A VICTORIAN WHITE MARBLE GROUP OF 'VIOLET AND HENRY'

A VICTORIAN WHITE MARBLE GROUP OF 'VIOLET AND HENRY'

BY ALEXANDER MUNRO (SCOTTISH 1825-1871)

mounted on a verde antico marble plinth

64cm high, 83cm wide

Catalogue Note

Alexander Munro (1825-1871)
Alexander Munro was a Scottish sculptor who pioneered the move away from the academic style of the early 19th century towards the greater naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Munro met Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes at the Royal Academy Schools, which he joined following an invitation by the architect Charles Barry to work on the sculptural decoration of the new Parliament building. Though not formally part of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Munro was closely associated with its members and shared a studio with Hughes for six years. Munro also met John Ruskin while teaching at the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street alongside his fellow sculptor Thomas Woolner from 1855. The ideal of truth to nature set out by Ruskin is present in Munro’s work, as well as the Pre-Raphaelite interest in the Medieval world, encapsulated in his masterpiece Paolo and Francesca, first executed as plaster maquette for the 1851 Great Exhibition’s Sculpture Court and later in marble (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, accession number 1960P29). Munro was also an accomplished portraitist, exemplified by the group of six portraits of scientists he was commissioned for the Oxford University Museum by Professor Henry Acland, including a bust of the professor himself (Ashmolean Museum, accession number WA.OA1769). All these innovative features are encapsulated in the work offered here, Violet and Henry, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865. Described in full ‘Violet and Henry', and published in The Illustrated London News on 17 June 1865, it displays Munro’s technical virtuosity and the tender pathos that characterises much of his work, as well as his skill in imbuing liveliness in his portraiture. This work is closely related to the marble figural group titled ‘The Sisters’ which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1857 and sold by Sotheby’s, London, 19th & 20th Century Sculpture, 12 December 2018.