Thomas Woolner (Hadleigh 1825 - 1892 London), Circa 1865

Sotheby's London, 12 December 2003, lot 231;

Where acquired by Aso O. Tavitian.

Joanna Barnes and Benedict Read (eds.), Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture: Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture 1848-1914, exhibition catalogue, London 1991, pp.154-155, no.73.

London, Royal Academy, 1868, no. 1027.

The present reliefs are the plaster models for three marble panels on the memorial to British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809 - 1898), now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (acc. no. WA1926.33.1). Thomas Woolner received his commission to create a bust of Gladstone in 1863 and he completed the model in August of that year. The marble was carved some time afterwards, according to Amy Woolner, and was presented to Oxford University in 1866 and placed in the Bodleian Library. The completed memorial consisted of the portrait bust on a plinth decorated with the three reliefs. The current plaster reliefs were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868.

The reliefs, based on scenes from Homer's Iliad, were designed "as a compliment to Mr. Gladstone's study and knowledge of Greek art".¹ Gladstone, a Greek scholar who studied the classics at Oxford, was a renowned commentator on Homer. He had published his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age in 1858 and in 1863, together with his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, he wrote Translations, containing passages from The Iliad. 

Woolner thought it appropriate that Gladstone "should look the living man surrounding the Ideal subjects, to avoid any possibility of being mistaken for the poet himself instead of his commentator".² Classical subjects are relatively unusual in Woolner's oeuvre; however, Homer remained high in Pre-Raphaelite esteem.

Woolner's reliefs are unconventional by Neoclassical standards, detailed and sharply modeled; their actions are vigorous and expressive. The Athenaeum praised the "vigour of invention which is displayed in the Pallas and Achilles..."³ and F. G. Stephens referred to the "splendid energy" of the Achilles relief. Woolner carved a marble replica of the Achilles Shouting from the Trenches as his diploma work for election as a Royal Academician and another marble version was made for the sculptor's patron Charles Jenner (Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich). Bronze casts of this central relief are also known, one of which was sold at Sotheby's London on 27 April 2001, lot 163.

¹Amy Woolner, Sculptor and Poet; His Life in Letters, New York 1917, p.237

²Ibid, p.268

³The Athenaeum, 1868, p.769;