SNOW STATUARY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3118, 9 July 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

SNOW STATUARY.

Last winter a heavy fall of snow in Belgium gave the burgomaster of Brussels a " happy thought," and he at once set himself to carry it out. It was the " snow man" idea on a big scale. He invited the eminent artists of the capital to come out for a frolic and transfora the great park of Brussels into a vast saloon of winter sculpture. They arrived, and the gates were closed. It was great fun, precisely as if it were the Boston artists turned loose on the Common at the invitation of the mayor or the New Yorkers in Central Park. They caught the idea and went to work with a will ; spent all their talent to create masterpieces out of the shining snow marble piled at their feet. They picked and shaped and modelled with their hands as long as the snow was soft; after it hardened they used shovels, and boards and sticks and knives and shears—anything. They stuck in bits of coal for ] buttons and for eyes.

Meantime it had been announced throughout the city that the public would be admitted to the exhibition when all was ready for a small fee, four cents a person, the money to be given to the hospitals. In two days the sculptors had completed their statuos. The end gate at the Place des Palais and the Rue Ruyale was thrown open. The throng was so great that frequent relays of boxes and chests were sent for to hold the steady stream of small coin.

Everywhere were shouts of laughter, murm.irs of admiration, cries of wonder. People went into ecstasies—on this hand was a delicious cupid from the snowshovel of Kueller. on that hand a pair of gigantic laughing sphynxes by'Dillens. There was nn unaccountable crowd of bovs around DardeDno's " Family of Bears" seated upon one of the park benches. The youngsters delighted too iu the colossal "Snow Lions," the joint work of two sculptors, aud ia the '' Sleeping Elephant," and in various other fantastic monsters. There were many beautiful and serious figures, also a very fine statue of Leopold II of various public men, ''Charity," a " Man at Prayer," a ■' Pair of Lovers," etc.

When evening came the ■whole park was illuminated by myriads of great white paper lanterns. The effect was a spectacle of singular beauty. Among the dark tree trunks the snow statues stood out in sharp relief, white ana glittering. The park was throDged until the rain and sunshine spoiled the snow. It was agreed on all sides that nothing half so good had ever been done for the public entertainment, and that it was not at all a bad thing for a city to go on a frolic now and then.