Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892)
Thomas Woolner, RA (Hadleigh 1825 - London 1892)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1856 (inscribed and dated) - 1857 (exh at RA;in bronze)
Materials
Plaster and wood
Measurements
305 mm (12 in) (Diameter)
Order this imageCollection
Wallington, Northumberland
NT 584953.1
Summary
Plaster (circular medallion), Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892) by Thomas Woolner RA (Hadleigh 1825 - London 1892), inscribed T. Woolner. Sc./ 1856. One of a pair. In 1850 Woolner executed a bronze medallion of Tennyson but in 1854 after his return to England from Australia he wrote to Mrs Tennyson: "I have been thinking of the medallion and have concluded it will be better to make another entirely of a smaller size." He worked on it in February 1855 and had finished a first cast by November 1855 and finally completed it with alterations to the nose in July 1856. Robert Browning said 'no likeness could possibly be better' and Mrs Tennyson described it as having 'delicate lofty beauty'. Other plaster casts are in the National Portrait Gallery, London and Tate.
Provenance
Given with the property to the National Trust in 1941 by Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, 3rd Bt (1870 - 1958)
Makers and roles
Thomas Woolner, RA (Hadleigh 1825 - London 1892), sculptor
Exhibition history
The Pre-Raphaelites, Tate Britain, London, 1984, no.76
References
Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture 1848 - 1914 (eds. Benedict Read and Joanna Barnes), The Matthiesen Gallery, London, 31 October - 12 December 1991, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 15 January - 15 March 1992, 66;bronze cast