The grand Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, designed by architect Sir Aston Webb, with sculptures by Thomas Brock was finished in 1913, 10 years after work on it began.
There is so much allegory and symbolism here it's hard to know exactly where to begin. Victoria's reign was very long and it coincided with the shift of Great Britain from a colonial power to a maritime and colonial juggernaut that was at the time the most powerful country on earth. It was not a brag to say that the sun never set on the British Empire. Victoria's reign saw an incredible transformation of British society. She was queen during the Industrial Revolution, which revolutionized manufacturing in Britain and the world.
This amazing Edwardian monument features a marble statue of Queen Victoria seated on the throne with her scepter and orb surrounded by marble angels and figures representing Truth, Charity and Peace. Prows of ships jut out from the base of the memorial symbolizing Britain maritime power. A golden winged victory statue's amounts the top of this memorial, reminding of Britain's prowess in wars and the power Britain had to impose and enforce the Pax Britannica throughout her reign, one of the longest eras of peace in British history.
Four single bronzes representing Agriculture, Manufacture, Progress, and Peace are installed on a circular on a reading outside the memorial itself, creating a public walkway between the bronzes and inner part of the memorial.
In between those four single bronzes, two pairs of double-figured bronze sculptures are installed on a semicircular pediment-like plinth over related bronze relief panels. This part of the monument pours water into a fountain pool that surrounds the central memorial spire.
If it sounds busy, that's because it is. It's very Edwardian.
The waymarked pair of bronze figures represent Manufacture and Agriculture. They are located between the single figures of Manufacture and Peace on the Canada Gates side of the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace.
From the London sculpture blog: (
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"The Victoria Memorial dates from a generation after the Albert Memorial, and what a contrast: the earlier monument is a High Victorian Gothic jewel with contributions by many sculptors, while the later is Classical Edwardian, and if we exclude the outer ring of pillars with cherubs, the statues represent entirely the work of one sculptor, Thomas Brock, taking him a decade to complete.
The scheme belongs to the architect Aston Webb, who won the competition to design the setting for Brock’s monument in 1902: it would be 1911 before the edifice was finally unveiled, and even then the bronze groups with lions were not yet in place.
. . .
Next the bronze groups. Four massive lions, each with a monumental figure, stand to the four sides of the monument, the gift of New Zealand. They are Agriculture and Manufacture, Peace and Progress, something of a change from Brock’s earlier idea, which was to have winged lions. And there are two pairs of reclining figures to the sides, Art and Science, and Naval and Military Power, lying atop the enclosing walls of the podium, and beneath them, bronze panels of tritons and mermaids. Further low reliefs in stone run along these walls, with tritons, nereids and cherubs desporting in the water with dolphins, water horses and hippogriffs, very delicate, in an Edwardian interpretation of a Roman rather than a Greek style. (Other statues of lions are on this page, and of Mermaids on this page.)
But back to the bronzes. Agriculture and Manufacture are naturalistic, turn of the century figures. Agriculture is a woman, wearing some sort of a milkmaid’s costume, and carrying a huge sheaf of corn and a small sickle. Manufacture is a tough workman, muscular, bearded and heavily muscled, wearing an apron and holding a mallet and some rolled up scroll. Peace and Progress bring us back to the classical ideal, Greek rather than Roman again. Peace recalls the summit Victory, with her light garment outlining her form, and a heavier cloak with a bold sweep over the arm and across the legs as she strides forward. In her hand, a sprig of olive leaves. Progress, a young Greek athlete, strides forward holding a torch aloft. All four figures are excellent, appearing monumental even beyond their size, and the lions, carefully modelled after live ones at London Zoo, are suitably fierce."