Vauxhall vanished some ten or a dozen years since. Its latter days were
dreary, down-at-heel, and disreputable enough. The statue had departed
long previously. 'It was conveyed to the house of Mr. Barrett, at
Stockwell,' records Mr. J.T. Smith in 1829, 'and thence to the
entrance-hall of the residence of his son, the Rev. Jonathan Tyers
Barrett, D.D., of No. 14 Duke Street, Westminster.' Mr. Henry Phillips,
in his _Musical and Personal Recollections_ (1864), regrets that when
Roubiliac's Handel 'was brought to the hammer, and sold by Mr. Squibb on
the 16th March 1832, for two hundred and five guineas, the Sacred
Harmonic Society did not purchase it in place of its being bought by Mr.
Brown, of University Street.' Nollekens used to value the statue at one
thousand guineas. The plaster model became the property of Hudson, the
preceptor of Reynolds, who possessed a collection of models at his house
at Twickenham. Upon the death of Hudson and the sale of his collection,
the model was bought for five pounds by the father of Mr. J.T. Smith, a
pupil of Roubiliac's, and it then passed into the possession of
Nollekens. When Nollekens's effects were sold, the plaster Handel was
knocked down by Mr. Christie to Hamlet, the famous silversmith. Its
further history has not been traced.
The statue of Handel, the first original work that can, with any
certainty, be ascribed to Roubiliac, may be regarded as a fair specimen
of the artist's manner. He was of the school of Bernini. He followed the
sculptors who infinitely prefer _unrest_ to _repose_ in art. He dearly
enjoyed a _tour de force_ in stone. He liked to deal with marble as
though it were the most plastic of materials: to twist it this way and
that, and rumple and flutter it as though it were merely muslin. To
have carved a wig in a gale of wind would have been a task particularly
agreeable to this class of artists; they would have done their best to
represent each particular hair standing on end. They adored minutiae: a
shoulder-knot of ribbons, the embroidery of a sword-belt, the stitches
of a seam, the lace of a cravat, were achievements to be gloried in. And
yet, with all this realism in detail, their works are unreal and
artificial in general effect; as a glance at any statue by Roubiliac
will sufficiently demonstrate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account