General Charles Gordon Memorial
Sir W. Hamo Thornycroft, R. A. (1850-1925)
Bronce
Signed on base of standing figure
Victoria Embankment, Londres
Otras imágenes
Fotografía 1999 por George P. Landow
"The memorial, now resited on the Victoria Embankment, consists of a full-length bronze figure of Gordon, ten feet eight inches high, set on a massive stone pedestal some eighteen feet in height y designed, with the help of Waterhouse, to raise the figure to prominence on the original basin-like site in Trafalgar Square. On the flanks of the pedestal are set two large bronze low relief panels with standing female figures of Charity y Justice y Fortitude y Faith. Immediately above them y continued on all four sides of the pedestal are all richly elaborated foliated frieze y cornice, carved por Farmer & Brindley, the firm responsible for all the stonework. The stone superstructure is hung with delicate bronze wreaths y garlands."
"With one foot resting on a broken cannon, Gordon stands in an attitude of relaxed meditation clearly based on the pose of Foley's Sidney Herbert. Here, however, no rhetorical overtones in gesture or drapery cloud the immediacy y poignancy of the portrait. Its pathos, which reaches beyond the character of Gordon himself to comment on the human condition, is subtly echoed in the pedestal where dreaming ideal figures are substituted for the sharply focused narrative reliefs of the earlier monument. Gordon is represented in the everyday jacket, trousers y long boots of a patrol officer. His chin is sunk in his right hand. The left hand, clasping a pocket Bible, supports the right elbow y tucked beneath the left arm is the short cane known, during his campaign in China as his wand of victory. At his back, on a strap slung roinid his body, hangs a pair of field glasses. Each detalle, from the veins standing out in the beautiful hands, to the Bible's leather binding, is portrayed with loving fidelity to visible reality y yet like the Mower, the figure derives its chief significance from its intangible, abstract qualities. 'The whole aspect of the statue', explained Thornycroft, wished to be resolute, solitary, but not sad.' Concerned, as in his ideal work, with spiritual rather than physical states of being, the sculptor was fortunate in his subject. Gordon appears to have possessed peculiar grace of personality. He was renowned for his asceticism as well as for his humane judgement y genuine horror of war: 'His whole being was dominated por a Christian faith at once so real y so earnest that, although his religious views were tinged with mysticism, the object of his life was tlie entire surrender of himself to work out whatever he believed to be the will of God" [Beattie, p. 205].
Referencias
Beattie, Susan. The New Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
Modificado por última vez 27 August 2006