Head of a Man

Details

Date: 1918
Dimensions: 44 x 26 x 30
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS18
Artist: Dalou, Aime Jules (1838 - 1902)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

This head of a man was said to have been modelled by Dalou as a training excercise for students in 1877. The original clay model is now in a private collection. A bronze cast of the of the bust was made in 1918, destined for the Jojiro Matsukata collection in Japan but ended up in the Polish Embassy in London, and from 1971 was transferred to the Warsaw Museum. This version was cast for Frank Brangwyn, artist and art advisor to Matsukata.

Details

Date: 1900
Dimensions: 6.5 diameter
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: S57
Artist: Chaplain, J. C. (1839 - 1909)
Credit notes: WMG purchase , 2000

The Chadwicks had a long association with Morris & Co, several generations of the family having worked for the firm. Frank Chadwick started his career with Morris & Co. c.1921 as a dyer, later becoming one of the Firm’s weavers. The present medallion was sold together with other items, which included: a letter of recommendation for Frank Chadwick from Morris & Co. (dated 19 September 1940) following the closure and voluntary liquidation of the firm, a newspaper cutting (publication unknown) on the Chadwicks’ links with Morris & Co. and a booklet on Indigo: Its Application in Dyeing and Printing by Dr M Liebert of Meister Lucius & Bruning Ltd. (Pubd. Furstenhagen & Brown, Bradford, n.d.)

Details

Date: 1870-1880
Dimensions: 28 x 22
Object Type: sculpture
Catalogue number: H53
Owner: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Transfer from Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 2011

This drinking horn was acquired by William Morris in Iceland, possibly a gift from a friend.

The horn was donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter in 1939 by Mary Lobb, May Morris’s companion and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery.

Details

Dimensions: 49 x 36 x 23
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS34
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

A copy of Roman work in the Naples Museum.

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 43 x 23
Object Type: sculpture
Catalogue number: H54
Owner: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Transfer from Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 2011

This drinking horn was made in Iceland, the carved inscription reads ‘HVITINGR’ (drinking horn) 1881. William Morris visited Iceland twice, firstly in 1871, then in 1873. The horn was donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter in 1939 by Mary Lobb, May Morris’s companion and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery.

Details

Date: 1870-1880
Dimensions: 28 x 22 x 8
Object Type: sculpture
Catalogue number: H52
Owner: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Transfer from Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 2011

This drinking horn was acquired by William Morris in Iceland, possibly a gift from a friend.

The horn was donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter in 1939 by Mary Lobb, May Morris’s companion and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery.

Details

Dimensions: 99 x 83 x 51
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S60
Owner: Waltham Forest Labour Party
Credit notes: On loan from Waltham Forest Labour Party

This bust of William Morris was formerly on display in the William Morris Hall, Somers Road, Walthamstow. The unknown artist may have used the bronze bust of William Morris (S35) as a model, as this would have been on display in the Walthamstow Public Library at the time.

Details

Dimensions: 57 x 33 x 33
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S59
Owner: Waltham Forest Labour Party

PLaster bust of William Morris, formerly on display in the William Morris School, London Borough of Waltham Forest until 1989 when the school closed.

Details

Dimensions: 40.6 x 16.5 x 17.8
Object Type: sculpture
Material: wood
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: BrS30
Artist: Unknown
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Details

Date: c.1890?
Dimensions: 15 x 6.5
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S54
Artist: Chaplin, Alice Mary (1848 - 1921)
Credit notes: Presented by C. J. Whall, 1973

Alice Mary Chaplin was born in Sudbury Suffolk. Chaplin moved to London to study sculpture and settled in Chelsea. She produced statuettes and sculpture groups, often of animals, in bronze and terracotta. This is a plaster model of two lovebirds for a door-knocker. Between 1877 and 1900, Chaplin exhibited 18 works at the Royal Academy in London. She exhibited a statuette of a puma at the 1903 Arts and Crafts exhibition in London. Chaplin died at Fulham in London in 1921.

Details

Date: c.1968
Dimensions: 37 x 25
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: S50
Artist: Wolfe, Alfred Adrian (1891 - 1975)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Anna Wolfe, 1982

The original plaster from which this bronze plaque was cast was modelled in 1918. It is based on a photograph of William Morris showing him in an identical pose, taken between 1892-3. This bronze plaque was one of six cast casts made in around 1968 when the artist Adrian Alfred Wolfe presented one to the University of Essex for display in one of the University’s residences named after William Morris.
After Wolfe’s death in 1975, Mrs. Wolfe presented the other casts to the William Morris Gallery, as well as the William Morris Society for display at Kelmscott House, Princeton University, the South Place Ethical Society, Conway House, Red Lion Square and the Museum of Labour History, London.

Details

Dimensions: 75.5 x 45.1
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S44a
Attributed artist: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by Messrs Hallett, Fox & White, 1950

This panel was designed by George Jack and was formerly part of an overmantle, to the right of the of two other plaster panels (S44b) and ‘The Bird’s Nest’ (S44c), at number 41, Oakleigh Park, Friern Barnet, one of several houses in the locality by Arthur Keen. It was removed in 1950. The two outer panels (S44a and S44c), which form a pair, are slightly later than the central panel. A polychrome version of the same design was in the collection of the textile manufacturer James Morton (1867-1943), son of Alexander Morton, the founder of the Scottish textile firm.

Details

Date: c.1904
Dimensions: 75.5 x 45.1
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S44c
Artist: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by Messrs Hallett, Fox & White, 1950

This panel was designed by George Jack and was formerly part of an overmantl, to the left of two other plaster panels (S44b) and ‘The Woodman’ (S44a), at number 41, Oakleigh Park, Friern Barnet, one of several houses in the locality by Arthur Keen . It was removed in 1950. The two outer panels (S44a and S44c), which form a pair, are slightly later than the central panel. A polychrome version of the same design was in the collection of the textile manufacturer James Morton (1867-1943), son of Alexander Morton, the founder of the Scottish textile firm.

Details

Date: c.1904
Dimensions: 45.8 x 48.3
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: S44b
Artist: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by Messrs Hallett, Fox & White, 1950

This panel was designed by George Jack and was formerly part of an overmantle, flanked by two high-relief plaster panels of ‘The Woodman’ (S44a) and ‘The Bird’s Nest’ (S44c), at number 41, Oakleigh Park, Friern Barnet, one of several houses in the locality by Arthur Keen . It was removed in 1950. A polychrome version of the same design was in the collection of the textile manufacturer James Morton (1867-1943), son of Alexander Morton, the founder of the Scottish textile firm.

Details

Date: c.1900
Dimensions: 206 x 63.5 x 38
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: S35
Artist: Fehr, Henry Charles (1867 - 1940)

This bust of William Morris was given to Walthamstow Central Library in 1900 by Jonathan Passmore Edwards, a British journalist and philanthropist. It was unveiled by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt. The bust was given to the William Morris Gallery in 1950.

Details

Date: 1882
Dimensions: 18.5 x 15 x 19
Object Type: sculpture
Material: terracotta
Catalogue number: S32
Artist: Creswick, Benjamin (1853 - 1946)
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

This terracotta bust shows Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo as a young man, he is depicted with short hair and aquiline features wearing a collarless buttoned-down coat. It was made by Benjamin Creswick a friend and collaborator of Mackmurdo who worked with him on a number of decoration projects, including the Century Guild display at the Inventions Exhibition in 1885. Creswick lived with Mackmurdo for a short time during the 1880s at his house at 20 Fitzroy Street. It is likely the bust was made here during this period.

Details

Date: c.1890?
Dimensions: 21.5 x 14 x 13
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS29
Artist: Rodin, August Rene Francois (1840 - 1917)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Rodin was fascinated by the formal possibilities of groups of interlocking figures, with their suggestions of intimacy, movement and complexity. Although small in size, the pair of embracing figures has – like so much of Rodin’s work – a monumental quality, so that one can easily imagine the same group sculpted on a colossal scale. The bronze is inscribed with a dedication to Rodin’s friend, the writer Arsene Alexandre.

Details

Date: 1908
Dimensions: 29 x 23 x 26
Object Type: sculpture
Material: clay
Catalogue number: BrS27
Artist: Lanteri, Edouard (1848 - 1918)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Edward (Edouard) Lanteri, (1848-1917), was born in France. He trained in Paris and came to London in 1872 to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. From 1880, he taught sculpture at the South Kensington Art Schools (later the Royal College of Art) where he was Professor of Modelling from 1900 to 1910. This model for a bronze sculpture (see BrS11) depicts Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), a painter and sculptor and influential figure in the early Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1878, Richmond succeeded his friend and mentor John Ruskin as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Richmond was elected to the Royal Academy in 1895, where he served as Professor of Painting from 1895 to 1899 and from 1909 to 1911, he continued to exhibit with the Academy until 1916 and was elected Senior RA at the Academy in 1920.

Details

Date: 1890
Dimensions: 51 x 23 x 21.5
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: BrS26
Artist: Meunier, Constantin Emile (1831 - 1905)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Constantin Meunier was a Belgian sculptor and painter. In his work he chose to depict industrial workers, dockers and miners, elevating them as icons of the industrial age. This figure portrays the proud, athletic figure of a dock labourer but it was also Meunier’s intention to show the alienation of the individual through labour. A first version in wax was exhibited in 1885 in Brussels at the Salon des XX and a plaster version at the National Society of Fine Arts, Paris in 1998 where it was received with enthusiastic praise “… never have we had such an intense figure, with such a tragic expression and touching, energy, crushing, suffering and resignation’.
Meunier was one of the main artists to be exhibited at the Paris based art dealer, Siegfrid Bing’s influential L’Art Nouveu exhibitions, held at the Grafton Galleries in London in the 1897 and 1899. Frank Brangwyn designed the posters for the exhibitions and possibly acquired this figure around the same time.
Formerly known as ‘Coal Heaver’ a bronze version of the statuette is illustrated in the article by Walter Shaw Sparrow ‘Constantin Meunier: The Artist of the Flemish Collieries’ in the Studio Vol. 11 July 1897 pp.75 – 86, illus. p.79. An identical plaster version (not coloured), with the title ‘Le Debardeur’, is illustrated in the review of the Antwerp exhibitiion in ‘Studio Talk’, The Studio Vol. 15 No 69 Dec 1898 pp.201 – 202 illus. p. 200.

Details

Dimensions: 19 x 40.5 x 18
Object Type: sculpture
Material: terracotta
Catalogue number: BrS25
Artist: Mattos, Henri Teixeira de (1856 - 1908)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Details

Dimensions: 34.5 x 27.5 x 21
Object Type: sculpture
Material: terracotta
Catalogue number: BrS21
Artist: Deloye, Gustave Jean Baptiste (1838 - 1899)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Details

Date: c.1914
Dimensions: 34.5 x 23 x 14.5
Object Type: sculpture
Material: marble
Catalogue number: BrS20
Artist: Gelles, Carl, Professor (1880 - 1930)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Details

Date: 1918
Dimensions: 38 x 30.5 x 15
Object Type: sculpture
Material: marble and wood
Catalogue number: BrS19
Artist: Gelles, Carl, Professor (1880 - 1930)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Marble head of a girl, looking in profile to left, her hair covered by a kerchief knotted at the front of her head.
Gelles’ early sculpture, such as this marble torso, is strongly imbued with the spirit of Rodin (who wrote admiringly of Gelles’s work), an inevitably dominant influence upon Paris-trained sculptors in the pre-1914 period. Its quiet charm is in marked contrast to the style of the earlier torso (no.18). The slightly simplified and stylised forms of the girl’s features and headscarf evoke the spirit of early Classical Greek sculpture, know in German-speaking countries as ‘der Strenge Stil’ (the Severe Style). His later work, in both marble and bronze, is more within the mainstream of Austrian sculpture.

Details

Dimensions: 63.5 x 40.5 x 33
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS17
Artist: Falguiere, Jean Alexandre Joseph (1831 - 1900)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Details

Date: 1876
Dimensions: 47.5 x 26 x 22.5
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS16
Artist: Dalou, Aime Jules (1838 - 1902)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Head and shoulders portrait of a young girl in square necked dress looking to left, her hair tied at the back falling behind right shoulder and over left shoulder.

Details

Dimensions: 29 x 15 x 15
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS12
Artist: Dalou, Aime Jules (1838 - 1902)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Seated nude woman, her head against the shoulder of male nude leaning supporting her arms, a young faun standing right holding her knee and offering a bunch of grapes.
One of Dalou’s last works, the plaster for this sculpture was exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts in 1892.

Details

Date: 1908
Dimensions: 29 x 23 x 26
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS11
Artist: Lanteri, Edouard (1848 - 1918)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Edward (Edouard) Lanteri, (1848-1917), was born in France. He trained in Paris and came to London in 1872 to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. From 1880, he taught sculpture at the South Kensington Art Schools (later the Royal College of Art) where he was Professor of Modelling from 1900 to 1910. This bronze sculpture depicts Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), a painter and sculptor and influential figure in the early Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1878, Richmond succeeded his friend and mentor John Ruskin as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford. Richmond was elected to the Royal Academy in 1895, where he served as Professor of Painting from 1895 to 1899 and from 1909 to 1911, he continued to exhibit with the Academy until 1916 and was elected Senior RA at the Academy in 1920.
The model for this bronze is also in the Gallery’s collection, se BrS27.

Details

Date: 1913
Dimensions: 31 x 25 x 13
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS10
Artist: Toft, Albert (1862 - 1949)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Man stripped to waist, wearing trousers and braces, holding long pole with ladle attached from which he pours iron.

Details

Dimensions: 29.6 x 23 x 16
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS8
Artist: Dalou, Aime Jules (1838 - 1902)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

This is a small study for part of the much larger figure of Silenus in Dalou’s La Triomphe de Silene, a sculpture erected in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris in 1898. Silenus is the character in ancient Greek mythology who symbolises drunkenness and debauchery; he is sometimes depicted riding a donkey or goat and accompanied by fauns, satyrs and maenads. In its vigorous modelling and lively realism, Dalou’s bronze comes very close to the qualities of Rodin’s work.

Details

Date: 1938
Dimensions: 26.5 x 15 x 10
Object Type: sculpture
Material: marble and wood
Catalogue number: BrS7
Artist: Toft, Albert (1862 - 1949)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Standing figure of the artist in trousers, waistcoat and jacket with long scarf around neck, looking slightly to right, one hand in pocket of jacket, the other holding a palette. An area of rough metal by the palette suggests that he originally held brushes which have been broken off.

Albert Toft made two portrait bronzes of Frank Brangqwn, this statuette and a bust was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1938.

Details

Dimensions: 34 x 13 x 15
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS5
Artist: Drury, Alfred (1856 - 1944)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Standing female figure in long dress and bare head, a sleeping baby on her right shoulder supported by one arm, her left arm holding the outstretched hand of a little boy standing in front of her, partly enveloped in her billowing cloak.

This small bronze group is closely related to the colossal bronze allegory of Education which Drury made for Vauxhall Bridge in 1909, along with the groups of Art, Science, and Local Goverment. The figures for Education stand on the piers of the Westminster side of the bridge.

Details

Date: c.1877
Dimensions: 40 x 12. 5 x 18
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze and marble
Catalogue number: BrS3
Artist: Dalou, Aime Jules (1838 - 1902)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Woman seated holding baby in right arm which suckles at her breast, looking left and downwards to young boy leaning against her lap and looking up at her.
This sculpture is closely related in pose to a similar group, entitled ‘Charity’ (marble; height 91 cm) in the Tate Gallery, London (no. 3052). This Tate sculpture is a reduced replica of another marble group made to stand over a drinking fountain in Exchange Avenue at the back of the Royal Exchange London. The sculpture was completed by 1877, though the fountain was not erected and opened until autumn 1879. Although protected by a canopy, its condition had seriously deteriorated by 1895 (see Magazine of Art, 1895 pp. 327-329 note 1) and in 1897 was replaced by a poor copy in bronze which still stands.

Details

Date: c. 1895
Dimensions: 47.5 x 31 x 33
Object Type: sculpture
Material: bronze
Catalogue number: BrS2
Artist: John, William Goscombe, Sir (1860 - 1952)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1940

Boy standing balancing himself on one foot, reaching forward with other foot to touch a knucklebone on ground in front of him; he must recover his position behind the line without putting his foot to the ground.

Goscombe John was born in Cardiff and began his career assisting his father, a stonemason, on William Burge’s restoration of Cardiff Castle. He then studied in London, at Lambeth and the R.A. Schools, before travelling in Europe and working for a time with Rodin in Paris. He made many public monuments as well as statuettes and designed the regalia for the future King Edward VIII’s investiture as Prince of Wales in 1911. Goscombe John made the bronze memorial to Canon Guy, William Morris’s tutor, in the Chapel of Forest School, Walthamstow (1897).

The plaster version of this statuette was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1895 and in the following year a larger bronze was purchased by the Tate Gallery.

Details

Date: 1900
Dimensions: 42 x 26.7 x 22.9
Object Type: sculpture
Material: plaster
Catalogue number: BrS28
Artist: Creswick, Benjamin (1853 - 1946)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1950

Man in shirt, trousers and apron seated on an anvil looking slightly downwards and leaning forwards to rest his arm on one knee, his foot resting on a pile of horse-shoes below and hammer and pincers, holding a long-handled mallet in one hand, the other resting on the edge of the anvil.

Object Type: sculpture

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