THE MOWER
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
If Thomas Brock stands for the English academic ideal on its romantic side, Hamo Thornycroft represents the more naturalistic side of the same movement.
W. Hamo Thornycroft—who must be distinguished from his father, the sculptor of a group on the Albert Memorial—was born in 1850. His first exhibited work dates from 1871. A year later, he entered the Academy schools, gaining the gold medal in 1874, with his group “A warrior bearing his Wounded Son from Battle,” one of the very finest works which ever gained a studentship. It was no empty triumph. The young Thornycroft defeated no less an opponent than Alfred Gilbert, and his design challenged attention against such an exhibit as Stevens’s model for the Wellington Memorial. A man capable of such work in his student days was bound to go far.
“[The Mower]” (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) shows to what the virile naturalism of Thornycroft led. There is no sculpture which contains more of the thoroughly British spirit. Englishmen have little natural affection for the Whistler method of dashing off a “Harmony” in a couple of days and charging 300 guineas for it. They like to detect some definite proof of high thinking and strenuous workmanship in their art as in everything else. A sculpture of Thornycroft always leaves this impression. Added to that we feel that the artist is working towards a definite end, sufficiently ideal to demand effort, yet near enough to earth to come within his powers.
In the original sketch model of “[The Mower],” the upper part of the figure was draped. Thornycroft, however, finally discarded the shirt. He evidently felt that the subject could be treated in a thoroughly modern manner without departing altogether from the classical method. He succeeded in producing a statue which is neither conventional nor iconoclastic.
Whether this is to be counted a virtue or a vice depends upon the critic’s temperament, but the question is, perhaps, worthy of examination.
Meunier, the Belgian sculptor, has modelled a bronze “[Mower],” which Thornycroft’s statue irresistibly recalls. A comparison of the two works not only throws a searching light upon the whole school of sculpture which the Englishman represents, but, incidentally, brings into relief the leading characteristics of Meunier’s own work. No excuse is, therefore, necessary for interrupting our general survey of British sculpture with a reference to a sister school which really merits a chapter to itself.
Meunier is a man who has devoted himself to themes suggested by the colliery and artizan life of his country.