DOI Artikel:
Wall tablets and memorials by British sculptors
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21214#0199
Wall Tablets and Memorials
MEMORIAL TO AN ASSISTANT-MASTER, IN THE
CHAPEL, ABBOTSHOLME SCHOOL. BY F. V,
BLUNDSTONE
This is a point which will readily be appreciated
by any one who has analysed the feeling of dis-
comfort excited by seeing in a church which is
architecturally satisfying a monument that has
failed to reach the higher plane of design and
treatment. In Westminster Abbey, for instance,
there are pieces of memorial sculpture of a bad
period and hopelessly depressing in their un-
dignified realism which seem doubly failures
because the setting in which they are placed is
so truly noble in its aesthetic suggestion. The
blatant unfitness of such things to be where they
are excites ridicule, no doubt, but it is ridicule
born of resentment at the sculptor’s want of taste
and lack of understanding of the obligation im-
posed upon him by the situation assigned to his
work. We feel that he has been disrespectful not
only to the dead hero he was asked to com-
memorate but also to the great master builders by
whom the shrine was raised in which the ashes of
the hero were laid.
But it is scarcely conceivable that any of our
sculptors of to-day would be guilty of such a lapse
of judgment. We live fortunately in a time when
the principles of art are studied with some care,
and when the artists who take themselves and
their work seriously are rightly anxious to avoid
mistakes which would reflect upon their intelli-
gence. The desire for consistency, for the estab-
lishing of a rational relation between an artistic
production and the position it is designed to
occupy, is active and efficient, and serves as a very
valuable safeguard against erratic excursions be-
yond the bounds of good taste. Moreover we
have learned much from the errors of our pre-
decessors, and we can discriminate more justly
than they did between the art that rises properly
MODEL OF MEMORIAL TO THE LATE GEN. SIR SAM
BROWNE, V.C., IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL (REPLICA IN
LAHORE CATHEDRAL). BY J. NESFIELD FORSYTH
193
MEMORIAL TO AN ASSISTANT-MASTER, IN THE
CHAPEL, ABBOTSHOLME SCHOOL. BY F. V,
BLUNDSTONE
This is a point which will readily be appreciated
by any one who has analysed the feeling of dis-
comfort excited by seeing in a church which is
architecturally satisfying a monument that has
failed to reach the higher plane of design and
treatment. In Westminster Abbey, for instance,
there are pieces of memorial sculpture of a bad
period and hopelessly depressing in their un-
dignified realism which seem doubly failures
because the setting in which they are placed is
so truly noble in its aesthetic suggestion. The
blatant unfitness of such things to be where they
are excites ridicule, no doubt, but it is ridicule
born of resentment at the sculptor’s want of taste
and lack of understanding of the obligation im-
posed upon him by the situation assigned to his
work. We feel that he has been disrespectful not
only to the dead hero he was asked to com-
memorate but also to the great master builders by
whom the shrine was raised in which the ashes of
the hero were laid.
But it is scarcely conceivable that any of our
sculptors of to-day would be guilty of such a lapse
of judgment. We live fortunately in a time when
the principles of art are studied with some care,
and when the artists who take themselves and
their work seriously are rightly anxious to avoid
mistakes which would reflect upon their intelli-
gence. The desire for consistency, for the estab-
lishing of a rational relation between an artistic
production and the position it is designed to
occupy, is active and efficient, and serves as a very
valuable safeguard against erratic excursions be-
yond the bounds of good taste. Moreover we
have learned much from the errors of our pre-
decessors, and we can discriminate more justly
than they did between the art that rises properly
MODEL OF MEMORIAL TO THE LATE GEN. SIR SAM
BROWNE, V.C., IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL (REPLICA IN
LAHORE CATHEDRAL). BY J. NESFIELD FORSYTH
193