archaeology, must in such matters be the guide. There are, besides,
the “Marlowe Memorial,” set up in Canterbury—graceful and refined,
but rather trifling in manner—and the “Jowett Memorial,” a wall
decoration, in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The work of
Onslow Ford always charms, for he had a strong sense of the picturesque
and a true feeling for beauty, but with insufficient power.
But for his delight in decorative detail, he would have been greater
than he was; for over-enrichment is in inevitable opposition to the
greater qualities of the monumental and the dignified in glyptic art,
and abundance of small details involves poorness of effect. But
against Ford’s taste, especially against his admirable dexterity,
little can be said. The high degree of refinement, the charm of
modelling, grace of line and composition, sweetness of feeling, which
are the note of his work, are in a great measure a set-off against
occasional weakness of design and character, and lack of monumental
effect.
H. R. Hope Pinker is primarily a portrait-sculptor. Of all his works the seated statue of “Dr Martineau” is perhaps the best, for interest, refinement, and for technical qualities. His reliefs are as numerous as his statues, of which the most popular is the “Henry Fawcett” in the Market Place of Salisbury, but his most important work is the colossal statue of Queen Victoria executed for the government of British Guiana.
The most remarkable work executed by any British amateur sculptor is the “Shakespeare Memorial,” presented to the nation. by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, and set up by him outside the Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon (1888). This monument. carried out in Paris, represents the poet on the summit, attended below by the four great characters—“Hamlet,” “Henry V.,” “Lady Macbeth” and “Falstaff,” designed with singular ability and a happy display of symbolic inventiveness. Lord Ronald also modelled statues of “Marie Antoinette,” “The Dying Guardsman,” and other works which have secured wide attention.
In 1877 there burst upon the world a new sculptor, in the person of Sir Frederick (afterwards Lord) Leighton (1830–1896; A.R.A., 1864; R.A., 1868), who, in the following year, was to be the president of the Royal Academy. His first work was “An Athlete Struggling with the Python.” No piece of sculpture of modern times made a greater stir on its appearance; for here was a work, by a painter, a work, it was declared, which would have done honour to the ancients. fine in style, noble in type and in form, learned in the knowledge of the figure it displayed, original and strong in pose, in action and movement; scholarly in execution and instinct, with the manner of the painter himself. The group was hailed as a masterpiece by one who was thought to be not yet even a student in sculpture, and it was declared by the most exacting critics to be worthy to rank with the best examples of all but the finest periods. Yet it is somewhat lacking in expression—in that kind of humanity which every really great masterpiece of art should exhibit; and connoisseurs applauded the technique, the surface qualities and the like, when they should have been caught by the sentiment. But as Leighton was seeking only the beauty and expression of form, to the neglect of sentiment, he was well content with the reception and world-wide recognition of his work. One day the model for the “Athlete,” tired out, rose and stretched himself, and the sculptor was so enraptured by the pose that he forthwith began the model for the “Sluggard.” This work is in its way of still higher accomplishment than the “Athlete.” It is just as Greek as the other in its devotion to form and its worship of the beauty of the human frame. But it is a condition, a sensation, an idea, rather than an action, that is here recorded; and so it is the higher conception. And it has some of the mystery which is distinctive of the finest art of ancient times, in which modern sculpture is almost entirely deficient. Yet while the “Athlete” may be compared, in idea, with the relatively debased “Laocoon,” which it seems in some degree to follow if not to challenge; the “Sluggard” belongs to a more elevated expression of a distinctly pagan art, and, as it were, to a better period. Great as was the sensation made by these works, and by the charming little statue of “Needless Alarms ” (cast by the “lost-wax” process), Leighton seems to have left no direct follower or imitator among the younger men.
T. Stirling Lee, by natural ability as well as by cultivation, is an artist of unusual elevation of mind and excellence of execution, and in his composition he aims at securing beauty by the arrangement of his figures in the panel, rather than at enriching them with details, as a designer would do. He is an ascetic in choice of materials, so that his works generally remain beautiful studies of the human form, draped or undraped. It is for his power of telling a story beautifully in marble—as in his panels for St George’s Hall, Liverpool, which are among the finest work of their kind in England—that Mr Lee will continue to be admired: he is, beyond almost all others, a sculptor’s sculptor. His statue of “Cain,” extremely simple in conception, is a masterpiece of expression.
John M. Swan (1847–1910; A.R.A., 1894; R.A., 1905); a pupil of the Royal Academy and of Gérôme and Frémiet, specialized as a sculptor of a particular class of subject. He is a stylist in a high degree, whose work is full of beauty and importance. For the most part, but by no means exclusively, his sculptures are studies of animals, mainly of the felidae; but he would pass from the accentuation of action to the covering of skin and hair, without seeking much to emphasize the bone and flesh, because they alone display, with the fascinating expressiveness of their sinuous bodies, the whole range of the passions in the most concentrated form. In the “Leopard Playing with a Tortoise,” “Leopard Running,” “Puma and Macaw,” and similar works, we have the note of his art—sinuosity, with tense muscles, stretched and folded skin, suppressed frenzy of enjoyment. The note of Barye, the' great Frenchman, from whom in some measure Swan drew inspiration, is power and strength and decorative form, but his aim is rather at fine, grim, naturalistic studies of a great cat’s crawl, with amazing vivacity and vitality. In certain groups, such as “Orpheus” and “Boy and Bear Cubs,” the sculptor combines the human figure with animal forms. In the composition of these there is always the note of originality.
Another student of animal life is Harry Dixon, whose bronze “Wild Boar” is in the Tate Gallery. “A Bear Running,” excellent alike in character, form and construction, and especially in movement, “Otters' and Salmon,” and the figure-subject called “The Slain Enemy”—a prehistoric man with a dead wolf—are among his chief works.
Andrea C. Lucchesi is one of the few who, in spite of all discouragement, has not only persisted in concentrating his attention on ideal work, but has devoted most of it to the rendering of the female form. Prominent among his figures are those called “Destiny,” “The Flight of Fancy,” “The Mountain of Fame,” “The Myrtle’s Altar,” “Carthage, 149 B.C.,” and “Verity and Illusion.” Mr Lucchesi’s main excellence is in the treatment of nude forms, in which he has succeeded, through agreeable working out of idea and excellent execution, in interesting a public usually indifferent to this branch of sculpture.
Alfred Gilbert (b. 1854; A.R.A., 1887; R.A., 1892; resigned, 1909) is to be regarded as one of the greatest figures in British sculpture, not only as being a master of his art, but as having preached in his work a great movement, and in less than a decade effected more than any other man for the salvation of the British school, and inspired almost as much as Carpeaux or Dalou, the young sculptors of the country. Among his earlier works are two fine heads of a man and a girl, pure in style and incisive in character, which were cast by the cire perdue, or “lost-wax,” process, which he had learned in Naples. Its introduction into Great Britain—or, it may be more correct to say, its revival—had considerable influence on the treatment of bronze sculpture by British artists. In Gilbert’s portraiture we have not merely likenesses in the round, but little biographies full of character, with a spiritual and decorative as well as a physical side, and the mental quality displayed with manl sympathy. Flesh and textures are perfectly realized, yet broad: simple, and modest. Many of these qualities are as obvious in his portrait-statues, such as the fine effigy set up to “John Howard” in the market-place of Bedford. The monument with which Gilbert’s name will ever be associated is the “Statue of Queen Victoria” set up at Winchester, which, since its erection and re-erection in that city, has been irretrievably injured by depredations, and remains incomplete in its decorative details. The queen is shown with extraordinary dignity. Large in its masses, graceful in its lines, the person of the queen enveloped by all the symbolical figures and fanciful ornaments with which the artist has chosen to enrich it, the monument marks the highest level in this class to which any sculptor and metal-worker has reached for generations. The profusion of an ardent and poetic imagination is seen throughout in the arrangement of the figure itself in the exquisite “Victory” that used to surmount the orb, in the stately throne. Invention, originality, and inspiration are manifest in every part, and every detail is worked out with infinite care, and birth is given to a score of dainty conceits, not all of them, perhaps, entirely defensible from the purely sculptural point of view. In a measure it suggests goldsmithry, to which the genius of Gilbert has so often yielded, as in the exquisite epergne presented to Queen Victoria on her jubilee in 1887, typifying Britannia’s realm and sea power in endless poetic and dainty suggestions of beautiful devices. Among Gilbert’s memorials, not mentioned elsewhere, are those to “Frank Holl, R.A.,” and to “Randolph Caldecott,” both in the crypt of St Paul’s cathedral, London; the “Henry Fawcett” memorial in Westminster Abbey, which, with its row of expressive little symbolical figures, has been styled “a little garden of sculpture.” The finest work of its kind in England is the “Tomb of the Duke of Clarence” in St.George’s chapel, which in 1910 still awaited final completion. Perhaps his best composition expressive of emotion is the half length group “Mors Janua Vitae,” a terra-cotta group designed to be executed in bronze or the hall of the Royal College of Surgeons. Few artists in any age have shown greater genius as at once artificer and sculptor. Gilbert is fond of dealing with a subject which allows his fancy full play. His Work is full of colour; it is playful and broad. The smallest details are big in treatment, and every 'part is carefully thought out and most ingenious in design. His play ulness has caused him at times to be somewhat too florid in manner; but his taste is so just, and his fancy so inexhaustible, that he has safely given rein to his imagination where another man would have run riot and come to grief.
Robert Stark is an animal sculptor who has usually attracted the notice of connoisseurs rather than of the greater public, and his fine bronze statuette of an “Indian Rhinoceros” is to be seen in the Chantrey Collection. Mr Stark has a profound knowledge of
