The Prince of Wales’s sculpture collection was divided between his two residences Marlborough House in London and Sandringham in Norfolk. It began to take shape in the context of the houses’ furnishings and decorations on the occasion of the prince’s marriage to Alexandra of Denmark in March 1863. Marlborough House on Pall Mall, an early eighteenth-century mansion built by Christopher Wren, was their official seat. It was a dower residence for Queen Adelaide until 1849 and was thereafter the temporary home of the Museum of
Ornamental Art before being renovated for the prince in 1861–62.154
Sandringham, on the other hand, was the prince’s private property, bought in 1862
as an easily accessible shooting estate.155 The house that came with the estate was
initially refurbished for the occupation of the newly married couple. However, by the mid-1860s, it no longer met the requirements of the prince’s growing family and was replaced by a large, new brick house in the fashionable Jacobean style,
154 See Geoffrey Tyack, Sir James Pennethorne and the Making of Victorian London (Cambridge: University Press, 1992),
pp. 232-41.
155 For the development of Sandringham, see Rachel Jones, Sandringham, Past and Present (London: Jarrold & Sons,
inaugurated at the end of 1870. The new house’s art collection, together with that at Marlborough House, was first inventoried in 1877 in the privately published
Catalogue of the Works of Art at Marlborough House London and at
Sandringham Norfolk, compiled by Alan Summerly Cole, son of South
Kensington Museum director Henry Cole.156The reason behind this inventory is
unknown, but might have been motivated by the wish for a general appraisal of all works of art following the Prince of Wales’s return from a tour to India in 1875/76, from which he brought back a considerable collection of Indian arts and armour.
Containing over 1000 objects,157 the Catalogue of 1877 is divided by
material, following a rational classification system which Cole would have known from the South Kensington Museum. The categories are ‘Pottery’, ‘Sculpture and Mosaics’, ‘Paintings’, ‘Metal Works’, ‘Wood Work’ and ‘Glass’. Within each of them are listed, firstly, all objects at Marlborough House, followed by those at Sandringham, without providing their location within the residences. The information usually provided for each object concerns its type, subject matter, artist, country of origin, year, provenance and height. Although the sculptures are mixed up within the sections of ‘Sculpture and Mosaics’, ‘Metalwork’ and ‘Woodwork’, it is possible to extrapolate them, based on their identification by title, artist and type as ‘group’, ‘statue’, ‘bust’, or ‘figure’. With the exclusion of decorative objects and ceramics, both almost impossible to identify on the basis of the inventory, the total number of sculptures amounts to nearly ninety, mostly contemporary works of European fine art, and thirty figures of Egyptian and
Asian origin.While attesting to Bertie’s international outlook, the non-European
156 Alan Cole, A Catalogue of the Works of Art at Marlborough House London and at Sandringham Norfolk belonging to
their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, (London: privately published, 1877).
157 The object numbers range from 1 to 2609. However, the number sequences which were probably marking furniture and
works were received differently from European sculptures. Often undated and not clearly identified, they were appreciated as curious souvenirs and trophies rather
than art objects.158 In addition, they were, for the most part, displayed in a
separate context at the Prince of Wales’s residences. Therefore, the following assessment of Bertie’s sculpture collection focuses on works of European sculpture.
Divided into the two genres of portraiture and ideal works,159 the sculpture
collection contained around sixty portraits of the royal family and other famous personalities, as well as nearly thirty ideal works drawn from mythology, literature and genre subject matter. Both categories were typical features of a
private Victorian sculpture collection.160 While the central purpose of portraiture
was to commemorate family members and friends or to express politcal affiliations, ideal sculpture indicated a collector’s personal taste for specific themes and artistic styles. Looking closely at the most prominent works helps us to understand the scope and scale of Bertie’s patronage and the particular characteristics of his taste.
Portraits of the royal family
Busts and statuettes of the British and Danish royal families formed the majority of portrait sculptures in the Prince of Wales’s collection, with twenty-six in total. Amongst them were twelve portraits of Victoria and Albert, which were reduced versions in bronze or inexpensive plaster of originals in Victoria and Albert’s own collection made by their favourite sculptors such as Carlo Marochetti (1805–67),
158 For the contemporary perception of non-European artworks as ‘souvenirs,’ see Arthur H. Beavan, Marlborough House
and Its Occupants Present and Past (London: F. V. White & Co, 1896), p. 20.
159 In this context, the term ‘ideal’ sculpture is defined as meaning invented works inspired by mythology, religion,
literature or everyday life, in contrast to portraiture and ecclesiastical monuments. This broad and not very differentiated definition was similarly applied by Victorian art critics. See Martin Greenwood, Victorian Ideal Sculpture, 1830-1880, Ph.D. thesis (Courtauld Institute of Art 1998), pp. 21-35.
William Theed (1804–91) and Thomas Thornycroft (1815–85). This in itself represented a certain continuity of patronage, but Bertie’s own individuality as a patron becomes far more apparent in his commissions of portraits of his wife and children. For instance, he commissioned three different portraits of his wife Alexandra, made by three different sculptors between 1863 and 1870. The three examples clearly show the diverse modes in portraiture favoured by the prince during a decade that witnessed a shift from a neoclassical approach to a more sensual, contemporary and detailed representation of the sitter.
For the first sculptural portrait of Alexandra, Bertie returned to Gibson whom he had met again during a trip to Rome in November 1862. Bertie even persuaded the sculptor to come to England in the following year to model his new wife for a
bust in marble.161 As he had previously worked for the royal family on numerous
occasions, Gibson was a safe choice. His simple, neo-classical style had proved to be appropriate, serious and timeless. Although Gibson disliked leaving Rome, in the summer of 1863 he followed his royal patron’s invitation to London. Given the importance of the commission, the sculptor recorded his encounter with the Prince of Wales at Marlborough House:
“Well, here you are; you have fulfilled your promise,” said the Prince, giving me his hand on my first appearance. “I will go and bring the Princess to you.” He brought his bride. I bowed low – rose my head, She smiled sweetly. At once I saw what a pretty subject she was for a
bust. I said so, the Prince smiled.162
161 T. Matthews, The Biography of John Gibson, R. A. Sculptor Rome (London: William Heinemann, 1911), p. 231. 162 Ibid. p. 232.
The bust of Alexandra takes the form of a bare herm bust with straight cut sides forming a simple, square base on which her Christian name is inscribed [fig. 1.19]. The princess stares ahead, without any sign of movement, while her symmetrical hairstyle with a sharp middle parting is reflected in the regularity of her calm and smooth features. Her only adornments are two roses and a string of pearls holding the wavy hair at the back. Instead of emphasising the liveliness and youth of the sitter, Gibson, applied a restrained and timeles classicising formula,
possibly in deliberate contrast to Francis Chantrey’s earlier bust of Queen Victoria
(1841) which depicted the young queen at a similar age in a far more animated
and sensual pose.163 By choosing to render the bust of Alexandra with the utmost
simplicity, Gibson accentuated the princess’s nobility, chasteness and natural beauty. As if to underline Alexandra’s entitlement to these characteristics, the form of the herm, despite being unusual in Victorian female portraiture, aligned the young princess with the antique tradition of depicting philosophers and emperors.
According to Gibson, the Prince of Wales was ‘very much pleased’ with the
bust.164 The press, however, did not share the same enthusiasm when the work
was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864. The Saturday Review criticised its
restrained character with only a ‘certain echo of style’, and called it no exception to the recent works by other sculptors who ‘served [the royal family] to so little
purpose.’165 By this time, the severe style of Gibson appeared increasingly old-
fashioned and was rivaled by sculptors trained in Paris who followed a more
163 For Chantrey’s bust of Queen Victoria, see Droth, Sculpture Victorious (2014), cat. no. 2, pp. 62-64; Victoria & Albert,
Art & Love (2010), cat. no. 5, pp. 58-59. For more on Chantrey’s style and aesthetic, see Alex Potts, Sir Francis Chantrey 1781-1841, Sculptor of the Great (exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London, 16 January to 15 March 1981 and Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 4 April to 17 May 1981) (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1980).
164 Matthews (1911), p. 232.
165 Anon., ‘The Royal Academy’, Art Journal (1 June 1864), pp. 157-68, p. 168; Anon., ‘The Royal Academy of Arts,
innovative approach to modelling and contemporary costume.166 Bertie liked being fashionable and when he next commissioned a bust of his wife, in 1866, he followed the latest trend, repudiating the aesthetic associated with Gibson, who died that year. Made by the Anglo-French sculptor Prosper d’Epinay (1836– 1914), this bust depicts the princess in a particularly feminine and sensual attitude
[fig. 1.20].167 Set onto a round socle, Alexandra is shown wearing a light, almost
transluscent antique-style dress and turning her head slightly to the right. Her features appear clear and contemplative while her undulating lockets give her a sensuous appeal which is further emphasised by the left sleeve slipping off her shoulder and revealing her skin.
Born into a noble French family on the British-dominated island of
Mauritius, d’Epinay did not follow a conventional academic course.168 After some
initial training in Paris, he set up his own studio in Rome in 1864 and embarked in the following summer on his first Royal Academy exhibition in London. By the clever initiative of modelling a portrait bust of Alexandra, d’Epinay sought to impress in particular the Prince of Wales as he was the leader of London’s ‘smart set’ and proud of his wife’s celebrity for exceptional beauty. D’Epinay clearly knew how to flatter Bertie by helping him to boast that Alexandra’s beauty made men fall in love with her at first sight. As Bertie explained in a letter to his sister Louise, ‘[d’Epinay] only once saw Alix at a Ball last year – did it entirely from
recollection - & I think it is one of the best I ever saw.’169
166 The Saturday Review, for example, mentions works by the Paris-trained sculptors Carlo Marochetti and Joseph Edgar
Boehm amongst the exceptional cases of success in sculpture in 1864. Anon., ‘The Royal Academy of Arts, Portraits and Sculpture’, The Saturday Review (11 June 1864), pp. 721-23, p. 722.
167 It is possible that d’Epinay deliberated tried to rival Gibson’s bust of Alexandra, which he could have seen in Rome
when it was carved, as he, too, lived in the city during the 1860s.
168 For more on d’Epinay’s life and work see Patricia Roux Foujols, Un Mauricien à la Cour des Princes (Mauritius:
l’Amicale Ile Maurice-France, 1998).
It is possible that d’Epinay saw Alexandra only once in person and memorised her traits, but in order to model a successful likeness he would have also relied on other visual sources, such as carte-de-visite photographs. The story, relayed by Bertie, that d’Epinay made the bust ‘entirely from recollection’ can be considered as a strategy of self-promotion, in keeping with the fact that the sculptor first showcased his clay model of the bust to the Prince and Princess of Wales at a party organised by the prince’s close friend Lord Charles Carrington, where the sculpture was prominently placed on the dinner table and received
immediate approval by the royal guests.170 The outcome was that Bertie
commissioned one version of it in marble for Marlborough House and another
copy for the Queen as a Christmas present.171
The third portrait of Alexandra, dating from 1870, differed from both previous examples in that it was made of bronze and depicted the princess in the
form of a small statuette, dressed according to the current fashion of the time[fig.
1.21]. The artist was Bertie’s cousin Count Victor Gleichen (1833–91) who had, like d’Epinay, no formal academic training and relied primarily on his society contacts. In addition, Gleichen had an intimate knowledge of current fashions, which he deployed with skill in his portraits. His statuette of Alexandra shows her otter hunting. Standing on a simple round pedestal, she is depicted holding on to a long hunting stick while turning her head and ascertaining the state of the hunt. Dressed in a minutely rendered hunting costume with a ruffled skirt and tight uniform jacket, she looks attractive and fashionable. Otter hunting was a fashionable sport, considered challenging and exciting and even women were allowed to participate. Accordingly, Alexandra is represented as a fun-loving
170Roux Foujols (1998), p. 15.
171 RA/VIC/ADDA17/233, Prince of Wales to Princess Louise, 23 December 1867; In her journal, Queen Victoria writes:
‘I received some very nice [presents] including a very pretty bust of Alix’. QVJ, 24 December 1867, www.queenvictoriasjournals.org [accessed: 19 Oct. 2012].
society lady, sharing her husband’s passion for outdoor country sports. Comissioned together with a statuette of the prince himself in shooting costume, the little bronze figure of Alexandra reflected Bertie’s taste for contemporary
portraiture with a focus on detailed decoration.172 In marked contrast to Gibson’s
and d’Epinay’s portrait busts, the purpose of Gleichen’s statuette was not to create a lasting and timeless image but to capture a fleeting moment of amusement.
Portraits of famous personalities
Apart from the royal family, the Prince of Wales’s collection also featured portraits of eminent personalities – poets, statesmen and religious figures – of the sort that populated the ‘Portrait Gallery’ of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, opened in 1854. The idea behind such a pantheon was that eminent personalities were useful models for the public as ‘biography teaches how they traveled the
difficult and thorny road’.173 However, in contrast to the Sydenham collection,
Bertie’s assemblage reflected his personal interests and affiliations, without any pretence of moral improvement. The prince owned modern portrait medallions of Roman emperors and portraits of antique and modern poets, including Homer, Virgil and Shakespeare, but his preference was clearly for figures of notoriety. These included Marie Antoinette, Napoleon Bonaparte and the leader of the Italian nationalist movement Giuseppe Garibaldi, all of whom were admired for their righteousness, authority and dignity.
The plaster bust of Marie Antoinette [fig. 1.22] represents the young queen
as a prisoner before her execution, proudly ‘looking’, according to the Art
Journal, ‘with pitiful contempt on the wretched rabble surrounding the tumbrel or
172 The price paid for the pair was £210. RA/ADDA5/507/7, Cheques 1871, p. 62, no. 700.
173 Ibid.; For more on the intended instructive value of the Sydenham sculpture collection, see Anon., ‘Museum of
cart which conveyed her to the place of execution.’174 The bust was a study for a full-length figure of Marie Antoinette made in 1875 by the amateur sculptor Lord
Ronald Gower, a close friend of the royal family.175 By the 1860s, instead of
considering her as a symbol of absolutism, the French queen was celebrated as a victim of revolution, a tragic martyr who evoked sympathy through her alleged ‘courage’, ‘accomplishment’, ‘beauty’, ‘kind-heartedness’ and ‘heroic
fortitude.’176 In contrast to the original unadorned and callously observed pen and
ink sketch of Marie Antoinette on Her Way to Execution (16 October 1793) by
Jacques-Louis David,177 which served Gower as a source, he depicted her with
elongated, smooth features, wearing a large halo-like bonnet and an elegantly
draped shawl around her shoulders to emphasise her ‘noble qualities’.178 At the
same time, the fine and realistic modelling of details and textures, which Gower picked up in the Paris studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, where he was modelling the work, made the figure appear more authentic and appealed to the visual sensitivity of a collector like Bertie.
The assemblage in Bertie’s collection of three statuettes of Napoleonic soldiers, as well as a statuette and two busts of Napoleon himself, points to the popular veneration of the French emperor in Britain following his defeat and exile. Despite having been the nation’s arch-enemy, Napoleon came to be admired as a hero, not only for his military achievements and political power but for his
dignity and strength of character after his ‘tragic’ turn of fate.179 Numerous
174 Anon., ‘Marie Antoinette on her Way to the Place of Execution’, Art Journal (September 1878), p. 184. For more on
this depiction of Marie Antoinette, see Philip Ward-Jackson, ‘Lord Ronald Gower, Gustave Doré and the Genesis of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford-on-Avon’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 50 (1987), pp. 160-70, here p. 162-63.
175 For more on Gower’s career as an amateur sculptor, see Ward-Jackson (1987).
176 Anon., ‘Marie Antoinette on her Way to the Place of Execution’, Art Journal (September 1878), p. 184.
177 Jaques Louise David, Marie Antoinette on her Way to Execution, 16 October 1793, pen and ink on paper, Bibliothèque
Nationale, Paris.
178 Anon., ‘Marie Antoinette on her Way to the Place of Execution’, Art Journal (Sept.1878), p. 184.
179 For an evaluation of Napoleon’s political and cultural significance in Britain during the nineteenth century, see Stuart
histories of Napoleon were written from the 1820s on and published or translated in Britain. Statues of Napoleon as Roman emperor were famously collected by the
Duke of Wellington and other British collectors.180 The marble bust of Napoleon
in Bertie’s collection was probably made after a model by Antoine-Denis Chaudet
(1763–1810) [fig. 1.23].181 Characterised by the accentuation of pronounced
individual features, together with an emphasis on a general, antique-style expression with a direct gaze, short haircut and clean-shaven face, Napoleon possessed a highly recognizable iconography in line with the Roman imperial
tradition.182 From the distance of Bertie’s time, the possession of a Napoleon bust