Bronze, height I741 in. (44 cm.)

Inscribed on back: Eliza Macloghlin 190 (?6) Alfred Gilbert Sculp. Eheu Fugaces !

89b Eliza Macloghlin I906

Bronze, height I52 in. (3g.4cm.)

Inscribed: (as above) Lent by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Eliza Millard Macloghlin (1863-1928) met Gilbert in 1905 when she commissioned Mors Janua Vitae, her memorial to her husband Edward Percy Plantagenet Macloghlin (1855-1904) in the Royal College of Surgeons of England, London. The artist was then living in Bruges, again in debt, with his private life in disarray. When in May 1905 he and his wife legally separated, Mrs. Macloghlin stepped in, offering him adoration, encouragement, and companionship at a critical moment in his life. All who knew and wrote about her describe a compelling and vivacious woman whom they credit with delivering Gilbert from his despondency. The critic M. H. Spielmann (1858-1944) wrote a poem in tribute to her in 1908 beginning, "Enchantress of a genius! - Victor of a heart!" in which he held her responsible for Gilbert's survival as an artist:

Mark how a sweet-willed woman, passionate for Art - A passion exquisite and deep, - a love sublime - Called forth responding passion on the artist s part Lifting him back to heights he would no longer climb! Oh! take our thanks! - Oh take our love for such a deed.

On the other hand, Mrs. Macloghlin was mentally unbalanced. Independently, the sculptor Albert Toft (I862-1949) and the American painter Petrus Paulus Potter described her as dangerous. Certainly she proved so to Gilbert. In June I907 he fell out with her when she revealed the identity of the sitters in Mors Janua Vitae, then on view at the Royal Academy, to the Magazine of Art - thus potentially causing embarrassment to Gilbert and his family; when typically, he failed either to finish or surrender Mors Janua Vitae, she stoned the windows of his studio at Bruges ; and on hearing a rumour in October I909 that Edward VII planned to expel Gilbert from the Royal Academy, she unintentionally made matters worse by writing a deranged, pleading letter to Buckingham Palace which ended with the words, "Charity never faileth: Eh, Good King?"

Although she and Gilbert never met after 1908, when their love affair ended, and indeed, she spent her last years in a private mental hospital, she did not forget him. In April 1928, through Spielmann, she returned all the sculptor's letters to her; on May 4 of that year she took her own life.

Although related to the portrait of Mrs. Macloghlin in Mors Janua Vitae, No. 89 is an independent work. Here, the tossed head, smiling face, and bright eyes testify to the pleasure the sculptor had in his friendship with the sitter. Still, he suggests the other side of her personality in the manic spiral of the neck and head, and, below, the swirling draperies alive with cupids and cherubim acting as Michelangelesque caryatids. Just at her breast, one winged Eros sleeps with his head on a casket. The Latin inscription, 'Eheu! Fugaces' [Labuntur Anni!]' means "Alas! the fleeting years glide by!"

Toft, who saw the bust through the casting stage in I909, remembered making five or six casts, then destroying the plaster. 7 In the third codicil to her will Mrs. Macloghlin mentioned six casts one of which she bequeathed to her sister, and five to Spielmann to place in museums around the world.8 In I9I5 she herself presented No. 89a to the Tate Gallery and in I92I she gave No. 89b to the National Gallery of Canada.