“Queen Victoria” by Sir Alfred Gilbert

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Queen Victoria

Sir Alfred Gilbert, R. A. (1854-1934), sculptor

Unveiled (allthough not fully completed) 1878

Bronze and gilded beaten metal

The statue is 14 ft. high x 30 ft at widest point; weight, c.2 tonnes

The Great Hall, Winchester Castle, Hampshire

Commissioned by the High Sheriff of Hampshire to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee, the statue was originally intended to be displayed in the Great Hall, and Gilbert had planned to execute it in marble (see Beattie 207). He changed the medium to bronze after learning that it would instead be located out-of-doors, on Castle Hill. After a spell there, however, it was in fact moved to the Hall in 1912. It was then unveiled for a second time. [Commentary continues below.]

Photograph © Graham Horn. Text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee.

This photograph was first posted on the Geograph site and can be reused under the Creative Commons Licence. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

The statue has been very highly praised, despite some vicissitudes (its full-scale plaster model was mocked by Harry Furniss in a Punch cartoon when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888; it took a long time to put all the finishing touches; and it was vandalised during its outdoor years on Castle Hill). Most memorably, Susan Beattie writes:

Extraordinary in conception and execution, the monument represents the Queen seated, in massive robes of state, on a throne peopled by tiny allegorical figures. Above, as if suspended weightless in mid-air or upon the tendrils of the lilies that writhe about its base, hangs a colossal gilded crown of beaten metal set with white and ruby crystals and forming a canopy over the basilisk-like figure of the monarch.... Baroque in the manipulation of bronze and the great sweep of drapery, Gothic in the marshalling of its detail, and Donatellesque in the pathos of its statuettes [among them Faith, Hope and Charity, together with the Law, the Constitution and the Colonial Empire] the great monument was a melting pot from which memorial sculpture emerged transformed in scope and significance. [207]

Understandably, Benedict Read sees here Gilbert's "total commitment to the ideals of the New Sculpture" (369).

Related Material

Bibliography

Beattie, Susan. The New Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983.

Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982.

"Winchester Queen Victoria Statue Leaves Great Hall." BBC (gives dimensions and weight). 15 December 2010.

Created 2 October 2017