William Ewart Gladstone
Edward Onslow Ford, R. A. (1852-1901)
1882
Marble
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, Wirral, Merseyside
Another wonderfully expressive face, deeply attentive, commanding, half-challenging, half-benign, by one of the New Sculptors; Onslow Ford was a close friend of Lord Lever who founded this gallery in memory of his wife (see Davenport-Hines). A likeness of Gladstone, who was in so many ways a son of nearby Liverpool (where he was born in Rodney Street), would have been an essential item in the collection.
Photograph, caption, and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee, 2009.