“Monument to Bishop Reginald Heber” by Sir Francis Chantrey

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Monument to Bishop Reginald Heber

Sir Francis Chantrey

Marble

St George's Cathedral,

Madras (now Chennai)

India

Inscribed "Chantrey Sculptor London 1830"

Related material

Chantrey’s Heber memorial in St. Paul's Cathedral, Kolkata (Calcutta)

Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826)

Madras Cathedral

Photograph and caption by Tim Willasey-Wilsey.

Additional Commentary below by Jacqueline Banerjee.

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 the Victorian Web in a print one.

Since Bishop Heber's last exertions were on behalf of the mission in South India, his death was felt as a particular shock in Madras. A resolution was quickly put forward to set up a memorial to him in St George's there, with an inscription by the domestic chaplain Rev. Thomas Robinson, and for that purpose a subscription was proposed, to which everyone was encouraged to contribute. Sir George Ricketts, who seconded the resolution, said “It should be like those sepulchral cairns which were heaped in former times upon the graves of die illustrious dead,” by every individual of the country laying a stone upon them; and every person within this Presidency, high and low, rich and poor, European and Indian, who venerates that religion of which the late excellent Bishop was one of the brightest ornaments and best supporters, should have the gratification of being able to say, ‘I, too, have contributed a stone to his monument’” (qtd. in Bonner 135).

The monument was duly commissioned and installed, and an engraving of the finished work was quickly used as the frontispiece of his widow Amelia's second volume of her husband's memoir. But it has not been universally admired. Chantrey shows Heber with one knee supported against a kneeler, but not fully kneeling. In fact he towers over a pair of small, very submissive male and female converts while he lays a hand of blessing on the woman. The composition has been criticised for its strange proportions, and for the "unboned" appearance of the converts (Groseclose 95). Although Amelia Heber evidently approved, perhaps Heber himself would have been less pleased. Of course, Chantrey's preconceptions were widely held, but Heber was known for his humility and respect for others. Shortly before his death he had expressed his wish to be able to "preach to the natives of India in their own language" (qtd. in Bonner 110), and had already reached out to a congregation” by giving the blessing in Tamil. This was in Trichinopoly, now Tiruchirappalli — part of the old Madras Presidency.

Bibliography

Bonner, George. Memoir of the Life of the Right Reverend Reginald Heber, DD, Lord Bishop of Calcutta. Cheltenham, H. Davies, 1833. Internet Archive. Contributed” by Oxford University. Web. 10 June 2015.

Groseclose, Barbara S. British Sculpture and the Company Raj: Church Monuments and Public Statuary in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay to 1858. Cranbury, NJ.: Associated University Presses, 1995.

Heber, Amelia. The Life of Reginald Heber, DD, Lord Bishop of Calcutta, Vol. II. London: John Murray, 1830. Internet Archive. Contributed” by Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 10 June 2015.

Last modified 10 June 2015