sculpture – IMS Photography

Building Stone with Relief of Boar

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:29:00 +0000

A building stoner at Chesters Roman Fort, Northumberland

This stone with a relief of a boar came from Vindolanda.

Image Details
Date: 10 May 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 160
Licensing: Image of an English Heritage asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Emperor Hadrian (AD 76–138) (after the Roman original)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Bust of Hadrian in the museum at Chesters Roman Fort, Northumberland

Image Details
Date: 10 May 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 100
Licensing: Image of an English Heritage asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Ceramic Figurines

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Ceramic figurines in the museum at Chesters Roman Fort, Northumberland

37 figures of gods and goddesses, made from metal, stone and ceramic, are represented in the collection.

Image Details
Date: 10 May 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 200
Licensing: Image of an English Heritage asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Hand of a statue

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Bronze hand of a statue in the museum at Chesters Roman Fort, Northumberland

Only this fragment survives, but it suggests the existence of a sizable and well-modelled figure.

Bronze Dog

Ian Malpass-Scott — Sun, 10 May 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Bronze dog in the museum at Chesters Roman Fort, Northumberland

A Daughter of Eve

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Bronze or bronze patinated electrotype sculpture; A Daughter of Eve – A Scene on the Shore of the Atlantic; John Bell (Hopton, Suffolk 1811 – Kensington 1895), c. 1853-66. Figure of an enslaved African woman, partly nude and manacled at her wrists, standing on the shoreline of a West African country, probably on the Guinea Coast, about to be trafficked by ship across the Atlantic to North America. The sculpture was first exhibited by Bell at the Royal Academy in 1853 and was widely recognised as a powerful statement against the continuing practice of slavery in the Americas.

A full-size standing figure of an enslaved African woman, depicted with her hands manacled, looking to her right in sad contemplation, her eyes cast downwards, her mouth down-turned. The figure stands on an integral circular base with a lightly textured surface and, at the front, a single shell and a length of seaweed, indicating that the woman is standing at the seashore. A striped and fringed cloth is around her waist. She wears gold-plated earrings of circular form, on each of which is threaded a separately made sphere. The silver-plated manacles are also separately made and attached to the woman’s wrists. Signed on base ‘JOHN. BELL Sc.’ The surface of the sculpture is heavily worked with extensive cross-hatching of the flesh areas, possibly executed in the wax model. John Bell was a successful British sculptor whose lifetime spanned the nineteenth century, and who was involved in several of the most important sculptural projects of the period, including the Houses of Parliament and the Albert Memorial, to which he contributed the group representing America. His most famous sculpture was the ‘Eagle Slayer’, first exhibited in 1837, versions of which were made in marble, bronze and iron. Many of Bell’s compositions, including the ‘Daughter of Eve’, were widely disseminated in the form of reductions made in iron, electrotyped copper and Parianware, a form of ceramic. The Daughter of Eve is a sculpture of some beauty and is of great significance for its strong anti-slavery message. It was the most politically charged work that Bell would make in the course of his career. In the first instance, the sculpture was a direct response to the American sculptor Hiram Powers’ statue The Greek Slave, first exhibited to acclaim in London in 1845 and then in 1851 at the Great Exhibition (Martina Droth, Jason Edwards and Michael Hatt, Sculpture Victorious. Art in an Age of Invention, exh. cat., Yale Center for British Art and Tate Britain, New Haven/London 2014, no. 80; reductions at Arlington Court (NT 985340) and Ham House (NT 1139597)). Whilst the ostensible subject of Powers’ sculpture was a Christian girl captured during the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman empire, it came increasingly to be seen, especially in the United States, as a commentary on the continuing practice of slavery in the Southern States. In contrast, John Bell’s sculpture was from the time of its first exhibition, in 1853, seen as an explicit comment on slavery. Although A Daughter of Eve has been described as ‘a sentimental work, designed to elicit an emotional response from the viewer’ (Michael Hatt in Sculpture Victorious, p. 253), it is not in fact a sentimental or voyeuristic image; the woman is depicted naturalistically and with dignity, the use of the bronzed material providing a representation of her natural skin colour. Bell began working on the sculpture in 1852, in close collaboration with George Richards Elkington (1801-65), who would cast the bronze versions. He may in part have been moved to make his sculpture after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852. Bell stated in correspondence with Elkington that he wished his figure to be seen as a response to the Greek Slave, writing that it should be ‘on the same scale and in the same style as the Greek Slave.’ (Beach, ‘John Bell’s American Slave’, p. 1). His sculpture also shows awareness of the celebrated cartoon entitled ‘The Virginian Slave, Intended as a Companion to Power’s ‘Greek Slave’,’ published in Punch on 7 June 1851, which implicitly criticised the American sculptor’s timidity in not making a more explicit political statement with his work. John Bell’s figure was shown at the Royal Academy in 1853, in the form of a plaster model, described in the catalogue as ‘A daughter of Eve – a scene on the shore of the Atlantic, to be executed in bronze.’ Thus the sculptor made it categorically clear that the subject was an enslaved woman somewhere on the western coast of Africa, awaiting transportation across the Atlantic to America. As the reviewer of the exhibition in the Art Journal wrote, ‘the allusion is at once intelligible.’ (Art Journal, 1853, p. 152). The expression ‘daughter of Eve’ reflects the Bible’s message that all people were descended from Adam and Eve, so that all people, whatever their race or skin colour, were part of the same creation. The term, which also reflects John Bell’s deep Christian faith, was frequently used by abolitionists to counter arguments advanced by defenders of the practice that enslaved people were of a different and lesser order of humanity. Bell was known for his strong abolitionist views. In 1848 he made a portrait bust of the abolitionist Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845) for the Anglican Cathedral in Freetown, Sierra Leone. A bronze cast of A Daughter of Eve was exhibited in Manchester at the Grundy Gallery in August 1853 and was the subject of a lengthy piece in The Manchester Guardian for 27 August 1853, in which it was described as ‘the product of genius, expressing its sympathies for the negro race, in slavery – sympathies which Mr. Bell has felt for years’ ((p. 6; see also Hatt, ‘Sculpture, Chains, and the Armstrong Gun’, pp. 222-23). The article included a direct statement from John Bell: ‘The poor slave girl, represented on the bronze, does not struggle with her fate; but that very resignation should plead the more against the injustice and degradation of that position to which the colour of her skin condemns her. She is on the shore of the Atlantic, torn from her own land and kin to labour among strangers, by the fear of the lash. The voice, the pen and the brush have been energetic in advocating the rights of the oppressed race. A sculptor hopes that his art may also aid in directing a sustained attention to the greatest injustice in the world – John Bell.’ The Manchester Guardian article also noted that A Daughter of Eve had been seen and much admired by Harriet Beecher Stowe, as well as by another noted abolitionist, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland. A version described in the catalogue as in bronze, perhaps the same cast, had already been exhibited a few months earlier by Elkington, Mason & Co. at the Dublin International Exhibition. Its public exhibition may in fact have preceded the Royal Academy showing of the plaster, hitherto believed to have been the sculpture’s inaugural exhibition, since the bronze is discussed at some length, described as recently arrived in the city, in the Dublin paper The Freeman’s Journal for 25 May 1853. The writer of this article likewise made clear that the anti-slavery message was well understood by visitors: ‘Two exquisite works of art, bronze castings by Elkington and Mason, have recently been placed in the great hall […] The most remarkable of these, styled “A Daughter of Eve”, is the figure of a young negro slave girl in chains, standing, as it were, in the hideous slave mart, exposed to the brutal gaze of the heartless trafficers in human flesh. The whole attitude of the figure, and the expression of the features in which shame, grief, resignation and proud despair are finely marked, convey most forcibly the idea of hopeless, helpless servitude. It reminds one, to some extent, of Powers’s “Greek Slave”; but this does not, in the least degree, detract from its merit, the subject being treated in an original and independent style, whilst the modelling of the limbs almost approaches perfection. This work is certainly one of the gems of the Exhibition…’ On its return from Dublin and Manchester, the Daughter of Eve was exhibited at the Crystal Palace as part of a display of works made by Elkingtons. An article in the Morning Chronicle for 25 May 1855 singled it out for attention: ‘Among the figures thus arranged are “A Daughter of Eve”, by Bell. The figure is that of a negress, scantily attired, bearing the symbol of slavery, and her features marked by that expression of silent and resigned sorrow, and that hopeless despair, which characterises the victim of modern slavery. The work is far more true to its subject than the much-vaunted “Greek Slave” of Hiram Powers. No one can look upon this “Daughter of Eve” without recognising in her a slave, and feeling their sympathies aroused, and their better feelings awakened, on the subject of that great social blot which still mars the brightness of the “star-spangled banner” of the West.’ Many of the sculptures at the Crystal Palace were shortly afterwards sent to Paris for the Exposition Universelle at the Palais de l’Industrie, the Daughter of Eve being noted as ‘the highly expressive and beautiful statue.’ (Morning Chronicle, 9 July 1855). Bell’s statue was again exhibited in 1862 at the International Exhibition in London, in full-size and at half-size and in electrotype, as part of a display of electrotypes by Elkington. One of the commissioners of the exhibition, the South Kensington Museum curator George Wallis, wrote on this occasion that the Daughter of Eve may be seen ‘touching an appeal against the blasphemous hypocrisy which attempts to justify human bondage on the ground of external physical differences’ (cited in Sculpture Victorious, p. 253). At the 1862 exhibition, a Parian-ware reduction of the sculpture was also exhibited with the less subtle title The American Slave, alluding to the American Civil War then underway (Atterbury, The Parian Phenomenon, fig. 375). So far as is known, John Bell was not responsible for this title and, indeed, he seems throughout his life to have used his original title for the sculpture. A Daughter of Eve is one of a series of semi-nude captive female figures made by Bell in the course of his career. Whilst this was not the case for the Daughter of Eve, most of these sculptures were made with an eye to the market, reflecting the tastes of the sculptor’s largely male clients. They included a nude figure of Andromeda, from 1850, casts of which are at Ironbridge Gorge Museum and at Osborne House. In 1854 John Bell made two more figures, the titles of which explicitly refer to slavery, the Octoroon (marble version in Blackburn Town Hall) and The Abyssinian Slave, the latter clearly derived from A Daughter of Eve. Both were widely reproduced as reductions in Parian-ware (Barnes, John Bell, Pls. 52-53). In place of the realism of A Daughter of Eve, both figures are essentially European, and they have strong erotic subtexts, especially the Octoroon. Neither can be said to bear the fierce political subtext of A Daughter of Eve. Towards the end of his life, John Bell presented the plaster models for some of his best-known works to Kensington Town Hall, where they were placed on exhibition. The Daughter of Eve, described by Bell in the catalogue as ‘a negress, and yet a sister’, was the first work to be seen on entering the town hall’s vestibule (St Mary Abbotts, Kensington. Catalogue of Statuary by J. Bell, London 1890). The plaster model, which survived at Kensington Town Hall until the 1970s but may have been destroyed when the old town hall was demolished in the early 1980s, was painted black. Other plasters by Bell were lost in the fire that destroyed Crystal Palace in November 1936. Bell stated in the 1890 catalogue that the bronze statue ‘was purchased by the late Lord Hertford’, which has generally been taken to mean Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-70), whose collections form the core of the Wallace Collection in London. Lord Hertford is supposed to have bought the example of the sculpture that was exhibited at the 1862 exhibition in London, which was however a half-size version. There is no evidence in surviving inventories of Hertford House (today’s Wallace Collection), or of Lord Hertford’s properties in Paris that he owned an example of the sculpture, but he is very likely to have done so, given the statement by its maker in 1890. The sculpture in many respects corresponds to Lord Hertford’s taste for scantily clad figures of females. It is not known whether Hertford had abolitionist beliefs but, although he was a notoriously difficult and even misanthropic man, it is by no means impossible that he was opposed to slavery. Hertford also owned a small version of Raffaelle Monti’s contemporary marble sculpture of the Circassian Slave, which remains in the Wallace Collection (Jeremy Warren, The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Italian Sculpture, 2 vols., London 2016, no. 153). It has often been stated that the version of A Daughter of Eve now at Cragside is the example acquired by the Marquess of Hertford. This is possible, but no evidence has yet come to light to support this assertion. It is also possible that Sir William Armstrong acquired his cast directly from Elkington’s. He visited the company’s showrooms in Birmingham on 7 September 1865 (Beach, ‘John Bell’s American Slave’, p. 9; Alistair Grant, personal communication), so could well have ordered a cast then. The Daughter of Eve continued to be marketed by Elkingtons throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, a half-size version being exhibited on the company’s stand at the Birmingham Industrial Exhibition of 1886 (Beach, ‘John Bell’s American Slave’, p. 7, fig. 6). The Cragside version is generally considered the prime surviving cast. Two other full-size bronze versions of A Daughter of Eve are known, sold at auction in 2000 (Sotheby’s London, 5 October 2000, lot 197) and in 2012 (Christie’s London, 20 September 2012, lot 193). The version sold in 2000 lacked the manacles and the earrings were not gold-plated, but the 2012 version had silvered manacles amd the gold-plated earrings. One other version is currently known, in this case half-size, thus corresponding to the model exhibited by Elkington at the 1862 exhibition, in the Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum and Galleries (inv. Be39). Also made by Elkington, it is dated 1877. The figure at Cragside has usually been described as an electrotype. It is certainly not a conventional electrotype and does not bear an Elkington stamp of the sort routinely applied by the company to its electrotype copies. The sculpture has not as yet undergone technical study to determine if it is in fact a conventional bronze casting or, instead, was cast in copper or zinc and then bronzed, using an electrotyping process. This was a technique used for a number of large sculptures at this time for example the eighteen statues made for the new House of Lords between 1852-58. The term ‘bronze’ was used indiscriminately at this period, not least by Elkington, for sculptures made using various forms of casting and electrotyping, so John Bell’s own statement that at least one version was cast in bronze may or may not be accurate. It is certainly though unlikely that Lord Hertford would not have wanted his cast made in true bronze. A Daughter of Eve is the most significant of three works of art at Cragside owned by Sir William Armstrong (1810–1900) that explicitly refer to the practice of slavery. The others are a column inlaid with a Wedgwood ‘Slave Medallion’ (NT 1230999) and a large casket supported by four enslaved men (NT 1228296), the origins and purpose of which are unclear. A Newcastle upon Tyne-born industrialist, designer and manufacturer of arms, Armstrong’s company supplied large quantities of Armstrong breech-loading guns to the British military forces, which were used in conflicts across the globe. It has been asserted that Sir William Armstrong turned a blind eye to a subterfuge permitting his company’s products to be sold to both sides in the American Civil War (Hatt, Sculpture, Chains, and the Armstrong Gun’, p. 234). In 1864, an Armstrong gun was captured in the Confederate Fort Fisher, although it is not clear how it arrived there. A letter of 21 January 1864 to The Times from the Elswick Ordnance Company, in response to allegations that a cargo destined for the Confederate government included Armstrong guns, stated that ‘no Armstrong guns made by us, or under our authority, have yet been shipped to any foreign Government whatever.’ The Union side certainly seems to have sought to acquire guns through a complex scheme involving subterfuge, but these were never delivered (Marshall J. Bastable, Arms and the State. Sir William Armstrong and the remaking of British Naval Power, 1854-1914, Aldershot 2004, pp. 126-28; Henrietta Heald, William Armstrong. Magician of the North, Newcastle upon Tyne 2010, pp. 109-10). More recent research has demonstrated conclusively that Armstrong did not supply either side (Henrietta Heald, personal communication). Little evidence to date has been found in Armstrong’s own writings concerning his personal views on slavery, but a long passage in his book A Visit to Egypt in 1872, written after he had travelled to Egypt to advise the Khedive on bridging the cataracts of the Nile, and published in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1874, suggests he was strongly opposed to the practice. Armstrong wrote that domestic slavery was technically illegal in Egypt but was widely practised, commenting that these domestic slaves were in practice often well-treated in the households in which they worked, but that “The manner in which the poor creatures are kidnapped is atrocious, and is by far the worst part of the business. There are gangs of ruffians on the White Nile who do this horrible work, and their mode of proceeding is to make incursions into adjacent lands, and there, surrounding the villages, they set fire to everything that will burn. When the people rush out of their houses, the men are shot down, the children captured, and the women left to starve or provide for themselves.” He went on to criticise the system of forced common labour in Egypt, suggesting that “The evils and injustices of this system are fully recognised by the Khedive and his government. I heard one of his most able and enlightened ministers denounce it as horrible, but then, he added, it is at present a necessity; without it, labour could not be procured for the maintenance of the canals and the great irrigation works upon which the very existence of Egypt depends” (A Visit to Egypt in 1872, pp. 30-33; Heald, William Armstrong, pp. 176-77). Armstrong chose to place John Bell’s Daughter of Eve with its powerful political message in one of the most prominent positions in his new house at Cragside, where it could not fail to be seen by every visitor to the house. It is not unreasonable to see his acquisition of A Daughter of Eve and its display at Cragside as another reflection of his true views on the practice of slavery. Jeremy Warren March 2022

Provenance: Possibly the cast commissioned by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-1870) whose collection forms the core of the Wallace Collection, London; probably bought by Lord Armstrong (1810 – 1900) after 1870; alternatively, possibly acquired by Sir William Armstrong from Elkington, c. 1865-66.

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Bronze
Artist: John Bell (1811–1895)
Date: c. 1866

Image Details
Date: 21 April 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/60s
ISO: 100
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

A woman at her bath

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Marble sculpture; a bathing woman; after Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna, 1529-1608); probably Italian, c. 1850-75. A large marble figure of a crouching bathing woman, who lifts up her right arm to place her hand delicately above her head, whilst her left arm passes across her front, concealing her breasts. A nineteenth-century copy after a bronze statuette by Giovanni Bologna (1529-1608).

A marble figure of a naked crouching woman, depicted as if in the act of bathing. She almost kneels, her right thigh pressed upon her leg which is raised just above the ground, whilst her left leg is raised higher. The woman twists her body to her right and raises her right arm, so that her hand hovers over her head; her left arm passes across her front, with the hand likewise held just above the surface of the woman’s skin. Her hair is elaborately dressed. On an integral marble base. The sculpture essentially copies a bronze statuette of a bathing woman by the Italo-Flemish sculptor Giovanni Bologna (Giambologna). Born in Flanders, Giambologna spent almost the whole of his career in Florence, where he worked as court sculptor to the Medici dukes, making sculptures in a range of materials and sizes. Giambologna is best known for the small bronze sculptures which he was able, in his efficient and highly productive workshop, to make in multiple versions. His bronzes were sent by the Medici as diplomatic gifts to courts across Europe, further helping to cement Giambologna’s international reputation. One of the themes that preoccupied the sculptor throughout his career was the figure of a bathing woman, of which he made both standing and crouching models. Two types of crouching woman are known through bronze versions, one larger and the other smaller (Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe (eds.), Giambologna 1529–1608: Sculptor to the Medici (Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh and Victoria and Albert Museum, London), London 1978, nos. 19-22). The Cragside figure is partly based on Giambologna’s larger model, the best version of which is the signed bronze in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, from the Medici collections. The head with its elaborately dressed hair, the upper torso and the gestures of the arms all derive from Giambologna. However, in the Cragside figure the position of the woman has been reversed so that she faces to the right, making the lower part of the sculpture much closer to the antique source for Giambologna’s figure, a once celebrated composition of Aphrodite Crouching by the third century B.C. Greek sculptor Doidalsas. The original is long lost, but numerous copies of this influential sculpture were known from the Renaissance onwards, including the so-called Lely Venus in the Royal Collection (on long-term loan to the British Museum). The somewhat meaningless gesture with the woman’s left hand in the Cragside sculpture comes from the fact that the towel that the woman in Giambologna’s bronze model uses to dry herself has here been omitted. The sculpture, which perhaps was made in Italy, fits very well within its niche on the staircase at Cragside, so it seems entirely possible that it was commissioned for this position, in which the woman looks across towards John Bell’s Daughter of Eve. Jeremy Warren March 2022

Provenance: Armstrong collection. Transferred by the Treasury to The National Trust in 1977 via the National Land Fund, aided by 3rd Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside (1919 – 1987).

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Marble
Artist: after Doidalsas of Bithynia
Date: c. 1850-1875

Mercury, god of speed, travellers and commerce

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Sculpture, bronze; Mercury, the god of travellers; after Giambologna (Giovanni Bologna, 1529-1608); French, c. 1850-1900. A bronze statuette of the god Mercury, depicted flying through the air, his left foot balanced on a stream of wind emerging from the mouth of a zephyr or wind god. This iconic image is Giambologna’s most famous sculpture and was copied innumerable times. Here it is paired with a figure of Fortune.

A bronze statuette of Mercury, the god of speed, commerce and travellers. Mercury is depicted naked except for his hat of a type known as petasos, to which are attached small wings. A small wing also grows out of each of Mercury’s ankles. He flies through the air, his left foot balanced on a stream of wind emerging from the mouth of a zephyr (wind god), his right leg raised behind him, his left hand cradling his caduceus or herald’s wand, formed from a winged staff around which are entwined two serpents. He points the finger of his raised right hand into the air, towards the heavens. A fig leaf hides Mercury’s genitals. The inscription ‘J Boulogne’ is incised into the throat of the zephyr. Mounted on a circular bronze base, with moulded sides, which is in turn mounted upon a yellow marble socle, the central stem of which is ringed by a bronze frieze featuring two scenes, one of a putto sculpting a portrait bust surrounded by instruments of the arts, the other with another putto drawing a torso, derived from designs by Carle van Loo (1705-1765). A pair to a figure of Fortuna, goddess of Chance (NT 1231007). Giambologna’s Mercury is an iconic work of art. Even if most people today are unlikely to be aware of its origins and its author, it is nevertheless probably the only Renaissance bronze sculpture still instantly recognizable as a composition, owing to its widespread use as a symbol for communication, for example in stamps and company logos. It is Giambologna’s most famous work, the one which sealed his professional success at the Medici court in Florence. The Mercury is also the summation of Giambologna’s preoccupation as a modeller with creating sculpted figures built around a strong vertical axis. It is a masterpiece of technological achievement, the bronze figure balanced, apparently effortlessly, on a single point, making it appear as if Mercury is bursting upwards as he hurtles through the air. Between the early 1560s and the late 1580s Giambologna made five slightly varied versions of this extraordinary figure, knowledge of which was further disseminated through innumerable copies which continue to be made to this day. The great majority of copies, notably almost all the many made in nineteenth-century foundries, were based on the life-size bronze Mercury made by Giambologna around 1580 and sent from Florence sent to the Villa Medici in Rome, where it was part of a fountain in the gardens, remaining in Rome until its return to Florence in 1780. Today it is in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. This is one of two examples of the Mercury at Cragside. Both are mass-produced products of French foundries and were made in the second half of the nineteenth century, however the other version (NT 1228445) is slightly cruder as a cast. It can well be imagined that Sir William Armstrong, whose businesses depended on technical innovation and making maximum use of the properties of metals, might have especially admired this composition and the way in which the heavy bronze figure balances perfectly on a single point. The pairing of Mercury with a figure of Fortuna, the goddess of chance, is found mainly in the nineteenth century, but occasionally earlier. In the 1670s, full-size lead figures of Mercury and Fortune after Giambologna were installed in the gardens at Ham House (for modern copies at Ham, NT 1140391-92). Like Mercury, Fortune is essentially a creature of the air, blown hither and thither, and she was often depicted balancing on a sphere, representing the world. Some of the nineteenth-century pairings use Giambologna’s own model for the Fortuna, but there are also frequent instances of models by other sculptors, as in the example at Cragside. The bronze reliefs that adorn the socles of the Mercury and Fortuna are allegories of sculpture and drawing, showing small boys (putti) engaged in these activities. They are distantly derived from a set of four celebrated paintings of Allegories of the Arts made by Carle van Loo (1705-65) for the great patron Madame de Pompadour (Xavier Salmon, ed, Madame de Pompadour et les Arts, exh. cat., Musées nationaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Paris 2002, nos. 51-54), which depict young children engaged in the arts of painting, sculpture, architecture and music. The main design on the bronze reliefs on the Cragside bronzes is derived from the allegory of sculpture. Van Loo’s paintings were much copied and also reproduced in the form of prints, so the images were easily accessible. The pairing of Mercury and Fortuna on these distinctive socles is not uncommon, with examples appearing relatively frequently on the art market (for example, Bonham’s Edinburgh, 22 February 2017, lot 285). There are often however variations in the female companion figures, and in the attributes carried by both Mercury and Fortuna. Jeremy Warren March 2022

Provenance: Armstrong collection. Transferred by the Treasury to The National Trust in 1977 via the National Land Fund, aided by 3rd Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside (1919 – 1987).

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Bronze
Artist: after Giambologna (1529-1608)
Date: c. 1850-1900

Image Details
Date: 21 April 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Fortuna, the goddess of Chance

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Sculpture, bronze; Fortuna, goddess of Chance; Chauvin, French; c. 1850-1900. A statuette of the goddess Fortuna balancing upon a wheel. A pair to a figure of Mercury, after Giambologna.

A bronze statuette of Fortuna, the goddess of Chance. She is depicted naked except for a swag of drapery around her midriff that flutters out behind her, as she flies through the air. Her hair is carefully dressed, with a tiara at her forehead. Her right foot balances upon a wheel rising upon waves, her left leg raised behind her, her right hand cradling a cornucopia, symbol of abundance. She points the finger of her raised left hand into the air, towards the heavens. A fracture in the right leg, close to ankle. The inscription ‘Chauvin’ is in one of the waves. Mounted on a circular bronze base, with moulded sides, which is in turn mounted upon a yellow marble socle, the central stem of which is ringed by a bronze frieze featuring two scenes, one of a putto sculpting a portrait bust surrounded by instruments of the arts, the other with another putto drawing a torso, derived from designs by Carle van Loo (1705-1765). A pair to a figure of Mercury, after Giambologna (NT 1231006). Fortuna, the goddess of Chance, was often depicted in art from the medieval period onwards. She is often blindfolded and is usually depicted in an unstable position, balancing upon a sphere or a wheel, symbolising the uncertainty and inconstancy in the world’s fortunes. Especially in medieval art, the wheel is sometimes depicted with people attached to it, clambering up it or falling from it as the wheel turns. Often a powerful individual such as a monarch or bishop is shown descending towards the bottom. In the case of the present bronze, there is a small wheel and the woman carries a cornucopia, symbolic of abundance, somewhat diluting the goddess’s traditional iconography. The statuette, signed by a sculptor Chauvin, who remains to be identified but who must have been working in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, was specifically designed as a pair for the Mercury, the figure’s pose being an exact reflection of it in reverse. The bronze reliefs that adorn the socles of the Mercury and Fortuna are allegories of sculpture and drawing, showing small boys (putti) sculpting and drawing. They are distantly derived from a set of four celebrated paintings of Allegories of the Arts made by Carle van Loo (1705-65) for the great patron Madame de Pompadour (Xavier Salmon, ed, Madame de Pompadoour et les Arts, exh. cat., Musées nationaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Paris 2002, nos. 51-54), which depict young children engaged in the arts of painting, sculpture, architecture and music. The main design on the bronze reliefs on the Cragside bronzes is derived from the allegory of sculpture. The models are not uncommon and appear relatively frequently on the art market (for example, Bonham’s Edinburgh, 22 February 2017, lot 285). There are often however variations in the female companion figures, and in the attributes carried by both Mercury and Fortuna. Jeremy Warren March 2022

Provenance: Bequeathed to the National Trust by Mrs Veronica Mary Gibbs. Transferred to Cragside in June 1999.

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Bronze
Artist: Chauvin (fl. c.1850 – 1900)
Date: c. 1850-1900

Image Details
Date: 21 April 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/33s
ISO: 320
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

The Dying Gladiator

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:29:00 +0000

Bronze; The Dying Gladiator; after Pierre Julien (1731-1804); c. 1800-1820. A bronze figure of the Dying Gladiator, after a marble model presented by the artist as his reception piece for the French Academy in 1779. The part-naked figure is seated and looks down towards the ground

A bronze figure of the Dying Gladiator, with a young and bearded male figure seated upon the ground, naked except for a drapery across his midriff. Supporting himself upon his left hand, which clutches a laurel crown, and resting his right arm upon his circular bossed shield, partly covered by the swag of drapery, he looks down towards the ground and his laurel crown. His sword lies on the ground, beneath his right leg. The gladiator’s pensive expression, as his life ebbs slowly away, captures his mingling sensations of triumph and regret, memories and their extinction. This is a very well-cast and beautiful bronze, with a rich golden patination. A bronze cast after a once celebrated marble model by the French eighteenth-century sculptor Pierre Julien (1731-1804). Born in Le Puy, after training with a local sculptor Julien went to Paris, where he joined the workshop of Guillaume II Coustou. In 1768 he won a scholarship to the Académie de France in Rome, where he spent three years, before returning to Paris and work for Coustou. It was only after Coustou’s death in 1777 that Julien began to develop his own fully independent artistic personality. As a sculptor he adapted his style from a rococo idiom early in his career towards an ever-purer neo-classicism, in tune with the tastes of the years leading up to and into the French Revolution. The marble Dying Gladiator, proudly signed on the base ‘PAR Mr. JULIEN. 1779’, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (Pascal, Pierre Julien, pp. 26-28 ; Grandjean and Scherf, Pierre Julien 1731-1804, p. 32-35, no. 3), has always been recognised as one of his masterpieces, and ‘lies at the root of his reputation as one of the first to set France back on the true and narrow path of classicism.’ (West, From Pigalle to Préault, p. 89). It is a classic example of a composition based on an anatomical study of a male nude known as an académie, because drawing classes using hired models were regularly held at the Académie. The Dying Gladiator was Julien’s reception piece when, after a first rejection in 1776, he was elected to membership of the Académie Royale in 1779. A plaster version made in 1778 is in the Musée Denon, Chalon-sur-Saône (Pierre Julien 1731-1804, no. 4). The original inspiration for the subject of the Dying Gladiator came from the Roman marble in the Capitoline Museums in Rome, also sometimes known as the Dying Gladiator or, more usually, the Dying Gaul. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this was one of the most famous of antique sculptures (Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven/London 1981, pp. pp. 224-27, no. 44), and was widely diffused through small bronze copies, examples of which are in National Trust collections (e.g. Belton House, NT 435473; Gunby Hall, NT 637918). The Capitoline marble is a more horizontal composition, with the dying man half-lying on the ground, and its subject is clearly a dying warrior, rather than a gladiator. Julien studied the sculpture when he was in Rome and indeed whilst there made a reduced copy of it for a French patron (Musée du Louvre, Paris; Pierre Julien 1731-1804, pp. 92-94, no. 1). For his own composition, Julien created however a more upright composition. For example, the shield lies on the ground in the Dying Gaul but here stands up vertically; Julien also added the laurel wreath, to emphasise that the man had been fatally wounded in a contest. The composition is remarkable for its boldness and for the coiled tension it contains within itself, with the weary lassitude of the right arm, resting upon the edge of the shield, contrasting with the rigid left arm, the only thing that prevents the dying man from falling and finally expiring. Gladiators were slaves, captured people who were forced to fight to the death for the pleasure of the Roman audiences who flocked to see the gladiatorial contests. In eighteenth-century France, the figure of Spartacus was seen as a symbol of the individual’s struggle for freedom against tyranny. Spartacus was a Thracian-born gladiator who inspired and led an army of fellow escaped slaves in defiance of the Roman state over some two years from 73-71 BC, until his heroic final stand against overwhelming Roman forces in a battle near modern Senerchia in southern Italy. The philosopher and historian Montesquieu (1689-1755) wrote in his Pensées (1726-1754) in the context of his arguments against slavery that ‘La guerre de Spartacus estoit la plus legitime qui ait jamais esté entreprise’ (‘The war of Spartacus was the most most legitimate ever to have been undertaken’), whilst in similar vein Voltaire (1694-1778), in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) suggested that ‘Il faut avouer que, de toutes les guerres, celle de Spartacus est la plus juste, et peut-être la seule juste.’ (‘It must be admitted that, of all the wars that have happened, that of Spartacus is the most just and, perhaps, the only just one.’). The marble Dying Gladiator was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1779, where it caused a sensation. As one commentator wrote, ‘Il est composé avec genie, et supérieurement rendu. Ce n’est pas du marbre ; c’est de la chair, c’est un malheureux qui expire, et dont on partage la douleur : en un mot cette figure est toute âme. On ne voit pas souvent des morceaux de réception de cette force.’ (‘It is a composition of genius, and executed to a very superior level. This is not marble, it is real flesh, it is the death throes of an unhappy person, whose grief we share; in a single word, this figure is all soul. It is not often that we see reception pieces with the force that is present here’. Jean-Baptiste Radet in Ah ! Ah ! Encore une critique du Salon ! Voyons ce qu’elle chante !, Paris 1779, p. 29). Amongst all the praise, there were a few critics, Baron Grimm spotting the composition’s origins in an academic study: ‘ce n’est ni un gladiateur ni un homme qui se meurt, c’est toute au plus une figure académique, à laquelle on a fait faire une contorsion pénible’ (‘it is neither a gladiator nor a man committing suicide, at best it is an academic figure caought up in painful contorsions’, Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, 1877-82 edition, Vol. 12, p. 330). But overall the sculpture was greatly admired and would come to be seen as a key work in the artist’s career. After Julien’s death in 1804, his friend Joachim Le Breton wrote movingly that ‘Le morceau de reception de Julien réunit, au plus rare degré, la science de l’art à la grâce naturelle et à la perfection du ciseu… Il vit encore, mais le souffle qu’il aspire sera le dernier. La pose, l’arrangement ne ressemblent à aucune statue antique connue, et toute la figure a le caractère de l’antique. C’est la beauté virile d’un homme en parfaite santé, qui meurt d’un accident. Julien prit par cet ouvrage, et en entrant dans l’Académie.. la première place de nos statuaires…’(‘Julien’s reception piece combines to the most exceptional degree the knowledge of art with natural grace and the perfection of the chiselling… He is still living, but this breath will be his last. The pose and the composition bear no relationship to any known antique statue, and yet the figure has all the character of the antique. Here is the virile beauty of a man in the peak of health who yet, by an accident, is now approached by death. With this work and his entry into the Academy, Julien took the first place among our sculptors…’ Joachim Le Breton, ‘Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de Pierre Julien, Statuaire, de l’ancienne Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture’ [1805] in ‘Revue Universelle des Arts’, 13 (1863), pp. 175-88, p. 181). The bronze version of the model would certainly have been made in Paris and the first casts were probably produced around 1800 or into the early decades of the nineteenth century, so possibly even in Julien’s lifetime. A version in bronze was sold as early as 1813 in Paris (Catalogue d’une Collection de Tableaux…. [M. Irlande and M. Bordier], Lebrun, Paris, 27 January 1813, lot 104). It was part of a collection of bronzes, the introduction to the catalogue for which implied that all the casts had been made recently and with the greatest care in their casting and their finishing (‘..La fonte en a été soignée, et cette perfection conserve les beautés réelles; leur monture est aussi soignée et la ciselure y est menagée avec ce respect qu’il appartient d’avoir pour les chefs-d’oeuvre..’ – ‘the casting has been very carefully done, to a perfection that preserves the true beauty of the originals; they have also been carefully mounted and the chasing has been carried out with that respect that is fitting for masterpieces…’). This statement is significant in the context of the Cragside version of the Dying Gladiator, which is an exceptionally finely executed bronze. A number of casts in bronze are known. As well as the Cragside version, examples are in Bury Art Museum (Inv. BUYGM.0684.1959) and the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (Inv. 1971.9), whilst one was sold in London in 1992 (Sotheby’s, 20 March 1992, lot 91) and another in Paris in 2011 (Sotheby’s, Important French Furniture, Sculpture and Works of Art, 30 September 2011, lot 187). The casts appear from photographs to be very similar, so it is likely that they depend directly or indirectly from the same master model. The Cragside figure has an unusual patch of abrasion of the surface on the left knee. This results from an Armstrong family tradition, on ascending or descending the staircase on which the bronze is situated, to touch the knee for good luck. Jeremy Warren March 2022

Provenance: Armstrong collection. Transferred by the Treasury to The National Trust in 1977 via the National Land Fund, aided by 3rd Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside (1919 – 1987).

Text from the National Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland
Material: Bronze
Artist: after Pierre Julien (1731 – 1804)
Date: c. 1800-1820

Image Details
Date: 21 April 2026
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 500
Licensing: Image of a National Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.