Asia at the Albert Memorial
The Albert Memorial in Hyde Park is one of the great sculptural achievements of the Victorian era, and for sheer scale, opulence and number of individual statues and sculpted figures is unequalled. On the four outer corners are groups depicting the continents.
Asia, by John Henry Foley, has the central figure as a semi-draped Indian girl, in a superb pose, on a seated elephant, flanked by a vaguely Chinese Oriental, an Assyrian, another turbaned Arabic figure, excellently Biblical, and (not visible above), an equally Biblical reclining figure, some spice merchant perhaps.
Foley apparently aimed at a 'general feeling of repose'. Queen Victoria thought his and the Africa groups the best, and Foley's execution was admired (although Lady Eastlake had some reservations about his drapery), but the wider response was less generally favourable than the committee probably anticipated.
The Times thought his details 'full of incongruity and barbarity' and The Saturday Review thought that the composition had not been sufficiently studied from all points. His elephant was objected to, chiefly because it seemed to be about to rise, to the discomfiture of the figures reposing on or against it.
The official history tells us that 'the prostrate animal is intended to typify the subjection of brute force to human intelligence'. Sometimes the explanation of allegory is unwise, and it is damping to learn that the poetic image of Asia unveiling herself 'is an allusion to the important display of the products of Asia, which was made at the Great Exhibition of 1851'. In Foley's first sketch-model Asia was draped. It is not known when Foley substituted a partly nude figure.
Asia at the Albert Memorial
The Albert Memorial in Hyde Park is one of the great sculptural achievements of the Victorian era, and for sheer scale, opulence and number of individual statues and sculpted figures is unequalled. On the four outer corners are groups depicting the continents.
Asia, by John Henry Foley, has the central figure as a semi-draped Indian girl, in a superb pose, on a seated elephant, flanked by a vaguely Chinese Oriental, an Assyrian, another turbaned Arabic figure, excellently Biblical, and (not visible above), an equally Biblical reclining figure, some spice merchant perhaps.
Foley apparently aimed at a 'general feeling of repose'. Queen Victoria thought his and the Africa groups the best, and Foley's execution was admired (although Lady Eastlake had some reservations about his drapery), but the wider response was less generally favourable than the committee probably anticipated.
The Times thought his details 'full of incongruity and barbarity' and The Saturday Review thought that the composition had not been sufficiently studied from all points. His elephant was objected to, chiefly because it seemed to be about to rise, to the discomfiture of the figures reposing on or against it.
The official history tells us that 'the prostrate animal is intended to typify the subjection of brute force to human intelligence'. Sometimes the explanation of allegory is unwise, and it is damping to learn that the poetic image of Asia unveiling herself 'is an allusion to the important display of the products of Asia, which was made at the Great Exhibition of 1851'. In Foley's first sketch-model Asia was draped. It is not known when Foley substituted a partly nude figure.