Liverpool . . . builds vessels of commerce
Thomas Stirling Lee (1857-1916)
1882-1901
Istrian stone
St. George's Hall, Liverpool
Related Material
Photograph, caption, and commentary 2009 by Jacqueline Banerjee.
Lee was a London sculptor who had worked in the studio of John Birnie Philip (one of the sculptors involved with the Albert Memorial). He was originally commissioned to design 28 panels around the base of the hall, but less than half were completed, and not all by Lee himself. Problems started with the first panel, one of a projected series of six showing "The Attributes and Results of Justice": it caused a furore, because "the child Justice" was nude — as was "the girl Justice" in the next panel (see Cavanagh 260-61). Lee was eventually allowed to continue that series, which is to the left of the central portico, and also designed two in a different series to the right of the portico, of which this representation of shipwrights is an example. These panels tell "The Story of Liverpool," in which ship-building obviously played a major part. Other panels in the series were designed by Charles James Allen and Conrad Dressler. Benedict Read comments on these New Sculpture works, "The field of architectural sculpture was something the movement's apologist, then and now, consider it made particularly its own" (331).
References
Cavanagh, Terry. The Public Sculpture of Liverpool. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.
Read, Benedict. Victorian Sculpture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982.
Last modified 12 June 2009