Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916)

STATUETTE OF W.E. GLADSTONE, 1879

 

Bronze
Purchased with help from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, Joanna Barnes Fine Arts, Grosvenor Museum Society 1994.7

The Sitter

William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898) was four times prime minister 1868-74, 1880-85, 1886 and 1892-94.  In 1839 he married Catherine, sister of Sir Stephen Glynne of Hawarden Castle, six miles from Chester.  Hawarden was Gladstone's home from 1839 until his death in 1898.  He was one of the founders of the Chester Diocesan Training College, now the University of Chester, which he opened in 1842.  In 1895 Gladstone founded St Deiniol's Library, Hawarden, as a centre for Christian learning.  By the 1890s the statesman's home had become world famous and Hawarden was an essential feature of tourist visits to Chester.

The Artist

Lord Ronald Gower was the youngest son of the 2nd Duke of Sutherland.  His mother died in 1868, and his interest in sculpture began while supervising Matthew Noble's work on her tomb for Trentham Church, Staffordshire.  From the mid-1870s he spent long periods in the bohemian art world of Paris.   In 1875 he entered the studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (who had made a statuette of him in 1852), and in 1876 set up his own studio, which he shared with Luca Madrassi, a pupil of Carrier-Belleuse.  Punctuated by aristocratic wanderings around the country houses of Britain and France, Gower's sculptural output was relatively small.   His statuette of 'Marie Antoinette as Dauphiness' and a 'Head of the Saviour' were shown at the Royal Academy in 1876, and the following year he exhibited a life size marble 'Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine' (now at Eaton Hall) and a bronze 'The Old Guard' (now at Windsor Castle).   He also exhibited at the 1878 Paris International Exhibition, at the Grosvenor Gallery, and at the Paris Salons in 1880 and 1881.   His 'Gladstone' and a contrasting statuette of 'Disraeli' (a plaster version of which is in the National Portrait Gallery) were completed in 1879. From 1877-88 Gower's activity was dominated by his final and most impressive work, the Shakespeare Monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Lord Ronald Gower's sister Constance married Earl Grosvenor, later Marquess of Westminster, who in 1874 became Duke of Westminster on Gladstone's recommendation.   The Grosvenor family's Eaton estate almost adjoins Hawarden, and Gladstone was a close friend of Gower and his family; Gower's niece married Gladstone's eldest son. Gladstone enjoyed felling trees, and the statuette was inspired by a photograph of him at Hawarden, seated on a stump of a recently felled tree and resting one arm on a woodman's axe.