An Offering to Hymen
Sir Alfred Gilbert RA (London 1854 – London 1934)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1884 - 1886 (model) - 1900 - 1920 (cast)
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
294 x 63 mm
Place of origin
Brussels
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515067
Summary
Bronze, An Offering to Hymen, Sir Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934), cast Belgium, Brussels or United Kingdom, model 1884-1886, cast probably c. 1900-20. A bronze statuette by Sir Alfred Gilbert depicting an Offering to Hymen, the god of marriage. A slim naked figure of a young pubescent girl with short hair stands, gazing at a small flower that she holds in her hands. On an integral circular base, set upon a separately cast octagonal base with arches on each side, and at each corner a winged harpy and, below this, a monstrous mask. The sculpture was conceived in 1884, when Gilbert was living in Rome, and was first exhibited in London in 1886 in the form of a larger-scale bronze figure. The smaller-size version is known in many examples. The top part of the flower appears to be broken off.
Full description
Hymen or Hymenaeus, the son of Apollo and one of the muses, was the ancient Greek god of marriage. In Greek mythology, he took the form of a handsome youth carrying a bridal torch and a nuptial veil, whose name was invoked in the bridal song (hymenaios). In his statuette, Alfred Gilbert depicted a young girl, standing naked in a quite unselfconscious pose, offered her gift to Hymen. The innocent simplicity of the main figure group contrasts with the small base, intensely and grotesquely decorated with winged harpies, monstrous Greek mythological creatures which took the form of vicious birds with women’s heads, and, at the bottom, a series of monster masks. Susan Beattie suggested that this base was ‘modelled with grotesques so stylised as to suggest the hieroglyphics on a pagan altar, the pedestal thus echoing the symbolism of the statuette’ (Beattie 1983, p. 143). The model is recorded as having been conceived in 1884, during a period when Gilbert was living in Rome in straitened circumstances. It was at this time that he also sculpted his Perseus Arming, an example of which is also at Anglesey Abbey (NT 515027). Whereas the Perseus is heavily influenced by Italian Renaissance sculpture, the Offering to Hymen is remarkably bold and modern in its conception, in its abstraction and the figure of the girl, caught at a moment between adolescence and womanhood. The model was one of the three Miss Pettigrews, Hetty, Lily and Rose, sisters who worked as professional models for many leading artists of the day, including Holman Hunt, Leighton, Millais and Whistler. The sculpture was first exhibited in 1886 at the Grosvenor Gallery, in the form of a large-scale bronze, the only known example of which was exhibited at the Alfred Gilbert exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1986 (Dorment 1985, pp. 53-54, Pl. 25; Dorment 1986, no. 18). The discovery of this large version (78 cm. high), which is around the size of the large version of the Perseus Arming, allowed the model to be situated in a sequence of works made by Gilbert around this time, notably the Perseus and the Icarus (Dorment 1986, no. 15), all of which depict young adolescent men and women during their passages to adulthood. Richard Dorment suggested that ‘Gilbert conveys anxiety by the girl’s stiff carriage; he magically tells us through pose and gesture that the child will perform the ceremony with exaggerated solemnity and formality’ (Dorment 1986, p. 113). In its smaller-size version, the Offering to Hymen was among the most frequently reproduced of Gilbert’s models. Other casts of the model are in the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, Cardiff, Manchester City Art Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The main variation in the many versions lies in the object or objects proffered by the girl, which range from a cup (made variously from bronze, silver or aluminium), a rose, a sprig of hawthorn made out of wire, or a tiny figure of Anteros. Casts were made by the Compagnie des Bronzes in Brussels, the founder used by Gilbert to make authorised casts of serval of his best-known models. He is known to have ordered ten casts of the Offering to Hymen from the Compagnie des Bronzes between the years 1900 and 1920. However, Gilbert was well aware that unauthorised casts of some of his most popular works, notably the Perseus Arming, Victory and an Offering to Hymen were being made during this period and were circulating on the market (Dorment 1985, pp. 233-34; Penny 1992, III, p. 77). Jeremy Warren 2019
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) 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. 136. British Sculpture 1850-1914, exh.cat., The Fine Art Society, London 1968, no. 61. Beattie 1983: Susan Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London 1983, p. 143, fig. 134. Penny 1992: Nicholas Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum, 1540 to the Present Day, 3 vols., Oxford 1992, vol. III, no. 501. Dorment 1985: Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, New Haven and London 1985, pp. 53, 59-61, 67, 99, 131, 175, 183, 220, 233, 322, Pls. 25 and 32. Dorment 1986: Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert. Sculptor and Goldsmith, exh.cat., venue: Royal Academy of Arts, London 1986, pp. 112-14, nos. 18-19. Sir Alfred Gilbert & the New Sculpture, Fine Art Society and Robert Bowman Gallery, London 2008, pp. 52-53. British New School, Bowman Sculpture, London 2013, pp. 26-29. Alfred Gilbert, Frederic Leighton and the New Sculpture, exh. cat., venue: The Fine Art Society, London 2015, pp. 26-27, no. 2. The New Sculpture Movement: Searching for the Ideal, exh. cat., venue: Bowman Sculpture, London 2018, pp. 36-37.