Sir Alfred Gilbert (1854–1934)

Sculptor and goldsmith. Born in London, he trained at Heatherley’s, the Royal Academy Schools and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris under various teachers including Joseph Edgar Boehm, to whom he acted as an assistant, Pierre-Jules Cavelier and Emmanuel Frémiet. During a visit to Italy in 1878 the sculpture of Donatello taught him to seek a more expressive approach to the figure, and the example of Cellini encouraged an experimental approach to casting and polychromy. Gilbert shares with another sculptor, George Simonds, the credit for having introduced lost wax casting into England. The works that followed, such as the statuette of Icarus (1884, National Museum, Cardiff) and the monuments to the Earl of Shaftesbury (Eros, 1885—93, Piccadilly Circus) and Queen Victoria (1887-1912, Winchester Great Hall) are notable for their combination of naturalism and decorative fantasy. They confirmed Gilbert’s position as leader of the movement known as ’The New Sculpture’. However, the expense of casting the ornate Eros plunged him into debt. A prestigious commission from the royal family for the Tomb of the Duke of Clarence for the Wolsey Chapel, Windsor, commenced in 1892, dragged on, and was not completed before Gilbert departed for a self-imposed exile in Bruges in Belgium. During the years he spent in Bruges, where he settled more or less permanently in 1903, he produced relatively little, but in 1926 he returned to England and completed the unfinished Clarence Tomb, as well as creating his swan song, the Memorial to Queen Alexandra (1932). These late works are in a distinctive, generalising style, quite different from the precision of the earlier phase, but already foreshadowed in the reredos with The Resurrection for St Albans Cathedral, on which Gilbert worked from 1890 to around 1927. Gilbert was knighted in 1932.

Bibliography (updated 2024): S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983; A. Bury, Shadow of Eros, London, 1954; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. xxxvi, 23, 93, 255, 256, 367; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Leicestershire and Rutland, Liverpool, 2000, pp. xx, 159–64, 367–68; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Liverpool, Liverpool, 1997, pp. xviii, 38–39, 195–96, 260–61, 265, 329; T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of South London, Liverpool, 2007, pp. 205, 318, 326–29, 330, 437; D.A. Cross, Public Sculpture of Lancashire and Cumbria, Liverpool, 2017, pp. xiii, 56, 95; R. Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, New Haven and London, 1985; R. Dorment, ‘Gilbert, Sir Alfred (1854–1934)’, ODNB, 2004; R. Dorment et al, Alfred Gilbert. Sculptor and Goldsmith (Royal Academy of Arts), London, 1986; I. McAllister, Alfred Gilbert, London, 1929; P. Usherwood et al, Public Sculpture of North-East England, Liverpool, 2000, pp. 119–21, 206, 323; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of Historic Westminster. Volume 1, Liverpool, 2011, pp. xxxvi, xli, 131, 150–53, 162, 175, 183, 223–27, 307, 355, 399, 448–49; T. Wyke, Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester, Liverpool, 2004, pp. 33–35, 446.

Philip Ward-Jackson, 2011