Nelson & His World

Continuing my current obsession with stereoscopic photos - here is an unusual view - Nelson's column before Landseer's lions were added (?1868).



MB

Another great find, Mark.

Here is a picture of the Landseer lions.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1388/143 ... fd0564.jpg

There was quite a palaver about getting the lions made and they were subject to some criticism when they first appeared.

Jean Hood, in her book ‘Trafalgar Square’ (Batsford 2005) notes that the original artist commissioned to sculpt the lions, John Lough, withdrew because the budget of £3000 was too small. ‘His replacement, Thomas Milnes, produced four stone lions with the names, War, Peace, Vigilance and Determination, but they were rejected. Legend had it that they were based on the domestic cat, and the way Peace licks its front paw certainly suggests lazy contentment rather than the kind of peace won with blood and cannon balls. Returned to their creator, they can be seen today at Saltaire, near Bradford.’

When Sir Edwin Landseer, a notorious procrastinator, took the commission, ‘he was determined upon zoological accuracy. ‘When one of London Zoo’s lions died, the corpse was sent to him. The servant who opened the door is said to have gone to his master and asked, much as he might have enquired if Landseer had sent out for a pizza, ‘Did you order a lion, Sir Hedwin [sic]?’’

The costs rocketed and ‘when the lions were finally unveiled in February 1867, there were complaints that they had concave, rather than the rounded backs that lions exhibit when lying down and the architectural relationship with the column was weakened by the scrapping of Railton’s original plan to separate them with a flight of steps.’

Nevertheless, Landseer captured the majesty of the lions, now so familiar to us it is hard to imagine the square without them.

I wonder how and where these huge castings were made.

I guess they somehow made a mould from an actual sized original(clay?) and then made the bronze casting(s).

Probably made in several pieces and joined together like a 3-dimensional jigsaw.

Quite intriguing really. You would need some pretty heavy duty crainage to move the pieces around let alone the finished items.

Image what the weight of each of those lions must be!!

MB

Jean Hood doesn't say how the lions were cast but notes that they were cast at the foundry of Baron Marochetti, an Italian-born but French-naturalised sculptor famous for equestrian statues who had left France after the 1848 revolution. He charged £11,000. Landseer's fee was £6000.

John Lough, mentioned above, was given a commission for four 25 ft lions with a budget of 3000 guineas, but he said he couldn't do them at that price even if they were only 20 ft long. '25 ft lions,' he said, 'would cost at least 4000 guineas as each sculpture would need 141 tons of granite!' I'm not sure how big the lions in the square are.

Well - I never knew that a painting had been made of Landseer working on the lions for Trafalgar Square (see below)

It seems that Baron Marochetti had a studio and foundry together on the Fulham Road in London - so Landseer went there to produce the sculptures.



MB

Anna, Mark,

The painting was by John Ballantyne (1815-1897), and shows Landseer working on the models in Marochetti's studio. I remember it was reproduced in the National Geographic many years ago. In this link there is an interesting footnote:

http://jssgallery.org/Other_Artists/Bal ... Lions.html

Kester

Thanks for that.

I keep looking at that picture and wondering how he has built up that huge model. Is he using wet clay?

And how would you then create the mould for the bronze castings?

I suppose it's easy when you know how - but at the moment I find it quite mind boggling.

Does anyone make bronze statues/sculptures like this nowadays?

MB