Comedy and Tragedy
Sir Alfred Gilbert RA (London 1854 – London 1934)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1891 - 1892
Materials
Bronze and verde antico marble
Measurements
745 x 310 mm; 190 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515042
Summary
Bronze, Comedy and Tragedy: ‘Sic Vita’ [Thus is life], Sir Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934), c.1891-92. A nude figure of a youth holds in his hands an ancient comic mask, symbolising Comedy. According to the sculptor, when the boy’s face is seen through the mask, it has a comic aspect. To his forehead is attached a second mask. He is distracted by a bee stinging him on his left leg, which he raises up in surprise, his face distorted with pain into a scream, emphasising the second theme of Tragedy. Mounted on a verde antico green marble circular base. Probably sand cast. Arms and mask cast together, joins visible in biceps; legs cast separately.
Full description
The figure of Comedy and Tragedy was developed by Alfred Gilbert in the years 1891-92, when he was also working on his celebrated figure of Eros for the Shaftesbury Memorial fountain at Piccadilly Circus in London. Gilbert used the same model, Angelo Colorossi, for both figures. He noted in a letter of 2 February 1891 that he had begun work upon the Comedy and Tragedy, whilst in May of that year he was working on the Eros. Notionally, Comedy and Tragedy: Sic Vita comments on the dualism of these two dramatic forms in ancient Greek drama, the comic mask held by the boy being closely derived from ancient Greek models. As Gilbert himself explained, ‘..the subject haunted me. Always having the Theatre in my mind I conceived the notion of harking back to the old Greek stage upon which masks were always worn, and I conceived a kind of stage property boy rushing away in great glee with his comedy mask, and on his way being stung by a bee. This was the only way in which I could present the hidden pain and passion of the boy.’ (Joseph Hatton, ‘The Life and Work of Alfred Gilbert, R.A., M.V.O., LL.D.’, Easter Art Annual, 1903, p. 12). However, Tragedy, as represented by the boy’s startled expression as he is stung by a bee, also reflects a more contemporary naturalism. According to Gilbert, the composition was also strongly autobiographical. He told Joseph Hatton that Comedy and Tragedy, conceived by the sculptor as a companion to his figure of Perseus Arming (a version of which is also in the Fairhaven collection at Anglesey Abbey, NT 515027), was ‘the climax to my cycle of stories’, autobiographical interpretations of the artist’s life (Hatton 1903, p. 11. The Latin suffix to the sculpture’s title, translating as ‘Thus is Life’, is a reminder of this personal element. The main title is taken from the play Comedy and Tragedy by W.S. Gilbert, which in the early 1890s was revived at the Lyceum Theatre in London. Starring his friend the American actress Mary Anderson, Gilbert attended the play night after night. He told Hatton how he was ‘living a kind of double life at that time’; at night he played the ‘comedy’ of the well-known man about town, whilst returning during the day to the ‘tragedy’ of mounting personal debts. Gilbert’s home life was also increasingly unhappy at this time. Jason Edwards, who has perceived homoerotic elements in Gilbert’s nude male figures, has noted that a short story, ‘The Child in the House’ by Walter Pater published in 1878 in Macmillan’s Magazine, described a young boy who, when searching for a basket of crab apples, was stung by a wasp and experienced the ‘delicious passion of sudden severe pain’ (Jason Edwards, The “Open Secret” of Alfred Gilbert’s Male Nudes, Leeds 2006, p. 8). Gilbert noted in his studio diary for 2 February 1891 that he had begun work on the sculpture, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892 (Cecil Gilbert, ed., The Studio Diaries of Alfred Gilbert between 1890 and 1897. Volume 1. 1890-1894, Newcastle 1992, p. 33). In discussing the sculpture, Claude Phillips criticised the subject, suggesting that ‘the tragic antithesis has been exaggerated, and is grounded on too slight a basis’, but he concluded that ‘for fineness and suppleness of modelling nothing here can compete on equal terms’ with the figure and that his criticism of the subject was more than counterbalanced by ‘the beauty of the modelling in the torso, and the realistically rendered limbs and extremities’ (Claude Phillips, Sculpture of the Year. British Sculpture, Magazine of Art, 15 (1892), pp. 378-84, p. 380). Subsequent commentators were also to criticise the subject, for example Adrian Bury, who regarded the bronze as the ‘only figure where Gilbert has failed to present a great theme with the dignity characteristic of his genius.’ (Bury 1952, p. 59). The subject is certainly secondary to the sculpture’s status as a virtuosic exercise in the depiction of the human body; it should be seen as a homage to the Renaissance sculptor Giambologna (1529-1608) in the way in which it is designed to be admired in the round and from all directions, thus quite unlike a work such as the Perseus arming, essentially made to be seen from a single angle. The pose is also reminiscent of that of the bronze figure of Mercury on the pedestal of Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus in Florence. A model in plaster is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Diane Bilbey and Marjorie Trusted, British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. A Concise Catalogue of the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2002, p. 279, no. 426). The first definitive record of a cast in bronze is in an exhibition in 1900. The sculpture was cast in bronze in two sizes, many casts being made at the Compagnie des Bronzes in Brussels. The Anglesey Abbey figure is an example of the larger size, measuring around 75 cm. with its base. Other examples of casts of this size are in the Detroit Institute of Arts (Dorment 1985, figs. 81-83), the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (Dorment 1986, no. 22), Leeds City Art Galleries (Victorian High Renaissance, exhibition, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1978, no. 97a), the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Nicholas Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum. 1540 to the Present Day, 3 vols., Oxford 1992, III, p. 83, no. 505). The smaller figure has a height of c. 40 cm.; examples are in the V&A (Bilbey/Trusted 2002, no. 425) and the NationaL Gallery of Art, Washington (Inv. 1984.67.1. Alfred Gilbert, 1986, no. 23; Ruth Butler and Suzanne Glover Lindsay, European Sculpture of the Nineteenth Century, Washington 2000, pp. 266-71, entry by Alison Luchs). A version once owned by the collector John Postle Heseltine and illustrated by Joseph Hatton in his 1903 article was sold at auction in 2008 (Paintings and Furniture, Duke’s, Dorchester, 2 October 2008, lot 450). Jeremy Warren, 2019
Provenance
Purchased by Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) in March 1945 from the Fine Art Society, London, for 150 guineas (£157.50); bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Fairhaven with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Sir Alfred Gilbert RA (London 1854 – London 1934), sculptor
References
Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, p. 135, Silver Strong Room Bury 1954: Adrian Bury, Shadow of Eros :A biographical and critical study of the life and works of Sir Alfred Gilbert, London 1954, p. 59 Beattie 1983: Susan Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London 1983, p. 162, fig. 157 Dorment 1985: Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, New Haven and London 1985, pp. 131-34, figs. 81-83 Dorment 1986: Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert. Sculptor and Goldsmith, exh.cat., venue: Royal Academy of Arts, London 1986, pp. 116-17, no. 22 Glaves-Smith 1910: John Glaves-Smith, Reverie, Myth, Sensibility. Sculpture in Britain 1880-1910, exh.cat., venue: Stoke on Trent City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke on Trent 1992, p.47, no. 21 Edwards 2006: Jason Edwards, The 'Open Secret' of Alfred Gilbert's Male Nudes, 1882-c.1895, Leeds 2006, p. 8 Sir Alfred Gilbert and the New Sculpture: British Sculpture 1850-1930, exh.cat., venue: Fine Art Society in association with the Robert Bowman Gallery, London 2008, pp. 40-43 Alfred Gilbert, Frederic Leighton and the New Sculpture, exh. cat., venue: The Fine Art Society, London 2015, pp. 30-31, no. 4 The New Sculpture Movement: Searching for the Ideal, exh. cat., venue: Bowman Sculpture, London 2018, pp. 42-47