[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Sculpture —> Sir Alfred Gilbert, RA —> Next]

Commentary by Peter Nahum and Sally Burgess

St George and the Dragon, Victory Leading was conceived in 1904. The plaster was first exhibited in 1906. The only edition in bronze was cast for the Fine Art Society in 1923. From the edition of four, one cast, from the Handley-Read collection, is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. One other is in a private collection.

Whilst many of the New Sculptors sought an ever more naturalistic figurative, Alfred Gilbert became increasingly devoted to the expression of the unconscious, developing a language which was essentially Symbolic and which wholly contradicted the realism of his early figures. These later works are often embellished with orSir Alfred Gilbert, RAnt.

In St George and the Dragon, Victory Leading, St George shouts out for joy, urging his horse over the body of the slain dragon. The composition is an expression of a curious dream that Alfred Gilbert experienced on 15 May, 1904. He had dreamt that he was at work on an equestrian group of St George; the Saint, triumphant in victory, the defeated dragon spread-eagied over the pinnacles and turrets of a town. As in his vision, the finished work is sculpted with a compelling, dreamlike disjunction of scale.

Seeking a commission from the Lancashire regiment of Lord Grey for a large-scale memorial to the dead of the Boer War, he later added the figure of Victory to the original group. As the prospect of the commission became more probable, he placed the group on a six-sided base. The commission never materialized and the sculptor showed the plaster of St George and the Dragon at the Royal Academy in 1906 (number 1773).

Exhibition history: London, The Fine Art Society, Exhihition of Bronze Statuettes” by Sir Alfred Gilbert RA, 1932, number 16; London, The Fine Art Society, Exhibition of Bronze Statuettes” by the Late Sir Alfifed Gilbert RA, 1935, number 13; London, Royal Academy, Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts, The Handley-Read Collection, 1972, number F31; Manchester City Art Gallery, Victorian High Renaissance, 1978-1979, number 101. Travelling to: Minneapolis Institute of Arts; and; Brooklyn Museum; London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, 1981, number 22; London, Royal Academy, Alfred Gilbert Sculptor and Goldsmith, 1986, number 101; London, The Mall Galleries, The Heatherley School of Art 150th Anniversary Exhibition, February-March 1996, number 79 (this cast)

Bibliography

Nahum, Peter, and Sally Burgess. Pre-Raphaelite-Symbolist-Visionary. London: Peter Nahum at Leicester Galleries. Catalogue number 45.

---

Victorian
Web

Visual
Arts

Sculpture

Alfred
Gilbert

Next

Last modified 5 February 2020