MEN I HAVE PAINTED
accurately gauged. The street was smaller than the studio, making the test useless. His attention was being expended upon the helmeted boy holding the gurnet. The details of the head and fins of the fish were to him some of Nature's jewellery, and on these he devoted his love of subtle mimicry. Fishes and fins, fresh and stale, wet and dry, littered the tables and stands around him. Cherubs in helmets, holding real and plaster gurnets in every conceivable position, were poised upon the fountain. On this his genius was not thrown away, for the helmeted boy and his fish, repeated at every corner of the base of what is sometimes ironically called the "pulpit," form the masterpiece of the fountain. My anticipation that the mass of the fountain would be on too small a scale for its situation was realized. A work that would have graced a terrace in a nobleman's garden is out of place in Piccadilly.
The tomb of King George's brother, the Duke of Clarence, in Windsor Chapel, is, perhaps, a justification of Gilbert's contention that the study of detail in precious ornamentation may be an aid to the sculptor; for in this superb work the master has lavished all his affection upon the figures in armour that stand as guardians to the dead Prince within the catafalque. Here the scale is proportioned to the site.
In the memorial to Queen Victoria, Gilbert's sense of decoration, as well as of proportion, enabled him to disguise, by a masterly arrangement of the draperies of the royal robes, the short and corpulent figure of the sovereign, and to present Her Majesty in a manner fitting the dignity of the wearer of the crown of the Empire. Here realism is not outraged or disregarded, it is merely embellished by things as real as the Queen herself, and which add to the beauty of the monument.
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