Sculpture
Rupert Harris Conservation Ltd
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
2011
Materials
Silicone Bronze, Gilded
Measurements
2200 mm (Height)
Collection
Cliveden Estate, Buckinghamshire
NT 766393
Summary
Gilt bronze sculpture of figure of Liberty, winged and holding torch aloft. Based upon Auguste Dumont’s Le Génie de la Liberté (1833).
Full description
This is a gilt bronze figure is a copy of an original sculpture of 1833 by Auguste Dumont. The original, Le Génie de la Liberté, is located on top of the July Column in the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The Duke and Duchess of Sutherland commissioned a copy of Dumont’s sculpture and this was installed at Cliveden. This copy was destroyed in a storm in the mid-20th century. It was replaced by an inferior figure (766041) which was removed from the Clock Tower in the 1980s. This current figure is a modern (2012) cast derived from a copy of the Spirit of Liberty in the Louvre Museum, Paris. The Duke (1786 – 1861) and Duchess of Sutherland (1808 – 1868) were avid collectors and made extensive acquisitions of modern French sculpture. They had introductions to a number of people whose political power or sheer wealth made them prominent patrons of art or directors of state patronage in these years, starting with the Orléans family itself. They had known Louis-Philippe before the July Revolution. A reminder of the connection between the Sutherlands and the Orléans family survives at Cliveden in the form of a full size bronze version of the celebrated statue of Joan of Arc by Louise Philippe’s sculptress daughter, Princess Marie d’Orléans (see NT 766374). The Minister of the Interior, ex-art critic Adolphe Thiers, was also a friend, and proffered the Sutherlands advice on the furnishing of their Staffordshire house, Trentham Hall. His suggestion that they should use as part of their decorative scheme reproductions of the casts, made for the Ecole des Beaux- Arts, of Ghiberti's Baptistery doors, was turned down by the Duke with regret as 'altogether perhaps too much of an extravagance'.[i] Another extravagance, which this time the Duke did indulge, may have been prompted also by Thiers. This was the purchase of a bronze replica of the statue called Le Génie de la Liberté by Augustin Dumont. The French Government, directed in this by Thiers, had already commissioned a colossal version of the work to crown the Colonne de Juillet in the Place de la Bastille. The column was not unveiled until 1840, but the model for the statue was on public view in the foundry of Soyer d'Inge from March 1836. The Sutherland purchase, 'grandeur naturelle en bronze', was made, according to Dumont's biographer, in 1838.[ii] This must be the date of delivery. Some accounts for January-April 1837 record a payment made by the Sutherlands to Soyer d'Inge for 7,665 francs, most probably for the casting of the statue.[iii] Its destination was the clock tower at Trentham Hall, where it can just be made out in old pictures of the building [i] Stafford House Letters, London 1891, p.218, letter from the Duke of Sutherland to his mother from Paris, 3rd April 1837. [ii] 7G. VATTIER: Une Famille d'artistes, Les Dumont, Paris [1890], p.153 for the account of the stages of the execution of Le Génie de la Liberté; p.239, in the list of works at the back of the volume: '1836 Le Génie de la Liberté Statue colossale en bronze (Colonne de la Bastille). Statue de grandeur naturelle en bronze (château de la duchesse de Sutherland, en Ecosse) 1838. Statue de grandeur naturelle en bronze (musée du Louvre)' As far as I know, the Génie de la Liberté was never at Dunrobin. [iii] Staffordshire Record Office, Sutherland Papers. D593K/1/8/27, Blue folder marked 'Old Bills'. 1837 French Accounts ‘Jan-April: Payments for Bronzes / M. Renault 785fr / M. Crozatier 29500fr / M. Vittoz 1855fr / Soyer d'Inge 7665fr /M. Beck 20650fr /M. Lynen's Bill 521 lfr’ Adapted from Philip Ward-Jackson, ‘A.-E. Carrier-Belleuse, J.-J. Feuchère and the Sutherlands’ in The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 127, No. 984 (March 1985), pp. 146-153.
Makers and roles
Rupert Harris Conservation Ltd, maker after Augustin-Alexandre Dumont (1801 - 1884), sculptor