Summary

Sculpture, marble; Undine; Alexander Munro (1825-71); c. 1869. A full-length marble statue by Alexander Munro depicting the water-nymph Undine, rushing through the rushes with the wind blowing her hair. The story of Undine, as told by the German writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843), became immensely popular in Germany, Britain and elsewhere in Europe in the nineteenth century. It would have especially resonated with Sir William Armstrong, a large part of whose business success came from his exploitation of the power of water.

Full description

A full-length marble statue of the water-nymph Undine, by Alexander Munro (1825-71). She is depicted wearing a loose diaphanous dress, bare-shouldered and with the dress slipped down to reveal her left breast. Her loose hair tumbles down her back, some strands flying out into the wind, others seeming to merge with the folds of her dress. She appears to emerge from a patch of bullrushes, her hands clasped before her, her face sorrowful and her right foot placed delicately upon a water-lily. Her left leg and foot are slightly raised. The bullrushes reach up behind Undine, and the water ripples lightly. The sculpture is mounted upon a circular green marble base, which in turn is set upon a grey marble base. Within the base, ball-bearings are set, allowing the sculpture to be turned. The subject of this exquisite sculpture is the water nymph Undine, the heroine of the novella of that name by the German Romantic writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1777-1843), which was first published in 1811 and translated into English in 1817. The concept of the undine is first found in the sixteenth century in the writings of the physician Paracelsus, who regarded them as subliminal expressions of the element water. Gradually they came to be seen as water nymphs, dwelling in forest pools and around waterfalls, and with beautiful singing voices. At the heart of de la Motte Fouqué’s story of the water spirit Undine, able to transform herself from watery into human forms and back again, is her decision to marry a mortal, Huldbrand, in order to gain a human soul. When eventually, after various intrigues Huldbrand drives away Undine and marries another, she rises from the waters, enters the castle during the wedding celebrations and kisses her former husband, who dies in her arms. After his funeral, she transforms herself into a stream surrounding Huldbrand’s grave, so that she might embrace him for eternity. The tragic story was extremely popular throughout nineteenth-century Europe and especially in Britain, inspiring numerous operas, ballets, poems and novels and of course paintings and sculptures. Sir William Armstrong’s business career was in a sense built on water, through his understanding of the opportunities that hydraulic power and hydro-electricity offered, so it is particularly appropriate that he should have owned a sculpture of the watersprite Undine. But beyond this, Armstrong seems to have had a mystic association with the figure of Undine which, it has been suggested, represented his ideal of womanhood, more fully realised in his marriage to Margaret Ramshaw (Meggie). Armstrong wrote a semi-autobiographical dream story, in which water is given the persona of a mischievous Lady Brook, a ‘captivating guide’ who draws on the narrator with her light-hearted and flirtatious teasing, recalling contemporary descriptions of Margaret Armstrong’s joie de vivre and lively charm. But, just as with the Undine of de la Motte Fouqué's story, Armstrong’s imaginary beauty had her darker side: ‘We had reached the forest region and trees were closing in on either side as if to forbid our separation. I advanced a little further and then I stood upon a jutting shelf of rock from which the stream descended with a single leap into a deep and narrow forest glen. I saw her at the bottom sparkling amongst the trees and still gaily tripping forward – but as she proceeded on her course the banks contracted over her, the trees became more densely crowded, and at a little distance she retired into absolute darkness.’ (Henrietta Heald, ‘William Armstrong. Magician of the North’, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 2020, p. 36). Alexander Munro was not a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but was closely associated with its members, notably Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he was on terms of close friendship, and the sculptor Thomas Woolner, the only sculptor member of the PRB and something of a rival to Munro. Born in Inverness to a poor family, Munro showed talent for carving at an early age and was encouraged in his interests and provided with a sound education at Inverness Academy. In 1844 at the age of 18, he moved to London with the assistance of Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, who also found him work on the new Houses of Parliament. Among early commissions to come from the Sutherlands were the Caen stone reliefs of the Four Seasons at Cliveden (NT 766420). In 1847 Munro was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools, where he soon met Gabriel Dante Rossetti, with whom he developed a close friendship, both men sharing a love for poetry and an enthusiasm for the Middle Ages. The large collection of drawings by Rossetti now at Wightwick Manor once belonged to Munro and descended in his family, until their acceptance in lieu of Inheritance Tax in 2017. Munro exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1849 until his death. He enjoyed a moderately successful career, modelling portraits, monuments, historical statues and imaginative compositions, among the latter one of his best-known works, the Paolo and Francesca of 1851 (original plaster version at Wallington, Northumberland, NT 584952). In 1869 Munro, who had been suffering from cancer since around 1865, closed his London studio and moved to Cannes, where he died in 1871 at the age of just 45. The National Trust owns arguably the most important collection anywhere of sculptures by Alexander Munro, with important works at Cliveden, Wightwick, Wallington and of course Cragside. Munro often stayed with his close friends Sir Walter (1797-1879) and Lady Pauline Trevelyan (1816-66) at Wallington Hall, turned by Lady Pauline into a centre for many of the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers, and it was probably through the Trevelyans that he was introduced to Sir William Armstrong. Munro’s statue possibly shows Undine as she rises from the waters to go into the castle after Huldbrand’s marriage, but is more probably a simple evocation of her abstracted and spirit-like being, as she moves through the waters, almost flying in the air. Her essence as a creature within the watery elements is best seen at the back of the sculpture, where her flowing dress seems to become one with the water reeds. This Undine is far less earth-bound than the more stolid figure of her made around the same time by John Hancock (1825-69), another sculptor in the Pre-Raphaelite circles (Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture, no. 17). It has been suggested that ‘Water and wind fascinated Munro’ (Macdonald, Alexander Munro, p. 57). Another water nymph subject by him is the oval relief sculpture of Sabrina (Ackland Art Museum, North Carolina; ibid, fig. 31), whilst the figure of a fountain nymph, cast in bronze for Munro’s monument to Herbert Ingram in Boston, Lincs (plaster version in the Victoria & Albert Museum) is not dissimilar to the Undine, in her loose dress and hair. Munro seems to have made at least two marble statues of Undine in the course of his career. Although an obituary, written after the sculptor’s death in 1871 (Inverness Courier, 12 January 1871, p. 5), stated that the version exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869 was the only one to have been made in marble, a marble figure of the subject by Munro was in fact exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1858 (The exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts. MDCCCLVIII. (1858). The ninetieth., London 1858 p. 49, no. 1255). This may or may not not have been the same model as the Cragside figure. The author of the obituary wrote that ‘The charming story of de la Motte Fouqué, of which Coleridge said it was the only fiction of modern times that had given him a perfectly new idea, was an early favourite of Mr Munro’s; he made several figures embodying his conception of Undine.’ The earliest record of the present model of Undine comes in 1857, when Munro lent a version, either in marble or in plaster, to the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition (Catalogue of the art treasures of the United Kingdom, collected at Manchester in 1857, Manchester 1857, p. 134, no. 52). Other works by Munro at the exhibition included the marble version of the Paolo and Francesca made for William Gladstone (now Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). This plaster version of Undine was illustrated in one of the many publications accompanying the exhibition (The Art-Treasures Examiner. A pictorial, critical, and historical record of the Art-Treasures Exhibition, at Manchester, in 1857, Manchester 1857, p. 255). It may well of course have been this version that was exhibited at the Royal Acdemy in the following year. Munro’s original plaster seems then to have been lent by him to his friend and patron Henry Wentworth Acland (1815-1900), Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford. Acland was responsible for the conception of the Oxford Museum (now the University Museum of Natural History), for which Munro undertook his most significant public sculpture commission, six of the nineteen historical statues of scientists, philosophers and engineers which are arranged around the main hall of the museum. Whilst he was working on the statues, Munro often stayed with the Aclands or with other friends, George Butler and his wife, the reformer Josephine Butler. In around 1868, Munro wrote to Acland asking for the return of the plaster, which must have been in connection with his plan to create another marble version. This version, now at Cragside, was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1869, when it was apparently displayed next to a statue of similar theme, Ophelia, by Thomas Woolner. An engraving of the Undine was published in the Illustrated London News (8 May 1869) and described as ‘one of the most pleasing statues in the present exhibition….. Mr Munro’s delicate fancy and sentiment of ideal beauty are well exemplified by this charming design; and its execution in the marble is especially beautiful.’ For Munro’s obituarist in the Inverness Courier, ‘it is no exaggeration to say that in last year’s Exhibition it was by far the most beautiful work of art in the gallery; nor are there many such purely ideal conceptions to be found in modern sculpture.’ Jeremy Warren March 2022