt on entering a warm bath." Less battle-hardened sitters found it as painful as primitive dentistry. "I was taken in by Browere," wrote Jefferson to Madison. "He suffered the plaster to get so dry that separation became difficult & even dangerous. He was obliged to use freely the mallet & chisel to break it into pieces and get off a piece at a time. These thumps of the mallet would have been sensible almost to a loggerhead."

This week Sculptor Browere's busts went museumwards at last. Financier Stephen C. Clark (who has spent a raft of his Singer sewing machine money on art) bought all 20, presented them to the New York State Historical Association. In a special "Hall of Life Masks" at the Association's museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., they will go on display next June, as the first event in Cooperstown's sesquicentennial celebration of its most famed native son, James Fenimore Cooper--one contemporary whose bust Browere never got round to making.

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