Edward Onslow Ford - The Singer - antique book photo front left
Just as a small addendum to my photos of The Singer at the Tate Britain gallery, I'm including two images from antique art books. Bear in mind that for many years these photos, and maybe one or two others that I haven't found yet, were the only images of this amazing statue available *anywhere*. To the best of my knowledge these black and white images are in the public domain due to their age.
I have painstakingly whited out the original light grey background and adjusted the contrast for clarity.
If you look carefully, you'll see that the old photos show a couple of small features that have since been lost or broken. The more obvious one is the spiralling spike on top of the ibis's crown at the base of the harp. More subtly, the uppermost tip of the harp itself is no longer there today. I don't think those are huge problems in terms of the statue's aesthetic value, though it would be nice if they could be replaced.
You can also see that in this photo some of the harpstrings are bent. In the other black and white photo most of them have been straightened, and of course they were all fixed by the time I took the colour images.
It's also worth noting that at the time this photo was taken the statue's polychrome decoration was concealed by a protective layer of brown wax. It was not until the 1990s that the Tate's restoration team were able to restore it to the state in which it appears in the colour photos.
Edward Onslow Ford - The Singer - antique book photo front left
Just as a small addendum to my photos of The Singer at the Tate Britain gallery, I'm including two images from antique art books. Bear in mind that for many years these photos, and maybe one or two others that I haven't found yet, were the only images of this amazing statue available *anywhere*. To the best of my knowledge these black and white images are in the public domain due to their age.
I have painstakingly whited out the original light grey background and adjusted the contrast for clarity.
If you look carefully, you'll see that the old photos show a couple of small features that have since been lost or broken. The more obvious one is the spiralling spike on top of the ibis's crown at the base of the harp. More subtly, the uppermost tip of the harp itself is no longer there today. I don't think those are huge problems in terms of the statue's aesthetic value, though it would be nice if they could be replaced.
You can also see that in this photo some of the harpstrings are bent. In the other black and white photo most of them have been straightened, and of course they were all fixed by the time I took the colour images.
It's also worth noting that at the time this photo was taken the statue's polychrome decoration was concealed by a protective layer of brown wax. It was not until the 1990s that the Tate's restoration team were able to restore it to the state in which it appears in the colour photos.