SOME SNOW STATUARY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1904, 15 June 1892, Page 6

SOME SNOW STATUARY.

This winter a heavy fall of snow in Belgium gave the burgomaster of Brussels a " happy thought," and he at once set him self 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 transform the great park of Brussels into a vast salon 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 ; lent all their talent to create masterpieces out of the Bhining snow-marble piled at their feet. They picked and shaped and modelled with their hands as long aB 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 statues. The end gate at the corner of the Place des Palais and the Hue Royale was thrown open. The throng was so great that a frequent relay of boxes and chests was sent for to hold the steady stream of small coin.

Everywhere there were shouts of laughter, murmurs of admiration, cries of wonder, People went into ecstasies— on this hand at a delicious enpid from the snowshoveL of Knelier, on that hand a pair of giganticlaughing sphynxes by Dillens. There was an unaccountable crowd of boys around Dardenne's " Family of Bears " seated upon one of the park benches. The youngsters delighted too in the colossal " Snow Lions," the joint work of two sculptors, and in the "Sleeping Elephant," and in various other fantastic monsters. There were many beautiful and serious figures, also a very fine statue of Leopold 11,, of various public men, " Charity," a " Man at Prayer," a " Pair ot 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 and glittering. The park was thronged until the rain and sunshine spoiled the snow. It was agreed on all sides that nothing half so good htyl 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.