Studio: international art (53.1911)

The Queen Victoria Memorial

No longer can it justly be said that sculpture is
"the forlorn hope of modern art," as indeed it was
officially described in the catalogue of the Inter-
national Exhibition of 1862, when Gibson's tinted
Venus was the talk of the town, when Alfred Stevens
was unrepresented, and it was still undecided
whether the Albert Memorial was to be an
Egyptian obelisk with classical statues at its base,
or else, as Gibson suggested, a Greek mausoleum,
with the Prince's virtues allegorically represented
in niches, or whether it should take the form in
which, as the work of six leading contemporary
sculptors, it lastingly reproaches mid-Victorian
sculpture and the then ruling notions of artistic
fitness. We have certainly travelled a long way
since that period, and it is quite a lesson in artistic
progress to visit the Albert Memorial and look at the
lifeless sculpture, with its conventional modelling,
of Macdowell, Theed, Bell, Philip, Armstead, and
Brock's master, John Foley—certainly the most
significant and the least conventional of them all—
and then to go straight to the Victoria Memorial
and realise the vitality and expressive beauty of
Brock's own work. For happily, within the last
two or three decades, our British sculptors have
been strenuously freeing the practice of their art in
this country from the reproach which so long and
so deservedly rested upon it with depressing effect.
And among those artists who have been producing
sculpture in which a living beauty has been achieved,
through the true sculptural interpretation of Nature,
in expressive designs embodying vitality and sincerity
of idea and feeling, none has worked more con-
sistently, more whole-heartedly, or more successfully
for the dignity and credit of British art than
Thomas Brock. There may be—as he would be
the first to suggest—some soaring to greater
altitudes of idealism than he, some who strive
more vigorously for realistic or emotional expression,
some with livelier, daintier fancy and more
delicate touch; but, for a great monumental work
like the Victoria Memorial, the grand sculpturesque
imagination is imperative, the power of conceiving
in noble expressive lines, true proportions and large
impressive masses, which shall not be falsified,
when in position, by undue light or shade—and
with simple directness of emotional significance
and appeal. And it was because Brock was
known to possess in so eminent a degree this
power of treating his subject and material in the
large expressive monumental style—as witness his
superbly beautiful and touching memorial to Lord
Leighton in St. Paul's—that he was chosen, with-
out competition, among the many gifted sculptors

3°

Britain now can boast, for this most important
undertaking. When he first received the com-
mission, the magnitude of which might well have
seemed a little overwhelming to so modest a man,
it was the wish of the Executive Committee that
Brock, who has never visited Italy, should,
before commencing his design, travel abroad for
a year to make himself intimately acquainted with
the monumental masterpieces of other countries.
However, within three weeks of Lord Esher's first
intimation to him of the Committee having selected
him for the work, he had completed the clay sketch
—an illustration of which is given on the oppo-
site page — and submitted it for approval. It
will be seen that only in some details does this
original conception differ from the tenth-size model
which was exhibited at the Royal Academy, as,
again, only in the modification of small details did
that differ from the actual work. When once the
Committee saw Brock's design there was no
further suggestion that he needed to go abroad in
search of ideas. Wisely—and indeed, in its con-
sistent wisdom, sympathy, and tact, this Committee
might well serve as a model for all future com-
mittees of public monuments, so that they prove
not always the sculptor's bane—Brock's own ideas
were accepted as adequate to the biggest task ever
entrusted to a single British sculptor, and, with
King Edward's approval, he was allowed ten years
in which to carry them out. Now, what were his
ideas, and how has he carried them out ?

In the first place he has aimed at giving to the
Memorial a national and imperial as well as a royal
and personal significance. So he has designed the
base to symbolise those qualities of patriotism,
intelligence, and industry with which the British
peoples have built up the Empire and laid a secure
foundation for the monarchy. From the Mall side,
and from the Palace side, broad flights of granite
steps lead up to a circular podium, or raised plat-
form, of the finest Aberdeen granite, 104 feet in
diameter, in the centre of which stands the great
marble pedestal which sustains the chief sculptural
features of the monument. Water is an important
element in this basic part of the scheme, for, as
suggesting Britain's sea-power, from bronze sculp-
tured fountains, set in marble retaining-walls, which
curve gracefully round the podium, on either side,
between the approaches, cascades fall continuously
into great marble basins. On the walls themselves,
some 210 feet of marble, sea-waves, in which
Tritons and Nereids, with dolphins and sea-
horses, disport with joyous rhythmic motion, are
carved in relief, with careful and vivacious model-