Sketch for the Statue of the Cawnpore Angel, by Louisa Anne Beresford

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Sketch for the Statue of the Cawnpore Angel

Louisa Anne Beresford (née Stuart), Marchioness of Waterford (1818-1891)

c.1860

Pencil, ink and sepia

"Scrap-Book," Victoria and Albert Museum.

Bequeathed by Miss M. A. V. Cochran, cousin and god-daughter of the artist.

Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Most of the sketches in the scrapbook are on Biblical subjects for paintings or frescoes, but this one is for a sculpture. [Commentary continues below. Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

Related Material

An Icon of Empire:The Angel at the Cawnpore Memorial

Louisa Beresford's elder sister was Lady Canning, wife of the Governor-General of India during the Indian Mutiny. The dreadful massacre of women and children at Cawnpore upset her deeply, and the Cannings planned to set a memorial over the well into which the bodies of British women and children were thrown. It was to have a sculptural centrepiece. Lady Canning thought that this should be "a statue of the Angel of the Resurrection" (Hare III: 60, n.2), and turned to her sister, with her acknowledged gift for figure-drawing, for ideas. This is Louisa's sketch for such an angel.

Louisa was not a sculptor. The obvious choice for this work was Baron Marochetti, husband of the sisters' childhood friend Camille de Maussion, and sculptor of the Scutari monument, an obelisk with a complement of four mourning angels for those who died in the Crimea. By Marochetti's own request, the commission was opened to other sculptors, but in the end he was indeed selected for the task.

Was Marochetti guided by a copy of this particular sketch, or one similar to it? Or was this just a preliminary sketch, that Louisa herself altered later? At any rate, the sculptor was bound to have attended to the sisters' suggestions. The angel he executed is indeed subtly different from those on his Scutari monument. For example, the Cawnpore one's wings are noticeably less curved, her head seems just a little inclined to the left, and her robes are much more naturalistically draped. Still, the similarity to the sculptor's earlier work is clear, and (in contrast to this one) his angel holds palms facing different ways, and no wreath (or censer?). It would seem that the scrap-book sketch shown above contributed to rather than determined the final design of the statue. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Bibliography

Hare, Augustus J. C. The Story of Two Noble Lives, Being Memorials of Charlotte, Countess Canning, and Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford. Vol. III. London: George Allen, 1893. Internet Archive. Contributed by Harvard University. Web. 19 August 2015.

"Scrap Book." Ref. no. E.1615-1798-1966. Prints and Drawings Room of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Created 19 August 2015