Alfred Gilbert
- This is an article about the sculptor; see also Alfred Carlton Gilbert for the inventor and toymaker.
Sir Alfred Gilbert (12 August 1854 – 4 November 1934) was an English sculptor and goldsmith who enthusiastically experimented with metallurgical innovations. He was a central — if idiosyncratic — participant in the New Sculpture movement that invigorated sculpture in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century.
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[edit] Life
Alfred Gilbert's parents, Charlotte Cole and Alfred Gilbert, were musicians who lived at 13 Berners Street, London, where Alfred was born. He spent seven years at Aldenham School in Hertfordshire but received his artistic education mainly in Paris (Ecole des Beaux-Arts, under Jules Cavelier), and studied in Rome and Florence where the significance of the Renaissance made a lasting impression upon him and his art. He also worked in the studio of Sir Joseph Boehm, R.A.
On 3 January 1876 he married his first cousin, Alice Jane Gilbert (1847-1916), with whom he had eloped to Paris. They had five children. Bankruptcy made him flee from Britain in 1901 and for the next 25 years he settled in Bruges. His wife left him in 1904. They never divorced, but lived separated, Alice being a patient in a mental hospital.
After Alice's death, of which he received news only after the war, he married on 1 March 1919 his housekeeper Stéphanie Debourgh (Bruges 1863-1937), the widow of Alphonse Quaghebeur (Bruges 1863-1903), a modest typesetter; she, previously a lacemaker, and six of her seven children had lived with Gilbert since 1907 and throughout the War and the German occupation. As he was living underground, the presence of a large family was a good cover for the quantity of food needed in the household.
[edit] Work
His first work of importance was the charming group of the Mother and Child, then The Kiss of Victory, followed by Perseus Arming (1883), produced directly under the influence of the Florentine masterpieces he had studied. Its success was great, and Lord Leighton forthwith commissioned Icarus, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884, along with a remarkable Study of a Head, and was received with general applause. Then followed The Enchanted Chair, which, along with many other works deemed by the artist incomplete or unworthy of his powers, was ultimately broken by the sculptors own hand. The next year Gilbert was occupied with the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, in Piccadilly Circus, London, a work of great originality and beauty representing Anteros, yet shorn of some of the intended effect through restrictions put upon the artist.
In 1888 was produced the statue of H.M. Queen Victoria, set up at Winchester, in its main design and in the details of its ornamentation the most remarkable work of its kind produced in Great Britain, and perhaps, it may be added, in any other country in modern times. Other statues of great beauty, at once novel in treatment and fine in design, are those set up to Lord Reay in Bombay, and John Howard at Bedford (1898), the highly original pedestal of which did much to direct into a better channel what are apt to be the eccentricities of what is called the New Art School. The sculptor rose to the full height of his powers in his Memorial to the Duke of Clarence, and his fast developing fancy and imagination, which are the main characteristics of all his work, are seen in his Memorial Candelabrum to Lord Arthur Russell and Memorial Font to the son of the 4th Marquess of Bath.
Gilbert's sense of decoration was paramount in all he did, and although in addition to the work already cited he produced busts of extraordinary excellence of Cyril Flower, John R. Clayton (since broken up by the artist, the fate of much of his admirable work), G. F. Watts, Sir Henry Tate, Sir George Birdwood, Sir Richard Owen, Sir George Grove and various others, it is on his goldsmithery that the artist would rest his reputation; on his mayoral chain for Preston, the epergne for Queen Victoria, the figurines of Victory (a statuette designed for the orb in the hand of the Winchester statue), St Michael , and St George, as well as smaller objects such as seals, keys and the like. Gilbert was chosen associate of the Royal Academy in 1887, full member in 1892 (resigned 1909), and professor of sculpture (afterwards resigned) in 1900. In 1889 he won the Grand Prix at the Paris International Exhibition. He was created a member of the Victorian Order in 1897.
While Gilbert was known for his sculpture, he also periodically made oil paintings. Among his favorite subjects were still lifes.
[edit] Bibliography
- Beattie, Susan. The New Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
- Dorment, Richard. Alfred Gilbert. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
- Dorment, Richard, et al. Alfred Gilbert: Sculptor and Goldsmith. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1986.
- Edwards, Jason. Alfred Gilbert's Aestheticism: Gilbert Amongst Whistler, Pater, Wilde, and Burne-Jones Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
- Getsy, David. Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877-1905. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004.
- Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982
[edit] Famous works
- The Shaftesbury Memorial, commonly known as the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, London
- The tomb of Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence in St. George's Chapel, Windsor
- The Queen Alexandra Memorial, Marlborough Gate, London (a Grade I listed building)
[edit] See also
- Centre for Whistler Studies profile of Alfred Gilbert
- Works by Gilbert in the Tate Collection, London
- "Model for the tomb of Prince Albert Victor". Sculpture. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 2007-09-22.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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