Hylas and the Nymphs
Tate Gallery, London
An equally illuminating example of Gibson’s style can be seen at the Tate Gallery. This is the group, “Hylas and the Nymphs,” modelled in 1826. The technical industry of the sculptor and his feeling for sculptural form are obvious at once. But no one, comparing the “Hylas” with the modern works of the British school which surround it, can fail to see the sickly conventionalism with which it is imbued. Notice, for instance, the modelling of the limbs of the two nymphs, and compare them with those of the boy. Surely any imaginative sculptor of the modern school would insist, above all, upon the obvious contrast between the male and the female form, seeing that the story of Hylas itself depends upon this very point. Gibson, however, practically models the male and the female limbs, the male and the female flesh, alike. Hylas has not the legs of a youth, nor have the nymphs, who have been smitten by his beauty, the legs of women. Gibson has chosen to adopt a conventional compromise, unrelated to anything in nature, and selected for no other reason than a fancied resemblance to the Greek style. The three figures are graceful enough. But they are unsatisfying in the last degree to all who have felt the far more potent emotions arising from a rigid adherence to nature. Hence “Hylas and the Nymphs” and the works in the Gibson Gallery remain as perpetual memorials of all that the artists of our own day had to rid themselves before the rebirth of English sculpture was possible.
Matters improved very little during the thirty years following the production of Gibson’s “Hylas.” What can we learn from the exhibitions of 1851 and 1862, which may be fairly taken to represent the apotheosis of mid-Victorian artistic taste?
In his official guide to the Fine Art Section of 1862 the editor, F. T. Palgrave—of “Golden Treasury” fame—refers to sculpture as “the forlorn hope of modern art,” and proceeds to answer the question “whence this deathly decline?” The exhibition contained examples of all that was best in English sculpture to that time. “The Falling Titan,” by Banks, now in the Diploma Gallery; the “Thetis and Achilles” relief, now in the Tate Gallery; Nollekens’ “Cupid and Psyche” Joseph’s ”Wilberforce” (Westminster Abbey), and works by Flaxman, Westmacott, Chantrey, Wyatt, Watson and Park represented the earlier masters. Sculptures by Armstead, Baily, Foley, Gibson, MacDowell, Marshall, Woolner and the younger Westmacott witnessed to the achievements of the living. Yet Palgrave could only grieve over the decline in natural taste and the entire absence of that healthy severity and earnestness of spirit in which sculpture flourishes. “Serious as the subject claims to be,” says Palgrave, “I confess it is difficult to think of Nollekens’ ‘Venus,’ Canova’s ‘Venus,’ Thorvaldsen’s ‘Venus,’ Gibson’s ‘Venus,’ everybody’s ‘Venus’ with due decorum. One fancies one healthy, modern laugh would clear the air of these idle images—one agrees with the honest old woman in the play who preferred a roast duck to all the birds in the heathen mythology.”
In the “Albert Memorial” erected in Kensington Gardens, London, “by the Queen and people of a grateful country,” we have a concrete example of what was in Palgrave’s mind when he wrote.
Prince Consort was himself a man of real artistic perception. By his magnificent work in connection with the 1851 Exhibition he had done an immense amount to raise the standard of taste in England. Funds were not wanting. £50,000 was subscribed by the nation and at least another £60,000 was raised by public subscription. The Eleanor Cross was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and all the leading sculptors were invited to co-operate. If the mid-Victorians had had it in them to produce a noble work, surely we should have seen the result in the “Albert Memorial.” An examination only confirms the general impression which every Londoner has about the monument. The “Asia” by Foley, for instance; the “Africa” by Theed; the “Agriculture” by the elder Thornycroft—in none of these can we see any clear evidence that the sculptors had yet rid themselves of the conventions which had been hampering them for at least fifty years.
The Rise of Naturalism
Nevertheless, among those engaged upon the Albert Memorial were men who were to see the advent of a new spirit. Foley himself, who died in 1874, lived to carve the fine equestrian statue of Sir James Outram. This was one of the earliest works to show a clear trace of the return to the observation of nature, which was necessary if the English sculptors were to follow the lead given by Carpeaux in France. Even in H. H. Armstead’s work upon the frieze running round the podium of the Albert Memorial there are traces of a largeness and vigour of treatment indicative of better things. Both, however, were born too early to give English sculptors a decisive lead.
Strangely enough at the very time the sculptors of England were working upon the Albert Memorial, one of the greatest geniuses in the history of English sculpture was working upon another national monument. We mean Alfred Stevens, the sculptor of the “Wellington Memorial” in St. Paul’s Cathedral—the most complete piece of decorative sculpture ever set up in this country.
Born in 1817, Stevens went to Italy in 1833. He spent a portion of the nine years he lived there in Thorvaldsen’s studio, but his first study was painting. On his return to England he became a teacher of architectural drawing at Somerset House and then started a career as a decorative designer. Helped by such followers as Godfrey Sykes and Moody, who carried his principles into the Government art school, Stevens founded a school of domestic decorators which influenced decorative art in England through the remainder of the nineteenth century. A brilliant example of this side of Stevens’s genius is furnished by the magnificent “Fireplace” at Dorchester House.
Stevens’s great chance as a sculptor came in 1856 when he secured the commission for the Wellington Memorial. Such a group as the “Truth tearing out the tongue of Falsehood” is alone sufficient to prove how far Stevens was ahead of the English sculptors of his time in originality of treatment and breadth of design. It is true that the sculptor’s indebtedness to Michael Angelo is obvious, but the work of Stevens does not show any slavish copying of the great Florentine. The English sculptor has merely solved his problem by the light of Angelo’s experience. He has sought to reach the boldness of mass and line which he found in the master’s sculpture. A certain naturalism, also derived from his study of Renaissance art, together with its magnificently bold design and architectural fitness, gives the Wellington Memorial a unique place in the history of English sculpture. Nevertheless, Alfred Stevens was the Baptist of English Naturalism. He died—a voice crying in the wilderness. So little was his work esteemed that the Wellington Memorial itself was not brought up from the crypt and placed in the nave of the Cathedral, where it could be seen, until long after the sculptor’s death in 1875.
ALFRED STEVENS