Landon in The Literary Gazette 1827/Sculpture
The Literary Gazette, 12th May 1827, pages 299-300
SCULPTURE: EXTRAORDINARY GENIUS.
It has been the good fortune, and we trust the characteristic of the Literary Gazette, to bring forward talent under every circumstance in which it could be found; and as far as our powers and our judgment would allow, place merit in the view of the public: and we have not been in many instances without the satisfaction of finding that our labours have not been in vain.
We do not hunt for genius, nor travel to discover precocious powers, too often resembling the ignis fatuus, which astonishes for a while, and then is seen no more: but when we discover an individual in an obscure lodging, unknown and unpatronised, under every circumstance of privation and exclusion, occupied as a sculptor, and producing stupendous works of art, it becomes a duty, and it is our pride, to call the attention of the public, and of the lovers and patrons of the Fine Arts, to the case of so gifted an individual. The person to whom we allude is a Mr. Lough, the son, we believe, of a small farmer in Northumberland; who, we fear not to predict, is destined to become, at no distant day, one of the greatest sculptors of modern times. This young genius, for he is yet only twenty-four years of age, has already, at an age when others are little advanced in their studies, overleaped the bounds, and burst the trammels which confine ordinary men, and produced works of astonishing power. We have just seen him, in the obscurity of a paltry lodging, in a mean street (11, Burleigh-street, Strand); but in his poor apartment, surrounded with the wonders of his talent, and the proofs of his extraordinary character. There are two models, recently completed; the one a group of small figures, the subject, Samson slaying the Philistines; the other, a colossal figure of Milo, the Crotonian athlete, at the moment when, being unable to disengage his hands from the cleft of the tree he was endeavouring to tear asunder, he is devoured by wild beasts. They are both perfectly miraculous. There is no evasion of difficulties, but a daring defiance, and a complete conquest of them. We will not assert that there may not be slight inaccuracies of detail (although the parts are admirably marked); but we are free to declare, that they are such productions as only the most exalted and powerful genius could conceive and execute. His Milo, we are informed, tumbled to pieces three times while he was about it, from his not having money to purchase the materials necessary for its support! He will need support no longer, or England is insensible to the noblest efforts of the human mind.
As something of the history of such a being must be interesting, we shall state the result of our inquiry. In his boyhood Mr. Lough amused himself in modelling the peasantry about him in common clay. The accidental perusal of Gibbon's Decline and Fall gave a classical turn to his mind, and he sought London to improve it. In London, for about two years, his course must have been one of intense study and prodigious labour, which nothing but the most undaunted spirit and irrepressible enthusiasm could have enabled human nature to sustain.
By this notice of him we trust to be the means of putting an end to his privations—of cheering him on his glorious way—of procuring him the support he so pre-eminently deserves—and of seeing him enabled, by the prosecution of his studies in an adequate manner at home and in Italy, to reflect back an honour upon his country and age,—and we shall rejoice in having been the instrument to make his value known and appreciated.