(Photo:
Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020) RCIN31628
On 7 May
1848 a commission appointed by the new French republican government visited
Marochetti's home at Vaux-sur-Seine, to inspect the model for the equestrian
statue of Napoleon , which he had prepared for the Esplanade of the Invalides.
Three weeks later the commission made a rather damning report, which, given the
embattled position in which he already found himself in the French art world,
was likely to prove fatal to Marochetti's career if he remained in what had
become his home country. Just over a month later he was at Buckingham Palace,
working on a bust of Prince Albert. Queen Victoria wrote in her journal on the
1st July 1848, "Albert has been sitting to Baron Marochetti, a
distinguished Italian sculptor, who has done a beautiful equestrian statue of
poor Chartres [the title by which she continued to refer to the Duke of
Orleans], one of a Duke of Savoy, & one of the Duke of Wellington. I think
the likeness of Albert extremely successful. Baron Marochetti is very
agreeable, pleasing and gentlemanlike". Not only had Marochetti not
allowed the grass to grow under his feet, but he was risking his reputation in
an area which had hardly hitherto been his forte. Three not especially
distinguished busts of members of the Savoy Carignano dynasty have been
traditionally attributed to him. These, together with a posthumous portrait of
his father, and one of the elderly Duke of Wellington, done from the life in
1840, were the extent of his output in this form. It would expand prodigiously
during his stay in England. In other forms of portraiture he had of course, as
the Queen had heard, shown plentiful proof of ability.
On 10 Feb.
1849, Marochetti brought a marble version of his bust to Windsor. The Queen wrote
in her journal that it was "very like, & only requires a few slight
alterations". Marble versions of the bust were shown in 1851 at the Royal
Academy and in the Royal Manchester Institution, whilst a bronze cast of it
formed part of the exhibit of Elkington and Co. at the Great Exhibition in the
same year. According to a biographer of the Scottish sculptor John Mossman,
Marochetti had sent his bust of Albert to Paris "to be cut by a carver
whom he esteemed the best in Europe". On delivery, he had found it compared
unfavourably with his bust of Andrew Dalglish, as carved in marble by Mossman,
and had "caused the bust of the Prince to be done over again", by
Mossman. ("Mr. Thomas Gildard on the late Mr John Mossman", in Proceedings
of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, vol.XXIII, 1891-2, p.294) Following the royal couple's visit to Paris in
1855, Marochetti produced a new version of the Prince's bust, dressed in miltary
uniform. Presented in commemoration of their visit, to the Hôtel de Ville in
Paris, this and a companion bust of the Queen, also by Marochetti, survived the
fire which gutted that building in 1871. The bust of Albert is now in the
Sculpture Stores of the City of Paris at Ivry-sur-Seine. (see entry)
In 1859 William Theed sculpted a bust of Albert,
which the immediate family clearly found more sympathetic as an image, the
Princess Royal writing to her mother, the Queen, that , while Marochetti's bust
was "a better work of art", Theed's was "much more like".
(R. Fulford, Dearest Mama. Letters between Queen Victoria and The Crown
Princess of Prussia, 1861-1864, London, 1968, p.185) Maybe this was because it was closer to how
they last remembered him. Nevertheless, Marochetti's bust enjoyed considerable
circulation, due to its reproduction in Parian ware and in bronze in a variety
of sizes.
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