Narcissus
John Gibson, RA 1790-l866
1838
Marble
Sculpture shelf on the Sackler Wing Landing, Royal Academy, London
This was Gibson's Diploma Work for the RA. Benedict Read writes: "Gibson's ostensible subservience to the Antique was not as straightforwardly slavish as might at first be thought. Though he granted pre-eminence to the Greeks, Gibson was most emphatic that nature was his true teacher." As for this work, says Read, "not only is it not based on the simple classical story, but it is also not a simple classical form, being taken from an incident observed in nature" (201). Gibson recorded how, on a morning walk on the Monte Pinciano in Rome, he had seen a boy sitting on the edge of a fountain, and had looked keenly at the pose in order to memorise it, before hurrying back to his studio to make a "small sketch" of it in clay (qtd. in Read 201).
Photograph and text Jacqueline Banerjee, 2010. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite it in a print one]
Bibliography
Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven & London: Yale, 1982.
Last modified 28 July 2010