Show me:
and
Clear all filters

  • 34 items
  • 25 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 3,438 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 280 items
  • 4 items
  • 220 items
  • 13,284 items Explore
  • 209 items Explore
  • 1,225 items Explore
  • 8,751 items Explore
  • 5,089 items Explore
  • 14 items Explore
  • 165 items Explore
  • 13,005 items Explore
  • 13,617 items Explore
  • 4,810 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 5 items
  • 149 items Explore
  • 2,000 items Explore
  • 4,759 items Explore
  • 422 items Explore
  • 252 items
  • 102 items Explore
  • 19,977 items Explore
  • 34 items Explore
  • 1,925 items Explore
  • 1,083 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 2,104 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 456 items Explore
  • 920 items Explore
  • 1 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 7 items
  • 20,318 items Explore
  • 800 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 73 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 793 items
  • 20 items
  • 4 items
  • 26 items
  • 61 items
  • 28 items
  • 319 items Explore
  • 6 items
  • 44 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 2 items
  • 2 items
  • 7 items
  • 121 items Explore
  • 119 items
  • 1 items
  • 976 items Explore
  • 812 items
  • 95 items
  • 27 items
  • 107 items
  • 37,389 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,881 items Explore
  • 1,528 items Explore
  • 403 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 10,424 items Explore
  • 9,684 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1 items
  • 38 items
  • 3 items
  • 4 items
  • 6,777 items Explore
  • 7,364 items Explore
  • 4,632 items Explore
  • 1,910 items Explore
  • 1,194 items Explore
  • 23,713 items Explore
  • 3,626 items Explore
  • 17 items
  • 5 items
  • 334 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 3,360 items Explore
  • 23 items Explore
  • 374 items Explore
  • 796 items Explore
  • 1,093 items Explore
  • 514 items Explore
  • 1,146 items Explore
  • 89 items
  • 125 items Explore
  • 6,955 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 310 items
  • 4 items
  • 2 items
  • 63 items
  • 2 items
  • 2,909 items Explore
  • 1,582 items Explore
  • 203 items
  • 90 items
  • 22,188 items Explore
  • 1,289 items Explore
  • 138 items
  • 847 items Explore
  • 32 items
  • 1 items
  • 130 items Explore
  • 40 items
  • 20 items
  • 252 items
  • 313 items
  • 685 items Explore
  • 346 items Explore
  • 2,429 items
  • 2,544 items
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,394 items Explore
  • 40,349 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,293 items Explore
  • 275 items Explore
  • 8,748 items Explore
  • 31 items
  • 25 items
  • 304 items Explore
  • 777 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 65 items
  • 161 items
  • 50 items
  • 52 items
  • 23,408 items Explore
  • 916 items
  • 66 items
  • 22,644 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 2,337 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1,028 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 759 items
  • 499 items
  • 4 items
  • 3,308 items Explore
  • 179 items
  • 59 items
  • 454 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 21 items
  • 90 items Explore
  • 76 items
  • 281 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 6 items
  • 128 items
  • 295 items
  • 447 items
  • 288 items
  • 1 items
  • 906 items Explore
  • 272 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 11,295 items Explore
  • 755 items Explore
  • 6,032 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 8,298 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,977 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 3,725 items Explore
  • 9,182 items Explore
  • 7,885 items Explore
  • 185 items
  • 19 items
  • 144 items
  • 7 items
  • 853 items Explore
  • 19 items
  • 8 items
  • 1,096 items Explore
  • 269 items
  • 1 items
  • 2,063 items
  • 3,522 items Explore
  • 695 items Explore
  • 18 items
  • 134 items
  • 6,744 items Explore
  • 93 items
  • 18,938 items Explore
  • 3,136 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 10,979 items Explore
  • 37 items
  • 2 items
  • 21,544 items Explore
  • 35 items
  • 13,291 items Explore
  • 3,462 items Explore
  • 5,670 items Explore
  • 33 items
  • 50,825 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 634 items Explore
  • 417 items
  • 26,880 items Explore
  • 216 items
  • 3 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 35 items
  • 27 items
  • 445 items Explore
  • 636 items
  • 209 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 13,667 items Explore
  • 1,360 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 10,260 items
  • 9 items
  • 10 items
  • 14 items
  • 25 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,524 items Explore
  • 913 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 1 items
  • 314 items
  • 502 items Explore
  • 42 items
  • 2,286 items Explore
  • 1,664 items Explore
  • 15 items
  • 1,876 items Explore
  • 150 items
  • 81 items
  • 766 items Explore
  • 3,134 items Explore
  • 44 items
  • 17 items
  • 12 items
  • 10,667 items Explore
  • 23,431 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 41 items
  • 1,374 items
  • 179 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 84 items
  • 1 items
  • 13,583 items Explore
  • 3,582 items Explore
  • 2,904 items Explore
  • 4,798 items Explore
  • 22 items
  • 30 items
  • 6,910 items Explore
  • 4,841 items Explore
  • 256 items Explore
  • 2,300 items Explore
  • 2,978 items Explore
  • 2 items
  • 1,897 items Explore
  • 193 items
  • 223 items Explore
  • 466 items Explore
  • 6,118 items Explore
  • 8,729 items Explore
  • 1,860 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 1 items
  • 5,825 items Explore
  • 3,354 items Explore
  • 11,126 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 84 items
  • 11 items
  • 2,436 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 23 items
  • 51 items
  • 6 items
  • 1 items
  • 4,249 items Explore
  • 611 items Explore
  • 72 items
  • 17 items
  • 154 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 95 items Explore
  • 460 items
  • 996 items Explore
  • 3,553 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 5 items
  • 2 items
  • 9,493 items Explore
  • 48 items Explore
  • 3 items
  • 7 items
  • 42 items
  • 3 items
  • 13,790 items Explore
  • 1,161 items Explore
  • 92 items
  • 10,561 items Explore
  • 1,920 items
  • 18 items
  • 6,835 items Explore
  • 21 items
  • 12,950 items Explore
  • 1,418 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 6,172 items Explore
  • 14,892 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 1,667 items Explore
  • 181 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 15 items
  • 5,686 items Explore
  • 12,284 items Explore
  • 48 items
  • 25 items
  • 2 items
  • 3 items
  • 7,216 items Explore
  • 357 items Explore
  • 13 items
  • 6 items
  • 103 items Explore
  • 7 items
  • 5 items
  • 485 items
  • 667 items Explore
  • 8,371 items Explore
  • 58 items
  • 7,347 items Explore
  • 5 items
  • 26 items
  • 4,615 items Explore
  • 428 items
  • 339 items Explore
  • 12,715 items Explore
  • 55 items
  • 20 items
  • 7 items
  • 4 items
  • 325 items Explore
  • 427 items
  • 458 items
  • 3,704 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 1,238 items Explore
  • 2,503 items Explore
  • 733 items Explore
  • 36 items
  • 1,136 items Explore
  • 97 items Explore
  • 24 items
  • 228 items Explore
  • 80,042 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 3,139 items Explore
  • 2,874 items Explore
  • 25 items
  • 5,349 items Explore
  • 1,831 items Explore
  • 4 items
  • 17,514 items Explore
  • 4,930 items Explore
  • 1 items
  • 7 items
  • 631 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 31 items
  • 1 items
  • 76 items
  • 29 items
  • 86 items
  • 3 items
  • 1,176 items Explore
  • 109 items
  • 805 items
  • 12,462 items Explore
  • 27 items
  • 13 items
  • 1,709 items Explore
  • 214 items
  • 17,037 items Explore
  • 85 items
  • 17 items
  • 1 items
  • 8 items
  • 324 items
  • 2 items
  • 626 items Explore
  • 1,597 items Explore
  • 8 items
  • 1,130 items Explore
  • 376 items
  • 2 items
  • 331 items

Select a time period

Or choose a specific year

Clear all filters

Narcissus

William Theed the younger (Trentham 1804 – Kensington 1891)

Category

Art / Sculpture

Date

1848 (signed and dated)

Materials

Carrara marble on Portland stone

Measurements

210 x 76 x 70 cm

Place of origin

Rome

Order this image

Collection

Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire

NT 516652

Caption

Narcissus was a beautiful young man who rejected all his suitors, until, falling in love with his own reflection, he wasted away. Carved by the Victorian sculptor William Theed in Rome in 1848, this statue is very close to the original commissioned by Prince Albert for Osborne House. It stands in the Narcissus Garden at Anglesey Abbey, home to one of the finest collections of garden statuary in England, created by Huttleston Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven, during the first half of the 20th century.

Summary

Carrara marble on Portland stone, Narcissus, William Theed the younger (Trentham 1804 – Kensington 1891), signed and dated 'W.THEED./FECIT.ROMA.1848'. A reduced full-length figure of Narcissus carved of Carrara marble in Rome by William Theed the Younger. Narcissus as a youth, nude and in contrapposto, his long curls styled with a fillet. He leans on a spear and gazes upon his own reflection, his cloak draped over a tree stump at proper left. Mounted in a pool of water on an octagonal chamfered Portland stone pedestal engraved at proper left 'AD 1947'. In Ovid's Metamorphosis Narcissus was a beautiful hunter who was vain and proud and who rejected Echo's love. As punishment, Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, lured a thirsty Narcissus to a pool where he fell instantly in love with his own reflection. Realising his love was unrequited, he pined away and died, turning into the flower which bears his name.

Full description

This is one of three signed replicas of an original statue of Narcissus commissioned by Albert, the Prince Consort, in 1844-5 (Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 69002). The original statue was carved in Rome in 1847 and was at Osborne House until 1902. Copies at Anglesey Abbey, Temple Newsam, and formerly Manor House (Clifton Hampden), were produced in Rome a year later, in 1848 (Christie's, The Manor House at Clifton Hampden, the Home of Christopher Gibbs Esq., 25-26 September 2000, lot 108). One of these copies may have been retained by Theed himself, as a Narcissus was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Catalogue, p. 847, no. 79) and at the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester, 1857, with statues of Ruth and Rebekah (Catalogue, pp. 133-4, nos.13, 35 and 59 respectively). William Theed the Younger was a prominent and prolific sculptor who enjoyed extensive patronage from Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools, Theed went to Rome in 1826 to study under the celebrated neoclassical sculptors Bertel Thorvaldsen, John Gibson, R J Wyatt and Pietro Tenerani. After nearly twenty years there, in 1844-5 Theed received a landmark commission via John Gibson to produce a series of statues of Osborne House. Two of his designs - Narcissus and Psyche lamenting the loss of Cupid (RCIN 2044) - were accepted by Prince Albert, and the figures were completed in 1847. Theed clearly drew on his tutor John Gibson's Narcissus, a diploma work submitted to the RA in 1838 (Royal Academy, London, inv.no. 03/1918), and on antique prototypes such as the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Apollino (Uffizi, Florence) and the Apollo Sauroctonus (Louvre, MR 78 or Ma 441). Theed returned to England in 1848 and established a highly successful practice in Covent Garden, his output mainly in portrait busts and funeral monuments. Further commissions for the Prince Consort included a statue of Sappho (RCIN 2079), a bust of Periander (RCIN 41031), six busts after the antique as well as decorative work for Buckingham Palace. On Albert's death in 1861, Theed was summoned to take a death mask and casts of the Prince's hands which Victoria kept at her bedside. He went on to produce several posthumous busts (e.g. RCIN 34098), commemorative statues, and 'The Parting', a full-size group of the royal couple holding hands and wearing Anglo-Saxon dress (RCIN 60778). Theed was also one of several sculptors who contributed to the Albert Memorial. Alice Rylance-Watson 2019

Provenance

Purchased by Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) from Bert Crowther, Syon Lodge, 9 October 1952, £50.0.0; bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Fairhaven 1966 with the house and the rest of the contents.

Credit line

Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)

Marks and inscriptions

Base, proper left : W. THEED./ FECIT ROMA 1848 Pedestal, proper left : AD/ 1947

Makers and roles

William Theed the younger (Trentham 1804 – Kensington 1891), sculptor

References

Roper 1964: Lanning Roper, The Gardens of Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. The Home of Lord Fairhaven, London 1964, p. 44, pl. 17b.

View more details