[Carl] Linnaeus by John Lucas Tupper (1824?-1879). c. 1856; "repaired" by Tupper 1862. Caen stone. H (?) x W 50 x D 52 cm. Natural History Museum, Oxford University. Accession no. ART013. Image kindly made available on Art UK under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC).
Tupper's sculpture of the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, often called the Father of Taxonomy, was one of a series of full-size statues of eminent scientists commissioned for the Oxford University Museum of Natural History that had been designed by the Irish architects Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward in a Ruskinian Gothic Revival Style. Work on building the museum began in 1855 and it finally opened to the public in 1860. The crucial designer of the inner court, however, was not Woodward but Francis Skidmore. Around the inner court perimeter are one hundred and twenty-five polished stone columns, thirty-three piers and ninety-five shafts, each made from a different British decorative rock that were selected under the direction of the Professor of Geology. On massive corbels projecting from some of the piers in the ground floor arcade are nineteen statues of some of the great men of science "who first discovered, or first brought to important results, the several branches of knowledge which the edifice is intended to promote" (Acland and Ruskin, 34). Pre-Raphaelite sculptors were actively involved with the projects with six figures by Alexander Munro (Hippocrates, Galileo, Leibniz, Watt, Davy and Newton), Thomas Woolner (Francis Bacon), and Tupper (Linnaeus).
It is hardly surprising that Pre-Raphaelite sculptors were involved with this type of endeavor considering ideas about the current state of British sculpture then held by members within the circle of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and what they felt was necessary to revitalize this art form. In 1861 William Michael Rossetti wrote an article in Fraser's Magazine lamenting on the state of sculpture in Britain and on what he saw as the essential and natural position of sculpture in architecture:
Foremost among the causes of depression of the sculptural art may be named the divorce which has taken place of sculpture from architecture… Sculpture, to be vital, is essentially a national and monumental art. Besides, its great scale, its limited powers of expression and representation, and the laborious nature of its practice, combine to require very generally that it should work and display itself in a continuous series; a single figure or subject can seldom, comparatively speaking, explain itself with full force. Isolated, and set up as a mere specimen of fine art and unconnected object of sight, the work of sculpture loses half its power: It conveys, in a difficult and abstract form, only a limited meaning, which untutored eyes can scarcely read, and which neither harmonizes with its surroundings, nor is elucidated by them. [495-96]
The project at the Oxford Museum obviously met all the criteria that Rossetti was hoping would improve the current state of sculptural practice.
The involvement of Pre-Raphaelite sculptors in this project was undoubtedly assisted by the personal friendship of Dante Gabriel Rossetti with Benjamin Woodward, the museum's principal architect. Rossetti was certainly instrumental in Tupper receiving his commission. In a letter of March 23, 1856 from Rossetti to Tupper he writes:
Have you heard that a Museum is building at Oxford in connection with the University? The architect, Mr. Woodward, is a friend of mine, & a thorough thirteenth-century Gothic man. Among the features of the interior decoration are a goodish number of statues of celebrated men. Woolner is to do Bacon – Munro is doing Galileo. Woodward was asking me whether I knew anyone else likely to undertake one, & I told him I would mention it if he liked to you, which he asked me to do it at once. I must tell you at the outset that this, like other affairs of the kind, does not seem chiefly promising on the money side. I am not quite certain about the price at which Woolner & Munro have consented to do these figures (in stone I suppose of some sort, but perhaps this would be furnished), but I believe it is about £70 each. On the score of connection and repute it struck me you might be willing to think about a commission not certainly very promising on other grounds. The Museum is attracting the greatest attention among excellent circles in Oxford I know, as indeed must necessarily be the case, & Ruskin takes the greatest interest in it…I believe all interior decoration has been provided by special subscription, various people having come forward with these sums of £70 for the statues. [Letter 56.17, 109-110]
According to William Holman Hunt the Pre-Raphaelite sculptors were "all possibly working in hope of future patronage, for the pay was less than meagre" (158).
Individual donors did indeed pay for particular sculptures. Sponsors included Queen Victoria, who paid for Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz and Oersted, and John Ruskin who paid for Hippocrates. The Rev. F. W. Hope, D.C.L., F.R.S., a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, funded Tupper's statue (Acland and Ruskin, 103). Of all the sculptures contributed by the various artists, the intense naturalistic detail incorporated by Tupper into the furry coat worn by Linnaeus makes this an outstanding example of what constitutes Pre-Raphaelite sculpture. Tupper was able to achieve this level of detail because the statue was carved out of Caen stone, a light creamy-yellow limestone that was quarried in northwestern France near the city of Caen. This stone is very homogenous and fine-grained and is therefore more suitable for carving fine detail as compared to a hard stone like marble. W. M. Rossetti regarded this work, particularly Tupper's handling of the botanist's fur coat and the plants and flowers at his feet, as: "a work of the most conscientious order in realism of intention and unsparing precision of detail" (Rossetti, Poems, viii-ix). He later commented: "John Tupper seemed quite as zealous as any of the P.R.B.'s in the cause of their two leading principles - the need for serious inventive thoughts in works of art, and for close and detailed study of nature in their carrying out" (Rossetti, Reminiscences, 159-60).
Another photograph of the work, by George P. Landow, 1984. This image too may be used without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose, provided that it is duly credited.
W. M. Rossetti was not the only contemporary critic to praise Tupper's work as a sculptor. In 1857 a critic (L.L.), writing in the American publication The Crayon, stated: "John L. Tupper, a contributor to this journal, has adopted in a modified form some of the Pre-Raphaelite principles, and carried out his convictions in several sculptures, which exhibit great care and profound scientific knowledge, of a kind which is seldom brought to the aid of Art" (363). Rossetti, however, was certainly aware of his friend's long-term lack of success as a sculptor and commented that: "though I conceive him to have been fully capable of producing sound works of art, had circumstances been favourable, he did in fact pass through life without realizing anything considerable in sculpture" (Rossetti, Poems, viii-ix). In his Reminiscences Rossetti recalled: "He produced little beyond a bas relief (very commendable in its way) of two men playing at chess, and the statue of Linnaeus in the Oxford University Museum – a highly naturalistic treatment of a naturalist" (160).
Link to Related Material
Bibliography
Acland, Henry W. and John Ruskin. The Oxford Museum. London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1859.
Barnes, Joanna, and Alexander Kader. "The Sculpture of John Lucas Tupper: 'The Extremest Edge of P.R.Bism'." In Benedict Read and Joanna Barnes Eds. Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture: Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture. London: Lund Humphries 1991, 66-70.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). Art UK. Web. 26 April 2024.
Hunt, William Holman. Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. London: MacMillan and Co. Ltd., Vol. II, 1906.
Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982, 123, 180, 235.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Formative Years II. 1855-62. William E. Fredeman Ed. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002.
Rossetti, William Michael. "British Sculpture; Its Condition and Prospects." Fraser's Magazine LXIII (1861) 493-505.
Rossetti, William Michael (Ed.): Poems by the Late John Lucas Tupper. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897.
Rossetti, William Michael: Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti. Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906.
"The Two Pre-Raphaelitisms (Concluded)." The Crayon IV, No. 12 (December 1857): 361-63.
Created 1 January 2005
Last modified (entire commentary added) 26 April 2024