Portrait statuette of David Lloyd George (1863-1945)
Sidney Conrad Strube (Bishopsgate, 1891 - Golders Green 1956)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1930
Materials
Plaster
Measurements
242 x 228 x 96 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 1221040
Summary
Sculpture, plaster; David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, OM, PC, MP (1863-1945); Sidney Conrad Strube (1891-1956); 1930. A plaster statuette of the Liberal politician, one of a series of sculptures based on characters in the political cartoons of Sidney Strube, commissioned from Strube in 1930. Strube regarded Lloyd George as his favourite subject, whilst Lloyd George wrote that Strube’s caricatures ‘taught me how to laugh at myself.’
Full description
A portrait statuette of David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, OM, PC, MP (1863-1945), by Sidney Conrad Strube (1891-1956). The politician is shown making a speech, depicted as a squat, portly figure wearing a bow-tie, waistcoat and tail coat, his arms outstretched and a broad grin on his face. His pince-nez spectacles dangle down over his right chest. From between the openings of the tail coat at the back emerges the head and forelegs of a rabbit, hinting that he is also here acting as a conjuror. On an integral circular base with the initials ‘L.G.’, signed towards the back of the base ‘STRUBE’. The left hand has been broken and repaired, and the right hand is also broken, with elements missing. End of the rabbit’s nose broken off, and a chip in the base at back. The son of German immigrants, Sidney Strube began his career as a commercial draughtsman, but discovered early his talent for drawing cartoons, publishing the first in 1910. In 1912 he joined the staff of the Daily Express, where he remained for almost his entire career until 1948, when he was ‘retired’ to make way for a younger cartoonist. At the peak of his career in the 1930s, Strube was regarded by many as the world’s most popular cartoonist; in 1930, the Express's owner Lord Beaverbrook was forced to raise his salary to the unheard of level of £10,000 a year, to prevent his defection to a rival newspaper. Strube was celebrated for his creation of a figure called the Little Man, who appeared daily on the editorial page of the Daily Express. With his bowler hat and umbrella, the figure was representative of the hard-pressed ordinary man or woman struggling to make ends meet, whilst for many people this more modest middle-class figure also symbolised the new Britain that was developing, a country increasingly distant from the aggressive jingoism of an earlier national symbol, John Bull. Likewise in his political cartoons, Sidney Strube avoided biting satire, instead adopting a gentler style of humour, that not only chimed with the taste of readers of the Daily Express, but was even appreciated by his targets. Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), Prime Minister for many years during the interwar period, compared Strube’s work to that of his rival David Low: ‘Strube is a gentle genius. I don’t mind his attacks because he never hits below the belt. Now Low is a genius, but he is evil and malicious. I cannot bear Low!’ (Benson 2004, p. 54). Baldwin’s political rival the Liberal politician David Lloyd George, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1980-1915 and Prime Minister 1916-22, was Strube’s favourite target for his cartoons. Strube himself even suggested that he took up political cartooning because of him: ‘I might never have become a cartoonist had it not been for David Lloyd George. He was one of those characters that make a cartoonist. He had all the qualities that a cartoonist dreams of. Apart from his great oratorical powers, he had expressive features, which were a delight to draw, whether as conjuror, wizard, pirate, puck, doctor, farmer or a wasp under an inverted tumbler. I watched and caricatured Lloyd George throughout the years, from the days of his wizard’s black moustache down to the time when he became a picturesque figure with long white locks and a flowing cape. One could always rely upon L.G. to fit into any position within the cartoon. One day he was the giant, the next the giant-killer. He took the centre of the stage with the ease of one born to it. Even if he were tucked away in an odd corner, he was still the sparkle of the cartoon.’ (Benson 2004, p. 12). For his part, Lloyd George seems to have relished Strube’s cartoons: ‘The first thing I did, even before I got out of bed was to take up the Daily Express, a paper with whose policy I often profoundly disagreed, and looked at Strube’s cartoon. That put me in good humour for the rest of the day. Strube taught me how to laugh at myself and that, believe me, is a virtue which many eminent men would do well to acquire.’ (Benson 2004, p. 12). Strube’s statuette of David Lloyd George shows the politician in the guise of a conjuror, the rabbit which will come out of the hat lurking within the subject’s clothes at his back, but cheekily peering out. It is one of a group of five statuettes that were made in 1930, based on Strube’s drawings of five of the leading politicians of the day, the others Stanley Baldwin, William Joynson-Hix (1865-1932), Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937) and Winston Churchill (1874-1965). The statuette does not seem to be recorded in any of the extant Londonderry inventories, but it complements very well the seven satirical statuettes at Mount Stewart made by Dantan jeune in the early 1830s (NT 1221043-1221049), helping to emphasise the continuity of the Londonderry family’s involvement in the political life of the United Kingdom over more than a century. Perhaps the statuette of David Lloyd George was acquired by Edith Marchioness of Londonderry, who recounted a reception held at Londonderry House shortly after the end of the First World War, noting how the War had changed the world in many ways, including the nature of receptions held in the great London houses, but also her admiration for Lloyd-George: ‘What a vast change in those five short years. The world as we knew it then, seemed leagues away. The very fact of a party being held at Londonderry House, with Mr. David Lloyd George standing at the head of the staircase would have seemed quite incredible a few years back. He himself would have been the first to agree [….] Mr. Lloyd George possesses in a high degree “the gift of tongues”, and no one made better use of his talent of speech during those bitter years of warfare. Never did he give way to despair. His speeches delivered from the great City of London during some of the most critical days of the war were always a rallying cry, sounding a note of victory and faith in the men and women of these islands, and I shall always remember what the country owes him for those inspiring speeches of his, when his great, almost superhuman gifts of oratory and persuasion made defeat appear almost a victory and the end of our woes in sight.’ (Londonderry 1938, pp. 175-76). The Londonderrys must have much enjoyed the humour to be seen in this statuette, gently poking fun at Lloyd George the great orator. Jeremy Warren October 2022
Provenance
Probably Londonderry House; Lady Mairi Bury (1921-2009), by whom given to the National Trust, 1976.
Marks and inscriptions
Front of base: L-G Towards back of base: STRUBE Underside of base, label: 399
Makers and roles
Sidney Conrad Strube (Bishopsgate, 1891 - Golders Green 1956), sculptor
References
Benson 2004: Timothy S. Benson, Strube. The World’s most popular cartoonist, London 2004, p. 61.