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Title:
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Julia Stephen
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Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
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The subject
of this bust, mainly remembered as the mother of Virginia Woolf, at the time the
bust was sculpted, would still have been known by her maiden name, Julia
Jackson (1846-1895). Her mother, Theodosia, was one of the Pattle sisters, who
were remarkable for their propensity for marrying into artistic and creative
circles.This was not so much the case with Julia's father, George Jackson, who
was a medical man, but, due to the matrimonial fortunes of her mother's sisters,
Julia found her youthful beauty being both appreciated and exploited by
pre-Raphaelite painters and members of the Holland House circle. In the work of
her photographer aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron, she appears over and over again.
Marochetti, who had some contacts in those circles, is said to have used two
young women as models for his effigy of Princess Elizabeth, for St. Thomas's church
in Newport, Isle of Wight.(see entry). One was Janet Ross (née Duff Gordon),
who recalled being bored by the long sessions that were required of her.
However, the head of the princess is said to have been based on that of the ten
year old Julia Jackson. The bust, which until a short time ago was at
Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, seems to represent her as a young woman, rather
than as a child. It has always been understood in the family that it was the
work of Marochetti. Unfortunately, even at the time this snapshot was taken in
around 1992, it was terribly weathered. The
Bloomsbury group and its friends seem to have delighted in acting as
Marochetti's nemesis, seeing him as the art of the past, which they were moving
beyond. Even Julia's future father-in-law, Sir James Stephen, who was nothing
if not an eminent Victorian, after sitting to Marochetti for his bust in 1858,
made witty and disparaging remarks about
the outcome, setting the tone that his extended family was to follow. Anne
Thackeray Ritchie, sister of Leslie Stephen's first wife, commissioned
the sculptor Edward Onslow Ford to emasculate Marochetti's bust of her father,
the novelist, in Westminster Abbey, by carving off some of his luxuriant
whiskers. And, as can be seen in this snapshot, the bust of Julia Stephen was
for some time treated in such a cavalier fashion that it had by 1992 lost much of its
surface. On a visit to Charleston Farmhouse in 2018, enquiries were made as to
the bust's whereabouts, which none of the responsible people present were able
to answer.
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Material(s): |
Marble
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Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
Natural |
Technique: |
Carved |
Genre: |
Portrait Bust
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Location: |
Charleston Farmhouse, , ,
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Colours: |
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Year: |
1860 |
Height: |
0.4 metres |
Width: |
0 metres |
Depth: |
0 metres |
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Key: |
5794 |
Acc. No.: |
5794 |
Col. No.: |
5794 |
Number of views: |
2376 |
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