The Mairi Fountain: Lady Mairi Elizabeth Vane-Tempest-Stewart, later Viscountess Bury (1921-2009)
Margaret Wrightson (Stockton on Tees 1877 - 1976)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1925 - 1928
Materials
bronze
Measurements
750 mm (H); 640 mm (D)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 1221060
Summary
Sculpture. Bronze; the Mairi Fountain; Margaret Wrightson (1877-1976); 1925-28. A bronze garden fountain commissioned in 1925 and installed in 1928, depicting Lady Mairi Elizabeth Vane-Tempest-Stewart, later Viscountess Bury (1921-2009), at the age of four, surrounded by bells and cockle-shells as in the nursery rhyme, a verse from which is reproduced on the edge of the stone fountain basin. This is the most important of a number of sculptures by Margaret Wrightson at Mount Stewart, depicting members of the Londonderry family.
Full description
The Mairi Fountain, by Margaret Wrightson. A small garden fountain with a stone basin to collect water, the floor made from blue mosaic tiles, in its centre an octagonal stone column, the foot rectangular and tapering, the sides decorated with stylised reeds, at the top an opening bud. Atop the column is a bronze figure of Lady Mairi Elizabeth Vane-Tempest-Stewart, naked and with her right leg crossed under the left; she looks down towards her left, with a pert smile. Around the figure of Lady Mairi is a circular bronze frame, to which are attached fifteen bells arranged in groups of three, and five cockle shells, the tongues of the bells designed as conduits for water. Around the basin of the fountain the inscription in inlaid lead letters: MAIRI MAIRI / QUITE CONTRARY / HOW DOES YOUR / GARDEN GROW. The column and part of the base are replacements, as are the outer blocks of the basin, into which the letters have been re-sited. The blue mosaic tiles were installed by Raymond Gilmore. Margaret Wrightson was the daughter of the marine engineer and politician Sir Thomas Wrightson (1839-1921), and grew up in Stockton-on-Tees at the family home, Norton Hall. After studying at the Royal College of Art under Sir William Blake Richmond and Edouard Lanteri, as well as in Paris, she became a professional sculptor, enjoying a long and reasonably successful career. Wrightson exhibited at the Royal Academy regularly between 1906 and 1961, and even more assiduously at the exhibitions of the Society of Women Artists, between 1912 and 1972. Much of her work consisted in portrait commissions, but she also made a number of larger works, including ‘The Viking landing on the Northumberland Coast’, commissioned in 1925 for Sir Walter Runciman, now on display outside County Hall, Morpeth in Northumberland. The Vane and Wrightson families were neighbouring landowners in Northumberland from at least the early eighteenth century, at which time they were on close and friendly terms. In the later nineteenth century, Sir Thomas Wrightson renewed relations, developing a close friendship with the 6th Marquess and Marchioness of Londonderry (Wrightson 1894, pp. 99-100). His daughter Margaret would therefore have known the Londonderrys from childhood, but her long association with the family as a professional sculptor seems to have begun with the fountain made for Wynyard Park, entitled ‘Spirit of the Garden’, which was probably commissioned by Theresa, 6th Marchioness of Londonderry. A bronze statuette exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1912, as ‘Spirit of Spring’ (no. 1918), may have been a model, whilst the completed fountain was exhibited in 1913 (no. 1819). Formed from a lithe nude figure of Persephone, it was sold in 2104 by Christie’s (18 September, lot 300) for £68,500. From the 1920s onwards Margaret Wrightson made a series of portrait sculptures for Charles, 7th Marquess of Londonderry and his wife Edith, whilst further sculptures were commissioned by their daughter Lady Mairi Bury. However, their commission was the Mairi Fountain, commissioned in 1925, when Mairi was aged four, and completed and installed in the Mairi Garden at Mount Stewart in 1928. Margaret Wrightson in fact made several fountains in the course of her career, another being the Charles Lamb Memorial Fountain in the Inner Temple Gardens, London, also inaugurated in 1928. Jeremy Warren October 2022
Provenance
Commissioned by the sitter’s parents, the 7th Marquess & Marchioness of Londonderry; thence by descent, until given to the National Trust by Lady Mairi Bury (1921-2009), in 1976.
Marks and inscriptions
Edge of fountain basin:: MAIRI MAIRI / QUITE CONTRARY / HOW DOES YOUR / GARDEN GROW
Makers and roles
Margaret Wrightson (Stockton on Tees 1877 - 1976), sculptor
References
Wrightson 1894: Rev. W. Garmonsway Wrightson, Memorials of the Family of Wrightson, London 1894 R.B.S. 1939: R.B.S. Modern British Sculpture, London 1939, p. 105.