Photo: Royal
Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020)
RCIN 2077
Although
Marochetti produced his bust of Prince Albert shortly after his arrival in
England in 1848, it took him some time to come up with a convincing image of
Queen Victoria in bust form. In preparation for the equestrian statue for
Glasgow, she sat for him at least twice in April 1852. In the first of the two
references in the Queen's journal to these sittings, she rather misleadingly
wrote "Sat for Baron Marochetti for a bust for the statue he is to make of
me on horseback for Glasgow" (entry for 23 April 1852). A bust was maybe
what he modelled, but no finished bust was produced as a result of these
sittings, and the portrait of the Queen on the Glasgow statue, which was
inaugurated in September 1854, though adequate from a distance, does not have her
distinctive cast of feature. In making arrangements for sittings for an actual
portrait bust of the Queen, two months later, Marochetti showed signs of
uncertainty about how many sittings might be needed for him to get it right.The
Queen's journal records five sittings in November and December of that year.
Then, in January of the following year, more were required to "correct the
cast of my bust (entry for 19 Jan. 1855). In the light of this it appears
somewhat astonishing that in February 1855, the Queen was able to make a gift
to the Earl of Aberdeen of a marble version of Marochetti's bust, to mark the
occasion of his standing down as Prime Minister after criticisms of his
conduct of the war in Crimea. This version of the bust remains at the Earl's
home, Haddo Castle in Aberdeenshire (see entry). It is possible that the
corrections required were minor changes to the marble.
The version
of the bust in the Royal Collection was presented by the Queen to Prince Albert
on his birthday on 26 August 1855. In the following year, 1856, a marble
version of th bust was shown at the Royal Academy. In two notices, it was
observed that this version was slightly tinted. The Illustrated London News (No.798,
vol.XXVIII, 10 May 1856, p.514) specified that this was done with coffee, and
surmised that the intention might have been to imitate the antique. It was at this same time that Marochetti was essaying much bolder polychromy in his busts
of Indian subjects, and he would later produce a marble statuette of the Queen
in which the marble was entirely overlaid with colour. The magazine The Critic (15 May 1856,
pp.252-3) thought the staining of the bust an improvement, and found it "admirable".
The Illustrated London News pointed out that in the exhibition one could
compare Marochetti's bust of the Queen with another by Joseph Durham. Both
busts the reporter thought were "clever",
though they were "very unlike one another, and neither very like her
Majesty".
A critic for
the London Daily News (2 June 1856) also compared the two busts of the Queen at
the Royal Academy. His response was no more favourable, but, as is often the
case, a negative reaction resulted in a vivid description, highlighting distinguishing
features of the work. This critic wrote: "Enjoying some of the best light
is a bust of the Queen (1,221) by Baron Marochetti. It is characteristic, and
the full eye is given with much spirit; but in the effort to give animation,
the Baron has forgotten to render the calm dignity proper to a Queen, and has
conveyed still less of the quiet, self-relying grace of the English lady. The
air of the head is somewhat pretentious; the nostrils are sharp-cut and rather
disdainfully inflated, and the neck is set stiffly . In particular, the
mastoidene muscle of the neck, which in female form describes a beautiful serpentine
line, is here represented as strongly developed and as rigidly relieved as in
the other sex". Going on to compare
Marochetti's bust with Durham's, the critic continues: "While the former
work fails in going too far, this fails in not going far enough; the expression
is too bland, and the execution is timid. We are inclined to think, however,
that at least in feeling, of the two, this errs on the right side". Few
statements could better describe the unpropitious Scylla and Charybdis
predicament of the Victorian sculptor, of which blandness was the usual
outcome.
In 1856
another copy of the bust in marble, together with a new version of Albert's
bust, in military uniform, was sent to the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, to commemorate
the Royal couple's visit there the previous year. The busts survived the fire
which gutted the building in 1871, and that of the Queen is at present in the
offices of the Commission du Vieux Paris. (see entries)
Part of the
charm of this sculpture is the way that a wreath of symbolic leaves and flowers
has been woven into the Queen's hair: laurels, and roses, shamrocks and
thistles, emblematic of the different parts of the kingdom
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