Dorset Ancestors Rotating Header Image

August, 2014:

Alfred Stevens – Sculptor

This is the story of how a Dorset house painter became so saturated with the Italian Renaissance, putting it into practice in England, that he is called a ‘descendant’ of Michelangelo himself. Yet he was a modest man.

“Look around you if you would see his memorial” is still said of Sir Christopher Wren, who, as his crowning achievement, rebuilt St.Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire of 1666.

If you want to see the memorial to Blandford sculptor Alfred Stevens, you should go to the same place. Wren created the perfect majestic setting for the famous sculptor’s memorial to the Duke of Wellington – the nave of the cathedral is the only place for such a massive construction.

On a visit there in April 2003 I found it coated in white dust, which is understandable as the building is undergoing a facelift expected to last several more years. Thankfully it had not been covered with dust-sheets.

Starting life as a house painter and decorator in his father’s business, art-mad Stevens began a nine-year sojourn in Italy in 1833 at the age of 15, thanks to the patronage of a friendly Dorset clergyman, the Hon. And Rev. Samuel Best, rector of Blandford St.Mary; some people can sense greatness.

There in that sunny land, year after year, he was able to feast his eyes on 14th century paintings and visit Naples, Florence, Pompeii, Capri, Rome and Milan, studying the great painters and the architecture of the land.

It is said that the reversion towards Romanticism which occurred in the 19th century led in the West to an acceptance of conflicting standards and every style and taste, with little regard for skill or talent in the visual arts and literature.

However that may be, the man who was sculptor, painter, decorator, draughtsman, and designer of beer mugs, stoves, lamp posts – and memorials – was to use his Italian experience supremely well for he has even been compared to the greatest artists of the Renaissance suh as Michelangelo. He brought their intuition and skill back to his native land and we have it forever, thanks to a son of Dorset.

Stevens had his own pupils, and much of his work is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in west-central London and is apparent in the construction of the Royal Albert Hall nearby.

Perhaps for many the crowning glory of the great memorial of St. Paul’s is that a Dorset horse was modelled for the equestrian stature of Wellington, mounted in triumph on the battlefield. It was due to such statesmen-soldiers that the United Kingdom is free today and not under a tyrant. No wonder it was called Great Britain… Yet if for nothing else, many Dorset people must have gone to St. Pauls’s to see the horse. Alfred Stevens never forgot his roots.

However, it is only truthful to add that he died before completion of the work and the horse was added later, to his design, topping the whole gargantuan pile. In creating the monument, he also drew upon mediaeval paintings in Salisbury Cathedral, another local touch.

The monument, including 12 Portland marble columns all the way from his native county, was moved from a side chapel to a more dominant position alongside the central aisle and seating of the great nave. This is one of the great buildings of the world.

Wellington was created duke on the surrender of Napoleon and was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of France. After Napoleon’s escape from the island of Elba, Wellington conducted his last military campaign, which culminated on the field of Waterloo in June 1815.

Stevens has been pictured as a humble man who missed his chance to be really great, but there are not many whose work is on display to millions every year. It was Waterloo that ‘made’ Alfred Stevens. Starting work on the memorial in 1858, he worked on it for the rest of his life.

The central feature is the bronze of Wellington, with two allegorical groups: Valour triumphing over Cowardice, and Truth pulling out the tongue of Falsehood.

By contrast, there are two Stevens mosaics in the huge dome. He was also responsible for the decorations in and around great buildings in the capital, including the impressive lions on the British Museum railings.

A small carved wooden Gothic tower, modelled by Stevens on the tabernacle at Milton Abbey, was bequeathed to the Dorset County Museum, while Chettle House near Blandford has another example of his work.

One writer says “…his ambition was to give London great art in this Renaissance form.” It is that 30-feet-high monument, the biggest indoor monument that most people have ever seen, showing one of the illustrious heroes of England in his prime, that sticks in the mind.

It contrasts with those Latin-style paintings in the dome, where Steven’s work compliments that of another Dorset man, Sir James Thornhill.

For 17 years, while he worked on his great masterpiece at ground level, his health was failing and he suffered a paralytic stroke in 1872, dying three years later at the comparatively early age of 57. His London studio at Haverstock Hill would see his exacting standards no more. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery, north London, along with many other well-known figures.

Said ‘The Times’ obituary: “He left neither wife, nor children, nor riches. He was insanely devoted to his art.” Most of his personal papers were destroyed by the executor.

Here was a man who might just have gone in an entirely different direction, perhaps a negative one. During the Reform Bill riots in Blandford, he unhorsed a dragoon; he was in the firing line in skirmishes in Italy; ands he visited villages, which were devastated by cholera. He even saw the inside of political cells.

On his return to Britain from Italy he returned to his home town and spent his time on long walks and over the drawing board. A director of the Tate Gallery said of him that he was the most masterly interpreter of the Classic tradition England has seen.

 

St. Mary’s Church – Sturminster Newton

A marble plaque under the east window in the chancel informs us that the work of rebuilding this place of worship commenced in 1825. Hutchins suggests St. Mary’s was completely rebuilt and records the completion in 1827 – surely an exaggeration. This is a large church and it would have been a remarkable achievement to have completely rebuilt it in two years. However, there is no doubt major rebuilding and additions to the design of William Evans were made in the early 19th century, the cost borne by the Revd T.H. Lane Fox. It is worth noting St. Mary’s had previously been rebuilt and restored by Abbot Selwood of Glastonbury three centuries earlier.

It appears William Evans added to an existing perpendicular building comprising a west tower, the aisle walls, arcades, and the nave with its wagon roof. Evans extended the north and south aisles to wrap around the 15th century tower, which he heightened and restored giving the tower new parapets and pinnacles. Above the tower’s west doorway is an original two light window. During the 1827 works a four light window was installed in the east wall of the second stage of the tower, now inside the nave. The north and south walls of the tower each have a small window and there is a window in the west wall similar to that in the lower stage. In each side of the third stage is a 15th century belfry window but the one in the east wall is masked by the heightened nave roof and the other three by the 1827 clock-faces. There are six bells: two dated to the early 17th century, while the others were new or recast in 1827. On the south wall of the tower is a square stone dial with Roman numerals, possibly 18th century.

The nave has north and south arcades of four bays with two-centred arches, parts of these are 14th century and restored in the 19th century but the eastern most arches appear to be 19th century. Above the arcades are clerestorey windows; those over the east bay opening into the north and south transepts are of 1827 but the others are medieval. The roof of the nave is late 15th or early 16th century.

The north aisle is partly original but the whole of the west end is of 1827. The two north windows each with three lights are 15th century and in the west wall a similar window but from 1827. The stained glass in the north east window is by Webb and was installed in 1911. The south aisle is uniform in size to the north but contains the main entrance from the south porch and a small doorway at the west end of the south wall. The two windows in the south wall are similar to those in the north aisle and of the 15th century; the west window is of 1827. The stained glass in the south east aisle window is by Harry Charles of Dublin (1889-1831) and was installed in 1921.

The chancel has a two-centred window of five lights in the east wall and the north and south walls have arcades of two bays opening to the vestry in the north and the south chapel. Above each arch is a clerestorey window. The north vestry and south chapel each have east windows of three lights and the north and south walls each have two similar windows. The stained glass in the south window in the chapel is by M. Lowndes and I.L. Gloag and dates from 1901.  The north and south transcepts each contain windows similar to the east window in the chancel and in the west walls are three-light windows. The window in the west wall of the north transept is by Gibbs and is dated 1865.

Inside the church are a number of monuments and floor slabs. In the north vestry on the south wall a monument to Hamnet Ward 1705 and on the west wall a stone tablet to Rebecca Stephens 1723. In the north transcept on the east wall a white marble tablet to Elizabeth and Susan Marsh 1839 and there are monuments to Charles Salkeld 1776; Selena Salkeld 1756; Thomas and Selena Dashwood 1817 and 1828; Joseph Bird and other members of that family; John Sweet 1756; Jane Ward 1709 and others.