Alfred Gilbert

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This is an article about the sculptor; see also Alfred Carlton Gilbert for the inventor and toymaker.

Sir Alfred Gilbert (August 12, 1854 – November 4, 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.

He was the son of Alfred Gilbert, a musician. He received his education Inainly in Paris (cole des Beaux-Arts, under 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 J. Edgar Boehm, R.A.

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 Mr Gilbert was occupied with the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, in Piccadilly Circus, London, a work of great originality and beauty, 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.

Gilberts sense of decoration is paramount in all he does, 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. Mr 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.

[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