Portrait bust of Lady Avarina Vane-Tempest (1857-1873)
Matthew Noble (Hackness 1818 – London 1876)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1875
Materials
Marble
Measurements
559 mm (22 in) high
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Mount Stewart, County Down
NT 1542337
Summary
Sculpture, marble; portrait bust of Lady Avarina Mary Vane-Tempest (1857-1873); Matthew Noble (1818-1876); 1875. A posthumous portrait of Lady Avarina Mary Vane-Tempest, daughter of the 5th Marquess of Londonderry, who had died in 1873, at the age of just fifteen. This memorial sculpture reminds us that in the nineteenth century death could strike cruelly the wealthiest families no less than the general population. It has particular poignancy, since its maker, the successful Victorian sculptor Matthew Noble, created this work in the months after he had lost his own sixteen-year old son.
Full description
A posthumous portrait bust of Lady Avarina Mary Vane-Tempest (1857-1873), made in 1875 by Matthew Noble (1818-1876). The subject is depicted looking to her right, wearing a simple buttoned dress, with a sprig of lily of the valley tucked into the top. She has long flowing hair, brushed back from her forehead and her ears, which falls down her back and onto her shoulders. The subject’s name is inscribed on the back, together with the artist’s signature and the date. Avarina Vane-Tempest was the second daughter of the 5th Marquess of Londonderry and his wife Mary Cornelia. She died at Londonderry House on 26 June 1873, aged just fifteen. According to a notice published the following day in the Daily Gazette for Middlesbrough, Avarina had first fallen ill around fifteen months beforehand, just after the hardly less early death from a painful illness of her elder sister Frances, aged 21. Since then Avarina herself had according to the report steadily declined. The sensitive depiction of her by Matthew Noble was made in her memory two years after her death. In 1879, Lord and Lady Londonderry, who lived mostly in Plas Machynlleth in Powys, commissioned a new stained glass East window for the church of Saint Peter in Machynlleth, in memory of the Ladies Frances and Avarina. Matthew Noble was a prolific and successful sculptor in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Although he lived and worked in London for most of his career, Noble found many of his clients in the wealthy industrial areas of the north of England. He made numerous commemorative statues, especially for Manchester, and also many portrait busts. A number of Noble’s sculptures were disseminated in the form of Parian ware ceramic reproductions, including his posthumous portrait of Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland in older age, also known through a small version in the unusual material of ivory, at Mount Stewart (NT 1658117.2). Noble exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy but failed to be elected a member. Even by Victorian standards, Matthew Noble was a highly productive artist, who must have employed many assistants. He was described in a letter written by his contemporary and rival Thomas Woolner as ‘a person who never touches the work that goes under his name.’ Noble died relatively young, in his late fifties, his obituary in the Art Journal recording his ‘exceedingly delicate constitution’, but also the sculptor’s 'rare kindly qualities of mind and heart. Generous in his acts and in his sympathies, amiable in his disposition, his nature was essentially kind and good'. (Art Journal, 1876, p. 276). The portrait bust of Avarina Vane-Tempest, one of Noble’s last works, must have been a particularly poignant commission for the artist, who had lost one of his four sons, Charles, in 1874, at the age of just sixteen. In January 1876, a second son, Herbert, who had been a promising sculptor in his own right, died in a railway accident, aged nineteen. These losses were said to have hastened Matthew Noble’s own death, a few months in June 1876. Jeremy Warren September 2022
Provenance
Wynyard Park, Statue Hall; on loan from the Estate of the Marquess of Londonderry.
Credit line
Estate of the Marquess of Londonderry
Marks and inscriptions
Edge of bust, at back:: AVARINA MARY VANE TEMPEST Back of support: : M. NOBLE Sc. / LONDON / 1875
Makers and roles
Matthew Noble (Hackness 1818 – London 1876), sculptor
References
Wynyard 1949: Inventory and Valuation of the Contents of Wynyard Park, Co. Durham, the property of the Most Honourable the Marquess of Londonderry… deceased. Prepared for the purpose of probate by H. Clifford-Smith. 1949, p. 35.