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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Stephanie Brown
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Author(s): Brown S
Publication type: Authored Book
Publication status: Published
Edition: 1st
Series Title: Studies in the Art of George Frederic Watts
Year: 2007
Volume: 1
Number of Pages: 64
Publisher: Watts Gallery
Place Published: Surrey
Notes: Monograph examining G. F. Watts’s colossal sculptural design Physical Energy (1870-1904), culmination of self-generated projects for public monuments - exceptional in Britain at the time. Publication will be in advance of the centenary of the bronze cast appearing in Kensington Gardens in September 1907. As such, it uses a scholarly basis of new archival research, empirical findings and innovatory interpretation to give a comprehensive account accessible to wider public interest. Its extended ‘afterlife’ will be as the key information source on the most important work in the Watts Gallery sculpture collection. The original model for Physical Energy, will be the centerpiece in re-displaying the collection following 4.3m HLF grant for refurbishment. The book addresses incomplete, contradictory and erroneous accounts of a major but complex monument whose development, intentions and aesthetic and ideological values have never been consistently documented and clarified. It rigorously interrogates the validity of previous interpretations revealing confusion created by three different casts. In particular it explains how site determines readings of the work in Cape Town (1912); London (1907) and Lusaka/Salisbury/Harare (1960, moved 1965 & 1980) and examines personal and imperialist intentions, post-colonialism and socio-cultural space. Significant new findings concern the earlier colossal bronze, Hugh Lupus (1870-84), prototype of Physical Energy, issues of authenticity and reproduction concerning its bronze reductions, and how the design was appropriated by concerns as different as the Labour Publishing Company and the Consolidated Gold Fields Library. The publication will be edited, with a foreword by Philip ward Jackson and is one of the outcomes of AHRC research funding (graded A+. One of 281 awards from 574 applications).
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9780954823061
