(For general
remarks on Peel and his statues, see the entry for Sir Robert Peel Statue
Designs) The Westminster statue of Peel was an ongoing project for Marochetti
for the greater part of his residence in England, and one which, in the long
run, did little good to his reputation. He had made other efforts to involve himself in Peel commemorations. There is evidence that he may have entered the
competition for the Leeds Peel statue, although the names of most of the
competitors in that case were not divulged, and he was the runner up in the
competition for the statue at Peel's birthplace, Bury (Lancs). For that
competition he had presented two entries, but the design which had come second to Baily's successful one was
described in the Manchester Times (12 Feb. 1851): "A figure of Sir
Robert, habited in a surtout coat, with one hand a little extended in the
attitude of giving an address; drapery being thrown over the left
shoulder". By July 1851 Marochetti's name had become more widely known by the British public, as a result
of his equestrian statue of Richard Coeur de Lion being erected at the
Western entrance to the Great Exhibition. This, combined with his near success in the Bury competition, may explain why the members
of the Westminster Peel committee were unanimous in their decision to adopt him
as their sculptor in July 1851. It is likely that Marochetti presented them
with the more successful of his two Bury designs. Although John Gibson was to represent Peel in classical
garb in his statue for Westminster Abbey, and one of Baily's unsuccessful
entries for Bury had him in a toga, all the other Peel statue committees wanted
to see this very modern statesman in his everyday garb. In this the Westminster
committee was representative, but they departed from the norm in wanting their
statue 12 foot high. Marochetti later claimed that he had attempted to persuade
them that costume modernity and colossal scale was not a good combination.
There was also a problem in that the statue of Peel was originally intended to
share space in New Palace Yard with Sir Richard Westmacott's colossal, and
classicizing statue of George Canning.
Marochetti's
first statue was completed and cast by March 1853, but problems over siting, in
an area around Parliament which was still very much in flux, immedately
presented themselves, and it was another eight years before any sort of
resolution to the problem appeared to be in sight. A plaster model of the
statue was given a public airing, when the Sydenham Crystal Palace was opened
by Queen Victoria on 10 June 1854. In the central space, at the corners of the
crossing, the Crystal Palace Company had placed four colossal figures; the
classical nude Hercules Farnese, two statues in seventeenth century
costume, Peter-Paul Rubens by Geefs and Admiral Duquesne by J.-P.
Dantan, and Marochetti's modern dress Peel. According to the Morning Post
(5 June 1854), this "somewhat curious arrangement", resulted from
these being "the only casts of a like size in possession of the
company", though one might surmise, given the company's educational aims,
that it was also intended to indicate the various costume options open to
sculptors. The paper added, "It is, however, understood that the
arrangement is only temporary, and that Sir Robert Peel, the likeness of whom,
by the bye, is most admirable, will have ere long to vacate his place to make
room for a more fitting companion to the Hercules". As it turned out, the statue of Peel remained on display in the palace for several years.
In the
meantime, wrangling over the siting of the statue in Westminster continued. Sir
Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, who died in 1860, had let
it be known that he considered both the Peel and the Richard Coeur de
Lion statues out of scale with his building, and, after the Richard had been set up in Old Palace Yard in the very
year of the architect's death, Marochetti himself proposed, at his own expense,
to provide a smaller version of the statue of Peel. Although this was done, we
are told that the committee were disappointed with it, and the question of
where to erect it was not resolved until 1865, when Marochetti was authorized
to start erecting the pedestal in the middle of the Western railings enclosing
New Palace Yard. The actual statue was only put onto its pedestal in February
1868, shortly after Marochetti himself had died. For a while it remained under
wraps, exciting speculation, but once the wraps came off, in the words of a Manchester
Guardian London correspondent, "a unanimous expression of
disappointment swelled in waves of murmur from all who were permitted to see it
uncovered". (quoted in Huddersfield Chronicle, 11 April
1868).
Following a
lengthy debate in the House of Commons on 25 June 1868, it was decided, by a
vote of 182 to 71 to remove the statue. Edward Cardwell, who had been the Hon.
Secretary to the statue committee, reminded the house that only one of the members
of the original committee was still alive. Some of those who spoke claimed to
be admirers of Marochetti, but there seemed to be general agreement among them that, at the time when he had produced
the Peel statue, he had been, as one of them put it, "in his decadence as
a sculptor". (Hansard, vol.192) The statue was then placed in storage, and
finally melted down, after Matthew Noble had been commissioned to produce the
replacement figure, which still stands in Parliament Square today. Noble's
statue was also erected after its author's death, having been put in place in
December 1876, bringing this miserable saga to an undramatic conclusion.
As there is
almost no visual evidence to go on, it is difficult to know what to make of
this story. The Morning Post had admired the statue when it was on view
at the Crystal Palace, and some of the MPs who obviously took mischievous
pleasure in rubbishing it in 1868 were equally vehement in their
condemnation of other statues in the public domain, not all of which were
Marochetti's work. A questionable mixture of political and aesthetic motives
seems to have been at work here. One can only hope that further, hopefully
photographic, evidence will come to light, to justify or cause us to regret that decison
of the MPs.
(for a
longer account of this commission, see P.Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of
Historic Wesminster, Vol.I, Liverpool, 2011, pp.195-200)
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