Lot Essay
Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901) exhibited a marble version of the present bust of a girl at the Royal Academy in 1891, it is now in Pollack House, Glasgow. It was praised at that time by the critic Marion Hepworth Dixon: "Mr Ford's 'Study' is not simply a young girl, it is the young girl, soft-breathing in her fugitive grace, her exquisite unconsciousness. . . we feel that we have that evanescent and elusive thing...." (Beattie, op. cit.). A bronze version is in the Aberdeen Art Gallery and Beattie linked it with a Royal Academy exhibit of 1886 of 'A Study; bust, bronze'.
The model derives directly from Gilbert's influential Head of a Girl of 1882-3, (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff). Gilbert's study led to several offsprings, including Bates' 1887 Rhodope and Brock's figure of Sculpture on the Leighton Monument. However, it was his close friend and associate Onslow Ford who matched the artistry of his work.
Gilbert's study is melancholy, but vigorous and forthright. The addition of the shoulders in Ford's example has lessened the impact of the face, and together with the lowered chin creates a more reflective and transient emotion. The factor that truly ties the present bronze to Gilbert's Cardiff head is the casting. Having studied the art of lost-wax casting at the Sabatino de Angelis foundry in Naples in the early 1880's, Gilbert, upon his return to England, began experimenting with the techniques. He took up a studio close to that of Ford's, and the latter would frequently assist Gilbert in his lost-wax experiments. The Cardiff head was cast by the direct lost wax method, and Onslow Ford has followed suit with the present bronze, where the rough texture of the cloth is electrifyingly sharp and the threads of hair escaping from it are individually defined and of exquisite crispness. This cast, signed and dated 1884 on the inside, not only brings the model forward by two years, but also must have been cast from a directly worked wax model.
The delicate beauty, captured in all her adolescent fragility is a perfectly conceived and executed image of girlhood. The girl's withdrawn air, and her placement on a socle of idealised celtic design, endow her with an abstract and sybilline quality.
The model derives directly from Gilbert's influential Head of a Girl of 1882-3, (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff). Gilbert's study led to several offsprings, including Bates' 1887 Rhodope and Brock's figure of Sculpture on the Leighton Monument. However, it was his close friend and associate Onslow Ford who matched the artistry of his work.
Gilbert's study is melancholy, but vigorous and forthright. The addition of the shoulders in Ford's example has lessened the impact of the face, and together with the lowered chin creates a more reflective and transient emotion. The factor that truly ties the present bronze to Gilbert's Cardiff head is the casting. Having studied the art of lost-wax casting at the Sabatino de Angelis foundry in Naples in the early 1880's, Gilbert, upon his return to England, began experimenting with the techniques. He took up a studio close to that of Ford's, and the latter would frequently assist Gilbert in his lost-wax experiments. The Cardiff head was cast by the direct lost wax method, and Onslow Ford has followed suit with the present bronze, where the rough texture of the cloth is electrifyingly sharp and the threads of hair escaping from it are individually defined and of exquisite crispness. This cast, signed and dated 1884 on the inside, not only brings the model forward by two years, but also must have been cast from a directly worked wax model.
The delicate beauty, captured in all her adolescent fragility is a perfectly conceived and executed image of girlhood. The girl's withdrawn air, and her placement on a socle of idealised celtic design, endow her with an abstract and sybilline quality.