Albert’s companions: art / empire / industry

Last week I noted that the climax of the Albert Memorial, the great statue of Albert took its place at the centre of a large group of other sculptures and figures. This week we’re going to have a closer look at those other statues. This picture shows the rising succession of steps and terraces

It is as though you are entering a sacred precinct in a temple complex. Perhaps you are. The Memorial is located at the apex of a series of great Victoria buildings among them the V&A, the Natural History Museum, the Imperial Institute (the brainchild of Albert’s son) and the Albert Hall which together formed the area in South Kensington called Albertopolis.

Albert is surrounded by guardians representing geography, art, science and religion. The outer ring joined by an ornate fence is the four continents, each represented by a series of figures and an animal.

Africa, behind it the dome of the Albert Hall. This is a fairly partial view of the African continent concentrating on north Africa, with an Egyptian figure mounted on  a kneeling camel. (It was decided not to use a lion for Africa to avoid confusion with the “British” lion, although it might also have strained credulity to place a predatory animal among a group of people.) An engraving of the sculpture reveals a further detail.

The Sphinx – Egyptian imagery was extremely popular at the time.

America gets another quirky treatment.

The spirit of America rides the bison wearing a native American head dress. The woman standing is the United States. The seated man is an Aztec and there’s a Canadian woman on the other side. You can’t see the south American cowboy behind the bison. (The relevant engraving is no help in this regard).

Europe’s animal was the bull, possibly a reference to the story of Europa who was abducted by Zeus in the form of a white bull.

The bull is the only male in the group. The spirit of Europe rides the bull holding an orb and sceptre. Britain holds a trident symbolising ocean supremacy. Beside her, peaceful Germany, a home of learning, sits with  a book. This time the engraving shows us the other side.

France has a sword for military prowess and Italy, with one finger raised as though shyly making a point, concentrates on the arts and music, with a palette and lyre. The 1998 photo shows that other side.

The last of the four groups was Asia, by John Foley who eventually sculpted Albert. This is the most striking of the four continents.

The woman on the kneeling elephant is unveiling herself not as an allusion to the sometimes explicit sculptures on Hindu temples but apparently because the Great Exhbition was a showcase for goods coming out of Asia. Beside her, a Chinese potter, an Indian warrior, a Persian poet and, unseen, an Arab merchant holding the Koran. You can glimpse him in the engraving.

After the continents, on the main plinth, the Parnassus frieze. 169 figures of individual poets, painters, musicians, architects, the contemporary idea of the finest or most significant in their respective fields. The carving was all done on the spot by two sculptors, John Birnie Philip and Henry Hugh Armstead.

Here Shakespeare lounges next to Homer with Chaucer looking on. At the other end Bach and Handel exchange musical ideas. (Between them Gluck looks overawed by the company).

A bunch of Italian old masters stand around. Raphael gets a throne, with Michaelangelo slumped against it deep in thought. (Not his only appearance on the frieze – he’s with the painters here and takes the central spot amongst the sculptors on another panel.)

The rule was that no living artists could be depicted, but the Queen made an exception for George Gilbert Scott himself. Modestly, he had himself placed discreetly just above the shoulder of Pugin. Wren is at the centre of this group of architects.

Above the frieze another set of group statues representing industry – agriculture, manufactures, commerce, engineering

Once again a set of figures engage in the work presided over by an idealised personage – a female muse. You can also see further eminent men on the corners of the frieze.

Manufactures – Turner sits at the centre of the group underneath.

Commerce, and below Engineering:

Sennacherib the Assyrian king and Cheops stand there discussing building work. Between them, looking a bit weary of the whole thing is Nitocris, a 6th dynasty Egyptian queen holding a model of a pyramid (she was credited with building the third pyramid).

Finally we reach the canopy itself where a set of plain bronze statues representing the  sciences are gathered around Albert like a guard of honour

The lower group each on their own plinth:

Geometry, chemistry, geology and astronomy.

The upper group: philosophy, physiology, medicine and rhetoric.

I’ve rearranged the figures so they follow the spatial arrangement of the monument but if you look carefully you can see the figures are the work of two sculptors who took two corners each, our friends Philip and Armstead again.

The canopy is decorated by mosaics of four female figures- Sculptura, Poesis, Pictura and Architectura. I’ve picked the last one for a reason I’m sure you can guess.

Then there’s the spire, inhabited by the virtues, almost too high to make out in detail – Faith, Hope, Charity, Humility, Fortitude, Prudence, Justice and Temperance  and above them two sets of angels before you get to the cross at the very top. This drawing shows the arrangement.

The whole thing is an anthology of Victorian iconography. Is it all a bit much for one man, no matter what he did, or how much he was missed? Well, you decide. The Memorial has proved to be a survivor.

This was it about 1970 with the ungilded Albert (and the statues on the spire, withthat bluish colour of old bronze.) And here they all are gilded again:  Albert, the angels and the virtues:

 

Postscript
It was a purely factual post this week, and also a picture marathon. I remember many years ago watching an Open University documentary about the Albert Memorial which covered much the same ground. Do you remember how they used to broadcast in the early mornings and early hours of the morning in the dead hours before 24 hour television? Perhaps it was the oddness of the hour or the seemingly random nature of the subject matter but that documentary stuck in my mind. Hence the need, once I’d started, to lay out as much of the whole scheme as I could, for you. I’m taking a couple of team members out on Friday to take a look. It’s a reminder to me that it’s a privilege to work in an area with such a rich heritage.

And I’ve sneaked in the title of a Bill Nelson song.

The Albert Memorial: illustrated by 29 photographs (c1872)

The Albert Memorial, Hyde Park: its history and description by James Dafforne (Virtue & Co, 1878)

The National Memorial to His Royal Highness the Prince Consort (John Murray, 1879)

The two modern colour photographs were by Maureen G Stainton and are copyright by her.

Albert’s memorial

Do you remember the Albert Memorial being enclosed?

This curious tower of scaffolding came about as as result of a decision to repair and restore the most famous monument in London. A dangerously large section of lead had fallen from the canopy in 1983. After that, although it took some time for a final decision to be made, it was clear that some extensive work needed to be done. It took place over a period of several years and the restored monument was unveiled in October 1998.

Albert veiled…

…and unveiled, impossibly bright.

The restoration brought the memorial back as far as was possible to how it looked in the 1870s. The statue of Albert had been gilded again. My wife and I went down there at the time to take a look at something neither of us had ever seen, having grown up with the black version of the statue. (The gilding was removed during the First World War. The story goes that it was feared the gilding might provide a shiny target for Zeppelins, but it seems more likely it was a result of increasing pollution damage.)

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Albert, Prince Consort, husband of Queen Victoria died in 1861. The Queen was devastated by her loss, and the nation consumed by her grief and its own, along with a certain amount of guilt at not having appreciated Albert and everything he had done. The 1851 Great Exhibition was indentified with Albert and the work he had done for his adopted country. A national memorial to Albert would best be sited near the site of the Exhibition and also close to the complex of museums and educational establishments in South Kensington that was already known as Albertopolis. Funds were raised and a competition for the design established.

The outstanding design was by the presiding architectural genius of the day George Gilbert Scott. Scott is well known to us now as the creator of a number of iconic buildings such as the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.

A giant statue of Albert seated under a gothic canopy

Building began in 1864.

The memorial is a complex structure supported by a massive steel cross with an undercroft.

And an elaborate support structure.

Massive pieces of stone were assembled on the site.

An overhead crane moved the sections of sculptured stone around.

All these pieces were slotted together under the direction of Scott and the builder John Kelk.

 

The structure grew, under another layer of scaffolding.

It opened in 1872.

This picture shows the memorial before the statue was installed in 1875. The original sculptor,Carlo Marochetti, had produced different designs for the statue, all unsatisfactory. He then died and they had to start again with another sculptor, John Henry Foley, who had created one of the surrounding groups. The absence of the statue of Albert makes you look more closely at all the other sculptures, representing the continents, the arts and sciences, the virtues and a host of famous men. We’ll have a closer look at them next week but just for now let’s say that Albert was placed in the context of all the arts and sciences of the 1860s.

The finished monument in the 1880s, magnificent, grandiose or sinister?

The memorial became a fashionable spot to be seen, as in this 1870s illustration of fashions on the steps of the memorial.

Our old friend Markino depicted the same steps some years later, with a slightly thinner gathering of fashionable Londoners.

It could be argued that perhaps as the monument aged and suffered the ravages of city life, the Victorian taste for excess in decoration, and the Gothic style itself began to seem dated, and odd. Over the weekend I happened to watch the Jonathan Miller film of Alice in Wonderland, which was designed to look like the photographs of that era. Alice is another product of the 1860s, feverish and fantastic. I don’t want to labour the comparison but it may be that hallucenogenic quality shared by Alice and Albert which captured the popular imagination again in the 1960s when we began to appreciate Victorian taste again

When it was clear some major repair work had to be done in the 1980s the possiblity of dissassembling the monument for good was briefly considered. But not seriously  I think. London loves its strange monuments, and remembers that the memorial exists because these two individuals loved each other.

 

Postscript

Now, I know what you’re thinking, some of you anyway. The Albert Memorial is not actually in Kensington but across the border in the City Of Westminster. There is a story, probably apocryphal, that Queen Victoria had the border moved so that the memorial and the Royal Albert Hall would be in Westminster. However, the Memorial is in Kensington Gardens, and is closely identified with Kensington by many people. Culturally I think it is just as much a part of Kensington as Westminster.

And of course we have a lot of interesting material in our collection including some images not often seen. So I hope you’ll let me off. Especially as I found so many pictures that I decided to do a second post next week devoted to the surrounding sculptures.

The two books by Chris Brooks about the memorial were invaluable to me with this post. The first image of the covered memorial is from the 2000 book. Photographs 2 and 3 are by Maureen G Stainton and are copright by her. The picture of Victoria and Albert is by Roger Fenton. All other images are from the Local Studies collection.

The Albert Memorial. The Prince Consort National Memorial: its history, contexts and conservation. Edited by Chris Brooks. Yale University Press 2000.

The Albert Memorial by Chris Brooks. English Heritage 1995.

 

Visitor attraction: in the Crystal Palace 1851

When I first visited London in the 1960s we stayed with my uncle who lived in Crystal Palace. The first place he took us to was the park, where the stone dinosaurs immediately became one of my favourite things in London. Up the hill from the unlikely versions of the ancient animals were the TV mast, another source of wonder and the remains of the structure which gave the area its name: the Crystal Palace.

Before 1936 when some mishap caused it to burn down it looked like this. Joseph Paxton the designer of the great glasshouse had moved the whole thing from Hyde Park to an obscure site in Sydenham, south London. He expanded the main building, added two towers at either end (designed by Brunel) and built an ornamental park around it.

Despite its destruction (and who is to say it would have survived the War, and the post war dislike of Victorian structures that saw the disappearance of the Euston Arch among many others?) it remains a familiar image and occupies a small but permanent niche in the popular imagination.

We don’t usually remember where exactly it was originally located, but this is the spot:

It faced the main road between London and Kensington

And although photography was in its infancy, many pictures were taken including calotypes by the Fox-Talbot company. There are plenty of photographs of the interior but by technical necessity they show it empty, without people. The essence of a visitor attraction is the people who come to it in their hundreds, and you can only get a sense of that from prints and lithographs.

The transept had been built around the tree after an MP had complained about its possible destruction but it actually added to the general effect. The fountain was constructed out of crystal glass.

The statues were cast in plaster.

There was an appreciative and colourful throng of visitors. This view shows the height of the structure, the strangeness of some of the objects – a lighthouse reflector, the Ross telescope, the Colebroke Dome  and in the centre the Queen and the Prince Consort, the premier celebrities of the day.

They’re on a relatively informal visit in this lithograph.

Bystanders keep a discreet distance from the Royal party while getting as close as they think is correct on both sides of the Nave.

The exterior of the building appeared squat and monotonous but the interior seemed Tardis-vast.

Above the ground level were galleries, some stuffed with curious objects.

Others quiet and ecclesiastical:

And others weirdly intimate:

Victoria and Albert had paid a more formal visit on the day of the Palace’s Inaugeration in May.

They entered the Palace through iron gates and proceeded through the crowds to take their place under a giant canopy.

Victoria wrote in her diary: “the glimpses of the transept through the iron gates..(the) myriads of people filling the galleries and seats gave us a sensation which I can never forget.” In a letter she said “The sight…was incredibly glorious, really like fairyland.” Other commentators spoke of the intoxicating effects of, forms, colours and noise.

When I think of a Victorian glass house I think of the Palm House at Kew Gardens, full of vegetation and damp air, like being in a jungle. I can’t quite imagine an even bigger version full of light, artificial colours and people.

The opening ceremoney,Victoria said “fills me with devotion more so than any service I have ever heard”. She visited the Exhibition many times, going one day and starting off the next in the exact spot she had left off, until she had seen almost everything.

After six months in October of 1851  police cleared the building for a final time. There was a last private ceremony to close the building which Victoria “grieved not to be able to be present”. (Albert had advised aginst it.). She did go back to look at it again with all the exhibits removed “the beauty of the building was never seen to greater advantage.”

The following year after much debate as to its future the Palace moved to Sydenham, deep in the suburbs, and after seventy years or so, one day its story came to an end.

Postscript

We were over the border in the City of Westminster this week but as a forerunner of Albertopolis the Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition are of some interest to the history of Kensington and Chelsea. And I liked the set of lithographs which were too big for me to scan in one piece but had some irresistible details. I started out with them but the more I read the more pictures I wanted to add, so you get a  bumper crop of images this week.

John McKean’s book Crystal Palace (1994) was particularly informative, and was where I found the quotes from Queen Victoria.