After a bust is modelled it has to be cast in plaster. As a rule, only one cast can be taken, but there are various ways of getting a second, or even a third reproduction. The original clay bust on which the sculptor worked is now so damaged that it is destroyed, the clay often being used again for a fresh subject, and the bundles of wood being utilised for lighting the fire.
A young Frenchman once begged me to let him cast a hand and foot for some work he was doing, explaining that, though amongst the artists’ models there were exquisite heads and forms, that class of woman seldom had good hands, and a good foot never. Bad boots doubtless accounted for the latter. He made a pudding of plaster of Paris on a tin tray, and into the cold, clammy stuff my well-vaselined extremity was plunged. In a few minutes the cold, wet mud felt hot, almost burning, and the foot was done; but, oh, the dirty mess and the nastiness of it all.
Although England possesses some of the finest marble carvers, much of the work, unfortunately, is sent to Italy to be hewn, and even finished, because labour is cheaper there. Herbert Hampton always employs Englishmen, and does the actual finishing of the marble himself. In that he is a thorough John Bull.
It is an extraordinary thing to see how a bust is “mechanically pointed” in a rough block. Three fixed points with needles attached to each can copy the most accurate measurements, which, of course, are purely mechanical, from the original cast. After it is roughly hewn the sculptor begins carving and modelling with chisel and hammer. Thus the process is done in three parts: modelled in clay, pointed in marble, and then carved to its finished state of perfection.
Figures that are cast in bronze are done differently. The bust or figure is prepared in exactly the same manner in plaster of Paris, an exact model of what is wanted, and this has to be sent to the art foundry to be cast. That is not the work of the sculptor himself, but of the bronze-workers, and as bronze fetches from seventy to ninety pounds per ton, and it takes two or three tons to make a large figure, it is easily seen that five hundred pounds is quite an ordinary bill for casting a single figure at a foundry.
The huge figure of the late Duke of Devonshire (now in Whitehall) and I occupied the studio at the same time.
The greatest sculptor England ever produced, to my mind, was the versatile Alfred Gilbert. He was also one of the strangest personalities. He was both a genius and wayward. A genius as a sculptor, and wayward as regards the world. Never, never, in all my experience, have I known a stranger personality. For years I saw a good deal of him. He often came and dined, preferably alone, for dress-clothes irritated him, and humanity in the aggregate bored him.
I do not believe Gilbert knew what time or method meant. He slid through life. Sometimes he slipped into the right niche, sometimes he glided into the wrong one—but he was a genius by temperament, a genius oft-times in execution. He turned up on the wrong day to dinner, or failed to come on the right one. In fact, he was the most delightful, irresponsible, brilliant, irresistible human creature I have ever come across. His life was full of trouble, yet all those who really knew him loved him, and their hearts went out to him and condoned his muddles as the escapades of a boy.
Gilbert created the Clarence Memorial at Windsor, and if he had never done anything else, that would have been enough to stamp him as a genius. He designed the wonderful iron gates at Eaton Hall, and his work in metals and precious stones was unsurpassed. He practically revived the work of Albrecht Dürer and Benvenuto Cellini in this country.
When he dined with me he talked, he listened, he wept, he laughed by turns; after dinner he walked about, or passed his hands over the piano and played awhile, or would strike weird chords of wailing. He was a bit of a musical genius as well as a master in his own line. How often music and its sister art are thus twinned! But then, if I mistake not, he was descended from musicians on both sides. Suddenly he would leave the piano, attracted by a door-knob, a button, or an idea, and would then plunge into a dissertation upon art or a lecture on philosophy. How Gilbert loved art! Every bend and curve meant something to him. His blue eyes would dilate with pleasure or his heavy jaw become set and rigid in anger or contempt. When his work really pleased him he could not bear to part with it; when it dissatisfied him he broke it up—very honest of him, but hardly remunerative. He was never made for this world. He was a dreamer, a poet, an idealist; perhaps this very incongruity of temperament was the source of the beautiful ideals he conceived and sometimes brought to birth.