Page I of I Subject: Lending Request Date: 08/29/1404:25 PM To: [email protected] From: Interlibrary Loan - Lending <[email protected]> Type of Request: Article IL Number: 128918580 Call Number: N867~ Co - Location: art Article Details: Article Title: John Gibson and his 'Tinted Venus' Article Author: Cooper, Jeremy Journal Title: The Connoisseur IiIR sales annlolal Journal Volume : Journal Issue: Journal Month/Date: Journal Year: 1971 1 O;-;c..~:;1~~" Pages: 84-92 GZM TN : 2531354 SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS: If you have questions please contact the ILL staff at [email protected]. Thank you, University of Wisconsin-Interlibrary Loan Department THIS MATERIAL MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT LAW (TITLE 17 U.S. CODE). https:llwiscmail. wisc.edu/iwc _static/layoutlshell.html?lang=en-US&2-6.0 1_002019 9/2/2014 John Gibson and his 'Tinted Venus' JEREMY COOPER URING his lifetime 'John Gibson of Rome' became an Exhibition of 1862 a sculpture which attained the greatest D elected 11lcmbcr of the Royal Academies in London, possible notoriety. Munich, Berlin and Turin, of the Imperial Academy in St. The marble statue which aroused the Victorian public to Petersburg, and of the Pontifical Academics of St. Luke in conflicting storms, ranging from excessive abuse to ecstatic Bologna and Ravenna. With so rcfined and academic a pedigree, praise, was known as the 'Tinted Venus' (see colour plate) , divergence from the established artistic norm might seenl and it is the purpose of tlus article to provide the grounds for a unlikely, and in many respects Gibson did fit snugly into this balanced lustorical and aesthetic assessment of this the principal well defiu9d niche. Yet despite the reactionary Classicism of his work of the foremost English sculptor in Queen Victoria's reign. basic approach, Gibson, 'the most eminent British sculptor of Gibson's life is documented at length in the contemporary 11lodern til11es' (Art jOllrllal, 1866), produced for the International sources. The main reason for this was the artist's self-conscious l. Sir Edwin Landseer. John Gibson, an un­ finished and undated work of C.18S0. Bequeath­ ed to the Royal Academy by Landseer's executors in 1874. The Royal Academy of Arts. 2. Marble portrait bust of Mrs. Jameson by Gibson, executed in the 184°5. Th~ Natio1lal Portrait Gallery. insistence on leaving behind autobiographical material: firstly in intense political ferment. Yet in Garibaldi's Rome Gibson letters to Mrs. Sandbach of Hafodunosl dated from their first remained totally unresponding and unconcerned, as the normal meeting in 1838 until her death in 1852,2 and thereafter until his day began at first light over coffee with friends at the Cafe own death in 1866, by dictation at his home in Rome to his pupil, Greco followed by a brisk walk on the Monte Pincio before Harriet Hosmer,3 and to a friend, Robert Hay, fonner private settling down to wock in the studios off the Via Fontanella secretary to the Duke of Wellington. The character that emerges Bambino. As in life so in art, the fervent, active Romanticism is that accurately observed by the doyelme of early Victorian of a Delacroix or Byron left Gibson completely unaffected as he ,estheticism, Mrs. Jameson,4{No. 2) who described Gibson in 1849 worked for five years, from 185 1-56, on a statue of Venus as a 'benign, simple-minded and simple-hearted enthusiast in composed on the century-old principles of Winckclmann,6 and his art'. 5 This wlderstanding was denied in an undated portrait of carefully wax-coloured to the examples of Ancient Greece. Gibson (No.1) by Landseer of about 1850, which contrastingly Given this 'simple-minded' dedication of personali ty, it is a suggests a deeply Romantic figure; and indeed much of his revelation to fmd that his 'Tinted Venus' was created with an writing is almost unbelievable without assuming some degree amazing independence and vitality of spirit. It could, after all, of self-aware theatncal romanticizing. Nevertheless, Mrs. have bowed safely before famous antecedents, notably the Venus Jameson's is the correct interpretation, for Gibson's life was dei Medici, and the contempocary Venus of Canova (No.3) and conducted along decidedly unpoetic and straightforward lines. Thorwaldsen (No.4), but both in purity of form and in the For there surely is something overtly ingenuous, almost 'simple­ committed polychromy Gibson's 'Tinted Venus' marks a " minded', about the outer surfaces of Gibson's life and art in the significant achievement. 1850S. At this time Italy was involved like the rest of Europe in The bare biographical outline of Gibson's life is easily told. 85 3· 'Vcncre Itallca' sculpted by Canova in 1805. Gibson studied under Canova from 1817 until the latter's death in 1822. Palazzo Pitti, Florence . Colour plate "The Tinted Venus' by John Gibson, R.A. (1790-1866), wax-coloured marble. executed between 1851 and 1856 and first exhibited in 1862. To be sold on October 27th at Messrs Sotheby's, Belgravia. 4. Thorwaldsen's 'Venus' of 1813-16 and known to Gibson on his arrival in RaDle in 1817. The Thorwaldsen Museum, Coptnlragen. 86 The first nine years were spent in Conway, North Wales un til, General d' Allguilar, Jolm Gi b so~l j ourneyed to Rome where he in 1799, the family tOok up residence in Liverpool, w here was to spend the rest of his life except for infr eq uent visits to Gi bson's first employment was as a woodcarver with Southwell England on business. and Wilson in 1804. Soon after he began working on marble in The day after his arrival, the Abbe Hamil ton introduced the his spa re time in the studios of Samuel Francis of Brownlow HilJ, aspiring sculptor to Canova, who, on the evidence of the to whom he quickly changed apprenticeship. Under th e powerful drawings and influential recommendations, not only gave patronage of William Roscoe' the young artist Rourished, first Gibson a place in the studio but also agreed to support him unti l exhibiting terracOtta figures and drawing studies at the Liverpool such a ti me as he could support himself. This time ca me relatively Exhibition of 1809. Gi bon's early enthusiasms were for Antique quickly, for by I820 Gibson was installed in a studio of his own and and Renaissance art - culled from the books and prints of the set by the master 'to copy nature and relate this to the Antique'.9 Roscoe Collection - and for the contemporary Classicists, Tlus sa me emphasis on independence fr om slavish adherence to Fuseli and Flaxman, whose impact was strengthened in 1817 the Antique was moreover extended under Thorwaldsen's when Gibson visited both artists in London; they apparently tutelage after Canova's death in r822. praised his drawings highly. In this context Gibson's conunen t Frolll. the llud-twenties onwards Gibson's success was assured on Flaxman is interesting : 'although he (Flaxman) formed his as comllussions were received from numerous celeb rated style upon the Greek vases, his designs are full of ori ginal concep­ collectors,10 and the bas-relief 'Venus and Cupid' (No. 7) of tion'S This admiration of individuality within strictl y Classical r830, admirably illustrates his technica ll y outstanding flu ency and confines was characteristic of Gibson throughout his li fe, and an control in marble. Later in li fe Gibson became perhaps too early drawing from the Parthenon frieze (No. 5), although of no liberal with his acceptance of COl1urllss ions, leading to a hurried great merit, shows a pleasing independence of spirit, to compare lack of distinction in, for example, a preparatory plaster for a with Flaxman's style (No.6). memorial!! (No.8). But in works of concentrated and detai led In September, 1817, armed with distinguished letters of effort (e.g. NO.9) Gibson full y earned [he praise received from introduction to Canova from Fuseli, Lord Brougham. and Mathew Digby Wyatt in 'Masterpieces of Industrial Arts' 5. Pencil sketch from the Parthenon frieze, by John Gibson. Tire Royal Academy of Arts. 88 • , -. , , / -' ! / .r Y t ~ ) ..{ J ,~ /!/ 6. 'Oromedcs taken into the Sea', a drawing by FiaxITlan for his illustrations of Aeschylus. Messrs Sotheby & Co. (18p), a book which was on the whole critical of contemporary notably the Parthenon. On the latter side Gibson, influenced by art. Wyatt's typically historical appreciation described Gibson's the teaching of Lloyd and havin~. read both SemperI3 and 'strong natural genius, corrected by intimate aquaintancc with Hittorf14 on Greek polychrome architecture, became convinced the rules and limitations prescribed by severe study and refined that rhe Greeks had regularly applied colours to their stattlary. raste'.12 A further point of contention between the two schools of thought But the main concern of this article is with the 'Tinted Venus', was purely on a matter of taste, and it is interesting to find that a statue which Gibson approached fr om the outset as the ultimate Gibson, normally naive and incredible in discussion of aesthetics, expression of his sculp tura l ideals, aspirations which were appeared in this case at his strongest and most expressive. For acknowledged in the varied but extensive public reaction to its example: 'I am aware that it would be a very easy thing to unveiling at the International Exhibition of I 862. TillS is exempli­ produce a vulgar effect, but tIlis is no argument against the fied in two contrasting views, one from the Sculptor's Journal judicious use of colour which when applied with prudence is in (1863) - 'It is considered one of the most beautiful and elaborate my opinion essential to scul pture'.is And on another occasion : £gures undertaken in modern times' - and the other from the 'Polyehromy in sculpture should be applied with a nice taste, Comhill Magazine (r862) - 'Approach the statue any hour of the the colour should not interfere with the plastic character but be clay and you will hear a merciless rlum.ing fire of remarks subordinate to it'.