met with universal approval. Although the polychromatic
work of the Renaissance, for example, may keep its place, it is
held to clash with the idea of sculptural art; for though there
is no absolute approach to imitation, there is a very strong
suggestion of it. The use of a variety of marbles and metals,
or other materials, such as has been increasingly adopted, does
not offend in the same measure, as the result is purely formal.
Yet, in the final result, the work becomes not so much sculpture
broadly seen, as an “object of art,” amiably imagined and
delicately wrought.
Indeed, the sculptor has been greatly reinforced by the artificer in metal, enamel, and the like. But the revival of metal-work, cut, beaten, and twisted, however fine in itself, does not help sculpture forward very much. It may even keep it back; for, popular a.nd beautiful as it is, it really tends to divert the attention from form to design, and from light and shade, with planes, to ingenuity, in pleasing lines—a very beautiful and elevated art, but not sculpture. As an adjunct, it may be extremely valuable in the hands of a fine artist who does not mistake the mere wriggles and doubling which are the mark of the more extravagant phase of the so-called “New Art” for harmonious “line.” But it must always suggest the man with the anvil, shears, and pincers, rather than the man with the clay and the chisel. It is mainly to Alfred Gilbert that is due the delightful revival of metal-work in its finest form wedded to sculpture, with the introduction of marbles, gems, and so forth, felicitous and elegant in invention and ornament, and so excellent in design and taste that in his hands, at least, it is subservient to the monumental character of his sculpture.
The first effectual rebellion against the Classic, and the birth of Individualism, dates back to Alfred Stevens. The picturesque fancy of the Frenchman Roubiliac (who practised for many years in England), with his theatrical arrangement and skilful technique, inherited from his master. Coustou, had left little mark on the Englishmen of his day. They went on, for the most part, with their pseudo-classic tradition, which F laxman carried to the highest point. But until Stevens, few in England thought of instilling real life andblood and English thought and feeling into the clay and marble. It was not only life that Stevens realized, but dignity, nobility of form, and movement, previously unknown in English work. Follower though he was of) Michelangelo and the Italian Renaissance, he was entirely personal. He was no copyist, although he had the Italian traditions at his fingers’ ends, and his feeling for architecture helped him to treat sculpture with fine decorative effect. Yet even Stevens and his brilliant example were powerless to weaken the passion for the Greek and Roman tradition that had engrossed English sculptors—with their cold imitations and lifeless art, pursued in the name of their fetish, “the Antique.”
Until towards the close of the 19th century this pseudo-classic art was blindly pursued by a non-Latin race, and a public favourite like W. Calder Marshall (1813–1894; A.R.A., 1844; R.A., 1852) never attempted, except perhaps in the “Prodigal Son,” now at the Tate Gallery, to break away towards originality of thought.
Thomas Woolner (1825–1892; A.R.A., 1871; R.A., 1874), who had represented a modern heroine as a Roman matron, and had shown in his monument to Bishop Jackson in St Paul’s cathedral an archaic severity and dryness altogether excessive, sought elevation of conception such as brought him applause for his “Tennyson” in portraiture and for his classically-inspired relief “Virgilia lamenting the Banishment of Coriolanus”—probably his most admirable and most exquisitely touching work.
Meanwhile, Baron Carlo Marochetti (1809–1867; A.R.A., 1861; R.A., 1866), an Italian of French arentage, had tried to introduce a more modern feeling, and his “Richard Cœur de Lion” at Westminster evoked great enthusiasm. It is difficult, now, to admire without reserve the incongruity of the 12th-century king, mounted on a modern thoroughbred, and raising arm and weapon with an action lacking in vigour. The intention was excellent and fruitful, notwithstanding, and the statue is not without merit. It was he who cast for Landseer the lions of the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square, London.
Later on Charles Bell Birch (1832–1893; A.R.A., 1880), with his German training, introduced a new picturesque element in his “Wood Nymph,” “Retaliation,” “The Last Call,” and the “Memorial to Lieut. Hamilton, V.C., dying before Kabul”; but neither the vigour nor the individuality of is work influenced his contemporaries to any extent, doubtless on account of the strong Teutonic feeling it displayed.
Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, R.A. (1834–1890), an Austrian by birth, was more successful, and his influence, held by the talent of able studio-assistants (Professor Lantéri, Alfred Gilbert, and others), contributed somewhat to thaw the chill which the cold marble still seemed to shed around. There was not much inspiration in his monument of “General Gordon” in St Paul’s cathedral, and his “Wellington Memorial” is cold and empty, though correct enough; but the “Herdsman and Bull,” among his ideal subjects, the “Carlyle” on Chelsea Embankment, among his portrait-statues, had the right feeling in them. His busts were usually excellent.
J. H. Foley (1818–1874; A.R.A., 1849; R.A., 1858), who at first was all for “the unities” and a “pure style,” seemed in his later years to throw his previous convictions to the winds, when he produced the finely spirited equestrian statue of “General Sir James Outram,” now erected in India, and-the statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the Tate Gallery. This statue was welcomed with enthusiasm in the art world, and helped to remind the public that monuments need not be staid to dulness, nor stiff and dead in their imperturbability.
Meanwhile Henry Hugh Armstead (1828–1905; A.R.A., 1875; R.A., 1880), who had begun by devoting himself to the art of the silversmith, fashioning the “St George’s Vase,” “The Packington Shield,” and “The Outram Shield,” was working in the spirit of the younger school; he made his first appearance in the exhibitions in 1851. He was carrying out commissions of considerable magnitude—in the Palace of Westminster, and in the Abbey itself, for which he executed the marble reredos with its many figures, the whole of the external sculptural decorations for the Colonial Office in Whitehall, as well as the eighty-four life-sized figures on two sides of the podium of the Albert Memorial, with the four bronze statues, “Chemistry,” “Astronomy,” “Medicine,” and “Rhetoric.” Portrait-figures of all ages are here classed together, and the work is a better-sustained piece of designing and carving than is commonly understood. The statue set up at Chatham of “Lieutenant Waghorn” is a good example of Armstead’s sculpture, impressive by its breezy strength and picturesqueness; but a more remarkable work, technically speaking, is the memorial to a son of the earl of Wemyss, “David and the Lion,” now fixed in the Guards’ Chapel. It is in very fiat relief; Ninevite in character of treatment, and carved wholly by the artist directly from the living model, it is, in point of technique, one of his best productions. His marble statuette of “Remorse,” bought for the Chantrey Collection, is a remarkable example of combined intensity of expression and elevated purity of style. The work of Armstead is monumental in character—the quality which has been so rare among British sculptors, yet the finest quality of all; and in almost everything he did there is a “bigness” of style which assures him his lace in the British school.
Following the chronological order of the artists’ first, public appearance, as being the most convenient and the only consistent method that will prevent overlapping, we come to F. J. Williamson (b. 1853), who executed many works for Queen Victoria; John Hutchison, R.S.A. (b. 1856), a Scottish sculptor of the Classic school; and George A. Lawson, H.R.S.A. (1832–1904). Lawson was a pupil of Alexander Ritchie, of the Royal Scottish Academy, and in a measure of Rome. He went to London in 1867, and soon proved himself one of the best sculptors Scotland has produced. “In the Arena” was his first striking group; “Daphnis” is an excellent example of his Classic life-size work; and “Motherless” one of his greater successes in a more modern and pictorial spirit, a group full of pathetic pathos and free and sympathetic handling. “Callicles,” “The Weary Danaid,” “Old Marjorie,” and the statue of “Robert Burns,” erected at Ayr, are all in their way noticeable, Lawson’s work, which only requires a little more animation to be fine, has the quality of “style,” and is strong, manly, and full of distinction.
Sir Edwin Landseer (1802–1873) had exhibited in 1866 a “Stag at Bay,” but his four colossal lions for the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square, London, constitute his principal plastic works. They engaged him from 1859 to 1867, the year in which they were set up. The casting of them, as already stated, was carried out by Baron Marochetti. Each is 20 ft. in length and weighs 7 tons. They have great nobility and dignity of pose, and although they are not altogether sculptural in treatment, they are finely impressive with a good sense of style.
George Simonds (b. 1844) is a product of the foreign schools. He is the author of many monumental works and not a little decorative sculpture, but he is best recognized by ideal subjects, such as “Dionysus astride his Leopard” (his finest work), “The Goddess Gerd,” “The Falconer” (in the Central Park, New York), “Cupid and Campaspe” and “Anemone, the Wind Flower.” His treatment of the undraped female figure is refined and delicate, and there is an intellectual reality about his best work, as well as imagination in conception. A. Bruce-Joy (b. Dublin, 1842) has produced ideal work and statues of public men for public spaces, and many busts.
Thomas Brock (b. 1847; A.R.A., 1883; R.A., 1891), whose work is prodigious in amount as well as solid and scholarly, came to London from Worcester in 1866 and fell early under the influence of the sculptor Foley, who was soon to rebel against the formalism that prevailed. When his chief died, in 1874, Brock was appointed to carry out the great unfinished works in the studio—the “O’Connell Monument” in Dublin, the “Lord Canning” in Calcutta, and several others. But he felt the foreign current; and even when his style was formed, his career being already assured, he was perceptive enough to modify it, and, so developed, he left his master very far behind. The ideal work that marked this transition was “The
