Abstract
This introduction reflects on reading sculpture in Victorian culture, and in Victorian studies. How did the Victorians read sculpture? How should we read it today? What might a sculpture connote in different contexts: the home, the street, the gallery, the colony? How broadly should we define what we describe as ‘Victorian sculpture’, in light of nineteenth-century industrial and technological innovation? For the Victorians, as for modern readers of Victorian sculpture, legibility remains a prime preoccupation when addressing these questions. This introduction suggests that Victorian sculpture’s resistance to reading renders it fertile ground for revisiting and reinterpreting individual works, their creators, textual responses to them, and the greater significance of their cumulative cultural imprint.
Highlights
One of the most arresting photographs of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is taken two years after Albert’s death (Fig. 1)
The occasion was the recent wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and renowned royal photographer John Jabez Edwin Mayall had been engaged to photograph the wedding party
‘A fine morning —’, wrote Queen Victoria in her journal of that day, 26 March 1863, ‘was photographed with Bertie & Alix [Edward and Alexandra] & lastly, with the whole family near dearest Albert’s bust, as the dear dear protecting head!’1. This ‘dear dear protecting head’ operates in two ways: Albert the man is reduced to a sculptural ‘head’ just as he is symbolically enlarged to representative ‘head’ of the royal household, he be corporeally conjured for the photograph
Summary
One of the most arresting photographs of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is taken two years after Albert’s death (Fig. 1). ‘A fine morning —’, wrote Queen Victoria in her journal of that day, 26 March 1863, ‘was photographed with Bertie & Alix [Edward and Alexandra] & lastly, with the whole family near dearest Albert’s bust, as the dear dear protecting head!’1 This ‘dear dear protecting head’ operates in two ways: Albert the man is reduced to a sculptural ‘head’ just as he is symbolically enlarged to representative ‘head’ of the royal household, he be corporeally conjured for the photograph. 36) — reminds us that despite Victorian studies’ masterful readings of painting and photography, threedimensionality provides a new challenge and alternative models for comprehending nineteenth-century aesthetics and representation It seems that we remain as fascinated and bemused by Victorian sculpture as the Victorians themselves. Art in an Age of Invention, 1837–1901, ed. by Martina Droth, Jason Edwards, and Michael Hatt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), p. 15. 4 Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft, ‘Introduction’, in Sculpture and its Reproductions, ed. by Anthony Hughes and Erich Ranfft (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), pp. 1–6 (p. 4). 5 Martin Gayford, ‘Sculpture Victorious at Tate Britain Reviewed: Entertainingly Barmy’, Spectator, 28 February 2015 ; Adrian Searle, ‘Sculpture Victorious Review’, Guardian, 23 February 2015 ; Laura Cumming, ‘Sculpture Victorious Review’, Observer, 1 March 2015 [all accessed 7 May 2016]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
