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Title:
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Bust of William Makepeace Thackeray
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Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
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This is the plaster model for the bust of Thackeray which was unveiled in Westminster Abbey in 1865. It formed part of the loan to the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum) made by Marochetti's wife following her husband's death, though this plaster, along with the model for Marochetti's bust of Panizzi, was returned to the descendants of the sculptor in 2001. It remains an important record of this work, since the bust in the abbey was modified around 1900, in conformity with the wishes of Thackeray's daughter. The modification involved removing some of the facial hair on the bust, particularly the lengthy side-whiskers. The original appearance of the bust on the monument is also recorded in the illustration of it which appeared in the Illustrated London News of 21 April 1866.
The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray died on 23 Dec. 1863. The Times, reporting on the burial which took place on 30 December, observed that, for one so distinguished, it had been suggested that Westminster Abbey was the only fit resting place. But Thackeray had wished to be buried in the simplest manner at Kensal Green. An initiative to have a marble bust placed in the Abbey was reported to have been launched by early February (Birmingham Daily Post , 8 Feb. 1864), and Anthony Trollope ended a laudatory article on Thackeray in Cornhill Magazine (Feb. 1864, p.137). by stating that the Kensal Green burial had suited the sadness of the moment, but as weeks pass by us, they who love literature will desire to see some preparation for placing a memento of him in that shrine in which we keep the monuments of our great men. He concluded, it is to be regarded as a thing of course, that there should be a bust of Thackeray in Westminster Abbey.
By mid-July a committee had been formed under the secretaryship of Shirley Brooks, which, as the Manchester Times reported (16 July 1864) numbered some of the best-known names in literature and art. A list of its members was published in the Morning Post of the same day. There were Thackeray's fellow novelists, Dickens and Trollope, the actor William Macready, and Joseph Paxton, the architect of the Crystal Palace. Sculpture was represented by J.H. Foley, Alexander Munro, Joseph Durham and Marochetti, painting by Holman Hunt, Maclise, Elmore and Eastlake. There might have been some concern about the ecclesiatical authorities possible objection to Thackerays moral standing, but the new Dean of Westminster, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, who gave his consent to the placing of the bust, was, as one reporter pointed out, a different kind of man from the Oxford don who imagined that
Vanity Fair was something in the style of Bunyan (Manchester Times, 16 July 1864). Only in December, however, was it announced that the bust was being executed by the great authors friend, Baron Marochetti (The Era, 4 Dec. 1864). In other newspaper reports, it was stated that the sum required for the memorial would be about £600, a third of which, according to rules of long standing, would go in fees to the Chapter House of the Abbey.
Despite being a close friend of the author, Marochetti seems to have availed himself of other records of Thackerays appearance. On 5 Jan. 1865, he wrote to Colnaghis asking them to send him copies of their prints after two portrait drawings of him by Samuel Laurence (National Art Library, MSL/1903, 9000/109).
Shortly after the announcement of the choice of artist, the Saturday Reviews art critic, Francis Turner Palgrave suggested that Marochetti was the wrong man for the job. Although Palgrave was himself of Jewish origin, he believed that only an Englishman could adequately reproduce such English features as those of Thackeray. He accused the artist of overcharging for the bust. Once the Abbeys levy of £200 had been subtracted, £400 would be left for Marochetti, well over the standard rate of £100guineas, which English sculptors were in the habit of charging for their busts. Palgrave reminded his readers of the furore over the payment of government money to Marochetti for the Scutari Memorial, and of his demanding more for his forthcoming statue of Lord Clyde than John Henry Foley had for his equestrian statue of Lord Hardinge, which we do not think the most zealous of his friends could expect the Baron to surpass. The critic had also heard rumours that Marocheti was to do very well for himself in his role as founder of Landseers Lions for Nelsons Column. (Saturday Review, vol.19, no.481, 14 Jan. 1865, pp.50-51, A Cheap Duke and an Expensive Baron) Though it was not in the habit of defending Marochetti, the Pall Mall Gazette on this occasion took up the cudgels on his behalf, on the grounds that the sculptor was operating in a free market. It suggested that the subscribers had gone to him for the bust because they thought the Baron was likely to turn out a better bust of their friend than any other sculptor. It seemed to the Gazettes reporter hard to blame an artist for asking and readily obtaining large prices for his works. Furthermore the charge was particularly ungracious when made against a foreigner. (Pall Mall Gazette, 17 June 1865, p.1245)
The unveiling took place on 21 Nov. 1865, in the presence of the Dean, Thackerays two daughters, Marochetti and Mr Shirley Brooks, secretary to the fund. Consistent with its earlier defence of the sculptor, the Pall Mall Gazette (no.247, 22 Nov. 1865, p.1121), reporting the event, described the bust as a fine work", and interestingly pointed out that it was slightly toned. Subsequent responses were less positive. The Manchester Times (9 Dec. 1865) admitted it was a likeness, but qualified this by describing it as blunt featured and coarse; failing to express the fine characteristics of Thackerays visage by means of subtle execution or learned finish. Two years later, a reporter for Trewmans Exeter Flying Post (30 Oct. 1867) affirmed that not one of Thackerays dear friends like the head of him as executed by Baron Marochetti.
After the unveiling, Francis Turner Palgrave returned to the charge, claiming that the memorial to Thackeray fully justified his worst fears, as expressed in his previous article. He provided an extended expose of what he though to be Marochettis weak points as a sculptor, as demonstrated in his Thackeray bust. Seldom, in fact, can a single bust have attracted such a lengthy excoriation during the nineteenth century, as Palgrave meted out to Marochettis Thackeray. The sculptor, he claimed, had caught only the superficial and obvious features of the authors appearance. Thackeray is not here in the intellectual modelling of the forehead, or the keen insight of the eye; the mouth wants the graciousness of the smile, and the quality of mobility in which one saw his satire. The bust conveyed about as much of a likeness as an amateur manages to secure a kind of art of which Marochettis always reminds us. Palgrave recognised a certain level of skill in the bust. It was not a complete failure such as most of the busts, for example by Messrs Noble, Theed, Wood and Adams, or even Marochettis own life-size statues appear to us, but despite its superficial air of finish, it lacked truth to nature. Palgrave found that criticisms made by Gustave Planche of Marochettis work twenty years before, were as valid now as they had been back then, and he characterised Marochettis art as effectist, a quality it shared with that of another Italian sculptor working in London at this time, Raffaelle Monti, all of which indicated the depths to which Italian art had sunk since the days of Michelangelo. The critic went on to criticize the inharmonious juxtaposition of Marochettis classical plinth and the bronze bracket by Sir George Gilbert Scott, which though presumably intended for Gothic, is so undetermined in character that we hardly like to pronounce it such ( Saturday Review, vol.20, no.529, 16 Dec. 1865, pp.758-759. This is partially reproduced in F.T. Palgrave, Essays on Art, London 1866, pp.303-305)
The critical opprobrium surrounding Marochettis work in his last years, together with the further decline of his reputation after his death, may account for a particularly reprehensible act of vandalism performed on the bust at the behest of Thackerays daughter, Anne Thackeray Ritchie. This incident is recounted with an admirable sense of irony at her aunts expense by Mary MacCarthey in her book A Nineteenth Century Childhood (London 1924). Because for years she had felt that the side-whiskers on the bust were too long, Anne Thackeray Ritchie persuaded the Dean of Westminster to allow the sculptor Edward Onslow Ford to have his praticien subject the bust to a sculptural hair-cut. Ford did the old lady's bidding, according to her niece, with considerable annoyance, not wishing to tamper with another artist's work. The charm of Anne Thackeray Ritchie, and the forcefulness of her character prevailed over his scruples. Mary MacCarthy does not explain how the Dean was cajoled into allowing this. Happily the plaster model for the bust still exists, recording its original appearance. This once formed part of the loan made by Marochetti's widow to the Victoria and Albert, then the South Kensington, Museum. In 2001 it was returned to the sculptor's descendants, along with the model for Marochetti's bust of Sir Anthony Panizzi.
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Material(s): |
Plaster
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Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
- |
Technique: |
Cast |
Genre: |
Commemorative monument
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Colours: |
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Year: |
1865 |
Height: |
0.72 metres |
Width: |
0 metres |
Depth: |
0 metres |
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Key: |
2742 |
Acc. No.: |
2211 |
Col. No.: |
2211 |
Number of views: |
2609 |
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