RCEWA – QUEEN VICTORIA BY ALFRED GILBERT Statement of the Expert Adviser to the Secretary of State that the sculpture meets Waverley criteria One, Two and Three.

Further Information The ‘Applicant’s statement’ and the ‘Note of Case History’ are available on the Arts Council Website: www.artscouncil.org.uk/reviewing-committee-case-hearings

1 A marble bust of Queen Victoria by Alfred Gilbert R.A.

In our opinion this sculpture satisfies the first, second and third Waverley criteria, and we are therefore objecting to its export.

Description of the Sculpture

This monumental over life-size white marble bust portrait (h. 96 cm) of Queen Victoria (1819-1901; r. 1837-1901) was executed by Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934) from 1887 to 1889. It is signed on the front of the veined marble socle: ‘ALFRED GILBERT R.A./FECIT’. The Queen is shown looking slightly to her right, wearing a pearl necklace and earrings. A patterned scarf adorns her head as an elaborate headdress, and she wears a broad lace collar around her shoulders, fixed with a jewelled brooch at the front. The star of the Order of the Garter is partly visible above the swathes of drapery around her shoulders. A sash is draped around her left shoulder, pinned with a bow, to which is attached a double-portrait medallion of Victoria and Albert, also partly visible above the drapery. Victoria is depicted towards the end of her long life; the marble has been sensitively carved to reflect the texture of her skin, her meditative and somewhat melancholy face, as well as the soft swirls of cloth around her head and shoulders. She wears a circlet of pearls around her head, like a coronet, but lacks a crown. The bust has the appearance of a highly realistic and closely observed likeness, though in fact the sculptor did not work from the life, but from photographs. In addition he used his own mother as a model for the figure and drapery. He said at the time, ‘One was Queen of my country – the other Queen of my heart.’ His emotional investment in the subject is evident in his sympathetic portrayal of the ageing monarch.

The Commission

The bust was commissioned in 1887 by the Army and Navy Club, London to celebrate the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1837, as well as their own jubilee, the Club having been founded itself in 1837. The sculpture has remained in their possession ever since, and was until recently displayed at the foot of the grand staircase in their premises at Pall Mall.

The commission was delayed, Gilbert eventually delivering the bust to the Club two years late, in June 1889. But although the marble arrived safely, the absence of a crown was an abiding cause for concern. The sculptor had originally made a metal crown for it, but he subsequently removed it, presumably for aesthetic reasons. In October 1893 he offered to present a new marble crown to the Club, an offer which was unanimously accepted. But in 1896 the marble crown had still not appeared, and the Club therefore asked Gilbert to return the original metal one. In response to this request later that year Gilbert wrote to the Club again, proposing he give them a marble crown, in celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. However by June 1897 that crown had still not appeared, owing to the artist’s ‘pressure of engagements’. Sadly, despite numerous other requests from the Club, the crown was never produced.

2 Alfred Gilbert

One of the most important artists of his generation, Alfred Gilbert transformed British sculpture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His most celebrated works, such as the Shaftesbury Memorial (Eros) at Piccadilly Circus in London, and his magnificent tomb to Prince Edward, duke of Clarence in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, are amongst the finest sculptures of their time.

Gilbert was born in London, and was trained at the Thomas J. Heatherley School of Art and then at the Royal Academy Schools (1873-5). But he found the teaching at the RA inadequate, and so also studied in the studios of Matthew Noble (1817-1876) and William Gibbs Rogers (c.1792-1875). In 1872 he became a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-1890), with whose help he was able to travel to study in Paris in 1875. He later moved to Rome, remaining abroad until 1884. He became immensely successful, gaining prestigious commissions, and was exceptionally inventive in his use of materials for sculpture, employing for instance silver, gold, coloured bronze, aluminium and ivory in his works. However he was an unreliable and dilatory artist, and this unprofessional behaviour damaged his reputation.

In 1908 Gilbert was asked to resign his membership of the RA because of his professional misconduct. He had moved to Bruges in 1901, where he lived in some poverty until 1924. He then briefly lived in Rome, before returning to England in 1926. Towards the end of his life, with the help of the journalist and writer Isabel McAllister, he managed to repair some of his troubled relationships with former patrons, including the royal family. He was re-instated as a Royal Academician and knighted. He is seen as the key sculptor in the movement now known as the New Sculpture, his output drawing particularly on the work produced by French sculptors such as Jules Dalou (1838-1902), and the early renaissance sculptors of Italy, such as Donatello (c.1386-1466). The lively textured surfaces and compositions of Gilbert’s figures, and his imaginative use of materials, remain unparalleled.

The Bust of Queen Victoria in the Context of Gilbert’s Work

Gilbert rarely worked in marble; most of his sculptures are of bronze. The present bust is therefore highly exceptional. Its origins lay however in a statue of bronze, the Jubilee Memorial to the Queen made for Winchester. This is a full-length figure of Queen Victoria, was unveiled by her daughter Princess Louise in August 1887. A variant of this, also in bronze, was produced for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and unveiled there in 1903. The Winchester statue has been likened to some of the great Roman baroque figures, such as Bernini’s great tomb to Urban VIII in St Peter’s in Rome, which Gilbert would have known well. The full-scale plaster model for the Winchester Queen Victoria was shown at the Royal Academy in the following year, 1888, and was received with great acclaim, Rodin calling it the best monumental figure produced in England. Gilbert had in fact hoped to produce the Winchester portrait in marble, but was unable to do so because the authorities there wanted to display it outside, and so argued that bronze would be more suitable. Gilbert’s few other marbles (he produced only a dozen or so) include the Mother Teaching Child figure group made while he was in Rome in 1881 (Tate), and a portrait bust of Elizabeth Dyse Duckworth of c. 1890 (sold Sotheby’s 2 June, 2010).

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The relief and the first of the Waverley criteria: Is the object so closely connected with our history and national life that their departure would be a misfortune?

The provenance of this marble bust is unbroken. The Army and Navy Club commissioned it from the sculptor in 1887, and it has remained in the possession of the Club ever since. Additionally, documents and correspondence recording the vagaries of the commission are held at the London Metropolitan Archive. This great sculpture symbolises the Club’s prestige, its pride in its own history, as well as its reverence for the reigning monarch.

The bust and the second of the Waverley criteria: is the object of outstanding aesthetic importance?

The finesse and sensitivity of marble carving seen in this bust, with its range of textures and depth, are virtually unparalleled in nineteenth-century portrait sculpture. As a likeness of the ageing Queen Victoria this massy bust, a truly monumental work, is a remarkable and acute rendition of her long life as seen in her careworn yet majestic features.

The bust and the third of the Waverley criteria: Is the object of outstanding significance for the study of some particular branch of art, learning or history?

As noted above, Gilbert executed very few marble sculptures, and this work must rank as one of his most significant. He was the leading British sculptor of his generation, and the study of his oeuvre is central to any serious understanding of the history of sculpture in Britain.

Bibliography

Susan Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven, 1977

Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert Sculptor and Goldsmith (exh. cat.) Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1986

Isabel McAllister, Alfred Gilbert, London, 1929

Benedict Read, Victorian Sculpture, New Haven, 1982

Sculpture Victorious. Art in an Age of Invention, 1837-1901 (eds. Martina Droth, Jason Edwards and Michael Hatt) (exh. cat.), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven and Tate Britain, London, New Haven, 2014, entry by M.G. Sullivan, pp. 71-3

Entry on Alfred Gilbert in Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture (on-line database): http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1204072955&search=alfred%2 0gilbert (accessed 16 June 2017)

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