emphasized the impression then created by “Fate-Led” (1892,
Walker Art Gallery), “Age and the Angel of Death,” “In the Sere
and Yellow Leaf” (a remarkable study of old age), “The Goblet of
Life,” and “Hagar.” “The Spirit of Contemplation” and “The
Cup of Immortality” are more complete and display dignity and
refinement. His memorials of the Boer War, at Cardiff and Birmingham,
in design and silhouette, are among the most striking in the
country. In “Mother and Child” (1903) and “Maternity” (1905)
he has greatly raised the high-water mark of his achievement.
Toft’s busts, such as those of W. E. Gladstone and Philip Bailey, as
well as his statue of Sir Charles Mark Palmer, at Jarrow, and similar
works, have force and breadth of character; and in his ideal work
there is an effort, well sustained and successful, after dignity,
harmony, evenness of balance, and relation of the whole.
Professor Édouard Lantéri, a naturalized Englishman, to whom British sculpture owes much, employed his own striking gifts to teach rather than to produce. But “The Fencing Master,” “The Duet,” and “A Garden Decoration” have exercised influence on the younger school through their fine sculptural qualities of vitality, richness, joyousness, sensuousness, and movement. His portrait busts are full of life and have that refinement and elegance pushed to the utmost length, which are characteristic of all his work; in his nude figure called “Pax” we have much of the severity, dignity, and placid repose of the Greek.
W. Birnie Rhind, R.S.A., has produced little work so important as the elaborate decorations for the doorway of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, but some of his statues and busts—“King James V. of Scotland,” “Lord Salisbury,” and others—show the influence of the modern school.
W. Goscombe John (b. 1860; A.R.A., 1899, R.A., 1909) achieved an early reputation with a figure of “St John the Baptist,” an austere creation of real importance. His other chief works are “Morpheus,” “A Girl Binding her Hair,” “A Boy at Play” (Tate Gallery), “The Glamour of the Rose,” and “The Elf”—a weird creation of true comedy. In these are shown a love of the purity and refinement of nature, realized with delicacy and a feeling for beauty. In portraiture Mr John is not less successful. The colossal seated statue of “The Duke of Devonshire” at Eastbourne has been acknowledged by the best critics in France and England to be one of the finest things of its kind, good in design and uiet suggestion of power. Among his chief memorials are the tomb of the marquess of Salisbury in Westminster Abbey, the “Memorial of the King’s Regiment” at Liverpool, the equestrian statue of “Viscount Tredegar” at Cardiff, the “Maharajah oil Balrampur” at Lucknow, and the monument to Sir Arthur Sullivan in the Embankment Gardens, London. These all sustain the reputation of the sculptor who has from the first been lo ally encouraged by his fellow-countrymen of Wales. The striking frieze “The Battle of Trafalgar,” for the pedestal of the statue of Viscount Tredegar (1910), is a remarkable performance.
Bertram Mackennal (A.R.A., 1909), the son of a Scottish sculptor settled in Australia, acknowledges no school, but was chiefly influenced by study in Paris. In his early ideal works, such as “Circe” and “For She Sitteth on a Seat in the High Places of the City,” there are boldness and a sense of drama, with a keen appreciation of elegance of form, not without severity and power of design. But they give little hint of the excellence that was to follow and to bring him to the very front rank of British sculptors, so that in 1910 he was selected to design the coinage of the new reign. His great pediment in the Local Government Offices in Whitehall is perhaps the finest work of its kind in the Kingdom., “Diana,” 1908, bought for the Chantrey Collection in the same year, is a marble nude of extraordinary grace, beauty, and refinement; and his small “Earth and the Elements,” similarly acquired in the preceding year for the Chantrey Collection, reveals a poetic beauty rare in these days. “The Mother” (1910) belongs to this group. The bronze statue of “The Dancer” (1904) is a work not less subtle, in which the learnedness of the sculptor is evident to every discerning eye, and “War,” a colossal female bust, reveals a power, amounting almost to ferocity, not disclosed in the other works. Among Mackennal’s other important statuary are the War Memorial at Islington and statues of Queen Victoria for India, Australia, and Blackburn; in all of these the sculpture is marked by good style, with movement, vigour, grace and nervousness of treatment.
G. Herbert Hampton made his first appearance in the Paris Salon with “The Mother of Evil,” and then the statues of “David” and Apollo” and “The Broken Vow,” “A Mother and Child,” “Narcissus,” “Orpheus” and other works were seen in the London galleries. Portraiture of merit has come from Mr Hampton, but his greatest success, perhaps, has been achieved in decorative sculpture.
F. E. Schenck (d. 1908) was similarly and more emphatically an architect’s sculptor—one of those who have done much to embellish many of the numerous great buildings which during the last twenty years of the 19th and the opening decade of the present century sprang up all over Great Britain. The municipal buildings at Stafford and Oxford, the public library at Shoreditch, and the Scotsman offices in Edinburgh—involving groups of colossal, figures bearing close relation to their architectural setting—are among the works which made his reputation. His defect was a “curliness” in his ornamental forms, which frequently detracts from the dignity and seriousness of his work.
J. Wenlock Robbins is another architectural sculptor of real power and individuality, whose work for the New General Hospital in Birmingham and for the Town Hall of Croydon is of a high order. His portraiture is also good, the colossal statue of “Queen Victoria” for Belfast being the most important of his achievements. Of ideal work, the statue called “Nydia” is the best known.
Henry C. Fehr (pupil at the Royal Academy and of T. Brock) contributed the group of “Perseus and Andromeda” to the Academy in 1893, when it was purchased for the Chantrey Collection (Tate Gallery). His subsequent ideal works, “Hypnos Bestowing Sleep upon the Earth,” “The Spirit of the Waves,” “St George and the Rescued Maiden,” and “Ambition’s Crown Fraught with Pain,” confirmed the high opinion of his cleverness; but in some of them his exuberance tells somewhat against their general effect, in spite of their inherent grace and strength. On the other hand, the statue of “James Watt” for the City Square of Leeds exhibits those qualities needful for open-air portraiture; and his busts and statues have character and life. “Isabella and the Pot of Basil” is free from this defect, and is an original treatment of the subject; and “The Briton” (1908), though full of vigour and imagination, shows restraint.
George Wade is essentially a sculptor of busts and statues; the most noteworthy of his works are the memorial to Sir John Macdonald in Montreal, the seated figure for Madras of the native judge, Sir Aiyar Muthuswamy, and a number of ambitious monumental works.
Gilbert Bayes, at first a modeller in the flat of horses treated in a decorative manner, produced “Vanity,” “A Knight-Errant,” and similar picturesque bibelôts on a large scale; and later still, such work as “The Fountain of the Zodiac,” showing a talent at once more serious, ordered and graceful. “The Coming of Spring” (1904) and “The Gallopers” (1905) are reliefs noteworthy for the intelligence and the sculptural appropriateness they display. The equestrian “Sigurd” (1909 and 1910) is full of fancy anti) illustrates the personal talent of the sculptor: the latter group was acquired for the Chantrey Collection. He is the designer of the great seal (1910).
W. R. Colton (b. 1867; A.R.A., 1903) is a sculptor of strong individuality, capable equally(of deep feeling and dainty fancy. “The Girdle,” “The Image-Finder,” “The Crown of Love,” “The Wavelet” and the “The Spring-tide of Life” revealed a sculptor of exceptional ability, whose love of truth and life has sometimes inspire him to place a touch of rather awkward realism in a graceful and charming composition; the result is something unusual, yet quite natural, and because it imparts to the work a flavour of quaintness and originality, it is not only unobjectionable but welcome.; Later, Colton struck out another path especially in the monumental and statuary work executed in England and India. Among his principal efforts are the South African memorial to the Royal Artillery erected in the Mall, London, during the summer of 1910, the statue of the Maharajah of Mysore (1906) and a monumental “Tiger” (1909) in bronze—a work of considerable power. His vigour of design and sense of style made him a force in the younger school of sculptors. He has acted as professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy.
David McGill first attracted attention with the relief of “Hero and Leander,” following it with a series of figures, of which the most striking is “The Bather,” a work at once of vigour and of humour. His work is good in pose and line, refined in drawing and feeling, and excellent in style.
Charles J. Allen belongs to the same group. “Love and the Mermaid” (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), “A Dream of Love,” “Rescued” and “Love’s Tangles” (1908) are works of high merit, in every case good in treatment, free in modelling and pleasing in design. His important Queen Victoria memorial in Liverpool was unveiled in 1906, and the monument to “Rt. Hon. Samuel Smith, M.P.,” and numerous busts have followed. “The Woman whom Thou gavest to be with me” is probably his completest ideal work.
F. M. Taubman, who had both French and Belgian teaching, has produced a series of works which display his power of design and strength of technique. “The Angel of Sad Flowers,” “Orpheus and Eurydice” and “Adam and Eve” reveal his strength in ideal work; and the statue of “Sir Sidney Waterlow” at Highgate is a good example of his monumental portraiture; In “The Sandal,” a small nude kneeling figure, he has turned frankly to classic coldness, and even the purity of design and modelling cannot warm it into life.
J. Pittendrigh Macgillvray, R.S.A., belongs to the rather meagre Scottish group, of whom he is generally regarded as the chief. His chief work consists mainly of monuments and colossal memorials. The “Peter Low Memorial” in Glasgow cathedral, the “Robert Burns,” the “Allan Family Memorial,” the fine relief of “Rhythm”. and the “National Gladstone Memorial” for Scotland are his leading works. With these should be considered the “Dean Montgomery Memorial” in St Mary’s cathedral, Edinburgh, and the “John Knox Memorial” in St Giles’s cathedral.
F. Derwent Wood (A.R.A., 1910) is a scul tor of exceptional ability. His varied training—at the Royal College of Art, the Slade School, the Royal Academy schools, and under M. Rodin and Mr Brock—gave him a wide outlook without impairing his individuality. His merit was recognized as soon as he quitted his masters, and he forthwith won the competition for a series of statues
