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James Graham, "The Graham Memorial"

This bronze, the work of Mr. Alfred Gilbert, A.R.A., will assuredly interest lovers of art. It is a tablet to the memory of the late William Graham, father of Mr. Graham, of Grosvenor Place, sometime member of Parliament for Glasgow, and whose important collection of pictures was sold at Christie's in 1886, shortly after his death. It was in consequence of Instructions left by him that this work was offered to and undertaken by Mr. Gilbert.

The design is by no means sad in character, differing in this respect from what is usual in monumental works of art. At the base of the bas-relief is a mound slightly indicated, traditionally representing the sepulchre. Plants and flovers form the main part of the design; notable among these is the poppy, emblem of sleep and death, and around it a luxuriant vegetation, suggesting that death is but the prelude to another life, as well as the future awakening.

Prominent in the foreground doves flit among the branches, the bringers of glad tidings, symbols of purity and love. Here the dove, as in her flight over the subsid ing floods of the ancient world, seems commissioned to reassure mankind with a message which each beholder may appropriate for his own solace, and interpret, perhaps, thus: -- that man shall not always travail on the restless waters; let him look forward to his own future, associating it with bright images, in confidence and hope. The artist has discarded all gloomy emblems.

"The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the tomb,
The deep, dark vault,the darkness, and thc worm,"

are nowhere hinted at except where, in dimmest parable, a gentle undulation of earth's surface suggests the grave, the mother's bosom, the sleeper's pillow. Mr. Gilbert has selected for his theme objects bright and beautiful, rather than those with which we are familiarised in the place of tombs, and many a mourner will think that in this he has chosen the better course.

His work is thoroughly in sympathy with the sentiment and philosophy so tenderly expressed by Longfellow --

"There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath,
Is but a suburb of the life elysian
Whose portal we call Death.

References

Graham, James. "The Graham Memorial." The Magazine of Art. London: Cassell, 1890, p. 115.

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Last modified 1999