JOHN BURNS'S TROUSERS, BY DAVID WEEKES.
From a Photo.
On the other hand, there have been sculptors who strive hard for sartorial realism. The trousers no more than the limbs of all our great men are faultless. At a glance we may appreciate shades of difference in the interesting studies by Mr. David Weekes of the trousers of Lord Rosebery and of Mr. John Burns. The former are the garments to the life, such as have long been familiar to the fortunate occupiers of the front rows at Liberal political meetings—redolent of the lonely furrow and on intimate terms with the historic spade—while as for the tumid and strenuous breeches of the member for Battersea, corduroy or otherwise, they are chiselled to the last crease of realism. But such is the perversity of Art that such interesting studies would in the finished statue be exchanged for far less convincing garments. The legs of the Palmerston and Peel statues in Parliament Square are clothed in what we might term a suave trouser—or, more properly speaking, pantaloons—of incredible length and irreproachable girth; whereas those whose eyes have rested upon these great statesmen's garments in the flesh will recall something eminently different. For example, if we do not too greatly err in our conception, Lord Palmerston, in his later years, was somewhat addicted to a style of trouser not often seen in sculpture. Happily, in the studio of Mr. Wade, we have been able to light upon an example of just the sort of trouser we mean, and in order more to accurately impress its proportions upon the reader we give an example of it. It is not the trouser of a statesman, however, but of a stableman, a personage in a lower station in life (page 77).
W. E. GLADSTONE, BY E. ONSLOW FORD, R.A.
From a Photo.
W. S. COOKSON, BY T. BROCK, R.A.
From a Photo.
A reference might here be made to the trousers of Mr. Gladstone, executed in bronze by the late Onslow Ford, R.A. The artist in this piece displayed extraordinary qualities of merit, but as realists we must take issue with him on the question of the length of Gladstone's trousers. Albeit if Mr. Gladstone, in posing for this really admirable work, undertook, with an eye to the effects the consequence would have with posterity, to assume for the nonce an unusual and unprecedented pair of trousers, then, of course, Mr. Ford merits a complete exoneration. He, like posterity will be, was deceived. But we take it upon ourselves, while admiring their aggressiveness and individuality, to assert that such trousers would be much more befitting Mr. Balfour, whose "tailor's length," we are given to understand, is thirty-six inches, rather than the venerable Liberal statesman, whose nether adornments never exceeded twenty-eight.