A cire perdue cast, 1882, with no markings (For comparison, see Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, Royal Academy 1986, catalogue number 5) Sir Alfred Gilbert became the leading artist in the vigorous revival of British sculpture, aptly renamed The New Sculpture, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. This generation of sculptors breathed life into the stale neo-Classical teachings of the academic establishment, creating a three dimensional equivalent to the Symbolist paintings of George Frederic Watts and Burne-Jones. Casting an eye back to the traditions of the highly finished bronze sculptures of the Florentine Renaissance, their work is often explicitly symbolic and Sir Alfred Gilbert’s own sculptures are intensely personal, conveying ideas and emotions centered on love, death and the spiritual. Perseus Arming marks the beginning of a cycle of myths and stories in which Sir Alfred Gilbert illustrated the course of his life. Modelled on his return from Florence after having seen Cellini's masterful Perseus and Medusa, in which Perseus triumphantly holds up Medusa’s severed head, Gilbert saw beyond the original text, to the imagined incident of Perseus as a mortal, ordinary man, preparing for his epic battle with Medusa. Gilbert explained to Joseph Hatton how: every story has two sides - the one being the accepted and literal text, and the other that which the text suggests. (Joseph Hatton, The Life and Work of Alfred Gilbert RA MVO LLD, Easter Art Annual, London, 1903, page 10) The lethargic figure of Perseus, gracefully reaching to fasten his winged sandals, was to Gilbert an allegory of his own circumstances as a budding artist. Gilbert was ‘arming’ himself, not to face the ferocious snake-headed Medusa, but the daunting group of art critics of the Paris Salon and Royal Academy. As at that time my whole thoughts were of my artistic equipment for the future, I conceived the idea that Perseus before becoming a hero was a mere mortal, and that he had to look to his equipment. That is a presage of my life and work at that time and I think the wing still ill-fits me, the sword is blunt and the armour dull as my own brain. (Ibid.) Gilbert emerged victorious in 1883, when the critics of the Paris Salon praised the first of his autobiographical departures, Perseus Arming (The pose of Perseus is echoed in his sculpture The Kiss of Victory (1878-81)). This gave Alfred Gilbert the courage he needed to: continue the task I had set myself - that was, to go on writing my own history by symbol(Joseph Hatton, The Life and Work of Alfred Gilbert RA MVO LLD, Easter Art Annual, London, 1903, page 10). Icarus and Comedy and Tragedy were two of the subsequent chapters in this artistic ‘autobiography’. It is not certain who commissioned the first cast of Perseus Arming. According to Edmund Gosse, Sir Henry Doulton had commissioned the piece on his way through Rome in the spring of 1881. Gilbert ... had striven and failed, and now, in deep indigence, with a wife and two children to support, had almost come to the very confines of his courage. ... At their first interview, Henry Doulton saw, admired and gave a commission for the statuette by which Mr. Gilbert first became generally recognised in London and Paris, the now well-known 'Perseus'. Mc Allister, on the other hand states that J. P. Heseltine acquired the prime cast of Perseus Arming, which may also be correct. The artist Louise Jopling recalls visiting Heseltine's house in the spring of 1883 where she saw, the very first work of that incomparable genius, Gilbert RA - a small statuette of a nude figure(Louise Jopling, Twenty Years of my Life, 1867 to 1887, London and New York, 1925, pages 229). At this date Perseus Arming is the only possible candidate and it is pertinent that in all early exhibitions it was J. P. Heseltine, not Sir Henry Doulton, who lent the cast.
Danny Katz; to 1985 Private Collection; to 1996
London, Grosvenor Gallery, 1882, number 380 Paris, The Salon, 1883, number 3700 Manchester, Royal Institution, Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition, 1887, number 552 Paris, Exposition Universelle, 1889, number 312 London, Clifford Gallery, Exhibition of Cabinet Pictures, Sculpture, etc. by Members of the Surrey Art Circle, 1900, number 131 Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, International Exhibition, 1901, numbers 123 and 125 London, Fine Art Society, First Exhibition of Statuettes by the Sculptors of To-Day British and French, 1902, number 5 London, New Gallery, The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Engravers, 1909, number 285 London, Art Congress, Exhibition of Fair Women, 1909, numbers 8, 10, 17 London, Fine Art Society, Exhibition of Bronze Statuettes by the late Sir Alfred Gilbert, RA, 1935, numbers 5, 8, 14 London, Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy of Arts Bicentenary Exhibition 1768-1968, 1968, number 58G London, Royal Academy of Arts, Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Art, The Handley-Read Collection, 1972, number F18 London, Fine Art Society, Centenary Exhibition, 1976, number 17 Manchester, City of Manchester Art Galleries Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Museum, Victorian High Renaissance, 1978, number 91 London, Tate Britain, Exposed: The Victorian Nude, October 2001 -January 2002, then touring to: Munich, Haus der Kunst, February - May 2002, and, New York, Brooklyn Museum of Art, September 2002 - January 2003 Bologna, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Ideale e realtà. Una storia del nudo del Neoclassicismo ad oggi, January - May 2004
W Cosmo Monkhouse, Alfred Gilbert, ARA - II, London, 1889, Magazine of Art, reproduced page 38 Andre Michel, Exposition Universelle de 1889: La Sculpture, Gazette des Beaux Arts, 3rd Series, volume II, 1889, page 404 M H Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-Day, London, 1901, page 78, reproduced page 78 Joseph Hatton, The Life and Work of Alfred Gilbert RA, MVO, LLD, Easter Art Annual, London 1903, page 32 reproduced page 3 Hermann Muthesius, Kunst und Leben in England, Leipzig 1903, page 85, reproduced figure 14 Alys Eyre Macklin, Alfred Gilbert at Bruges, The Studio, XLVIII, London 1910, reproduced page 100 Isabel McAllister, Alfred Gilbert, London 1929, page 58 Adrian Bury, Shadow of Eros: A Biographical and Critical Study of the Life and Works of Sir Alfred Gilbert, RA, MVO, DCL, London 1954, pages 8 and 80 Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, London 1985, pages 37, 45, 99, 201, 233, reproduced plates 19 and 44 Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert Sculptor and Goldsmith, London 1986, pages 106-8, catalogue number 11, reproduced in colour Alison Smith, Martin Myrone, Michael Hatt, Exposed: The Victorian Nude, Tate Britain, London, Tate Publishing, 2001, catalogue page 116, illustrated pages 36 and 116 Peter Weiermair, The Nude, Ideal and Reality from Neoclassicism to Today - Painting and Sculpture, Atificio Skira, Florence, 2004, catalogue 27, illustrated page 45