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| You are in National Portrait Gallery | NPG around the country | Bodelwyddan Castle | Drawing Room and Sculpture Gallery | Portraits on display | |||||||||
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BODELWYDDAN CASTLE Drawing
Room and John Gibson - no relation to
the architect of the 'Marble Church' - was born near Conway in
1790, moved with his family to Liverpool at the age of nine and,
in 1817, travelled to Rome.
There he studied with Canova and lived for the rest of his life,
rarely revisiting England. Gibson sought to recreate the spirit
of classical Greek sculpture. His portrait busts, such as those
of the writer Anna Jameson and the artist and Director of the
National Gallery, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, are idealized and
timeless, avoiding as far as possible modern dress and hair fashions
which Gibson felt to be 'not a fit subject for sculpture'. Also
on display is a group of Gibson's more ambitious sculptures,
their subjects taken from classical mythology. These are on loan
from the Royal Academy of Arts, to whom Gibson left the contents
of his studio and a generous portion of his estate. An oil portrait
of Gibson
by the woman portraitist, Margaret Carpenter, hangs above the
room's original fireplace while the two full-length portraits
of Sir
Francis and Lady Burdett are by the greatest portrait painter
of the Regency period, Sir Thomas Lawrence. Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Bt Sophia, Lady Burdett Sir Charles Lock Eastlake John Gibson Anna Brownell Jameson Walter Savage Landor |
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All images and text are subject to copyright
protection. 25 July 2008 |
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