Webberley Antiques

Description

In 1880 William Brodie exhibited a marble bust of his daughter at the Royal Scottish Academy. Another bust of the same child, also signed by Brodie, was sold by Sothebys and differs only in that the child is wearing a smock type garment. This bust is dated two years earlier than the clothed child and may be the original and the other a later example.

The Brodie brothers were the sons of a Scottish ship-master and were raised in Aberdeen. William initially worked as a tradesman but his skill in modelling small wax and clay portraits encouraged his family to send him, in 1847, to an Academy in Edinburgh and later he studied in Rome returning to Scotland in 1854.

William sculpted some of the figures on the Scott Monument and the bronze of Greyfriars Bobby along with numerous portraits of his contemporaries. His younger brother Alexander worked in his studio and attended classes at the Trustees' Academy's School of Design. He set up on his own in Aberdeen and was working on commissions for Queen Victoria. The Queen asked him to produce a statue of her with a distinctly Scottish appearance and Alexander included a thistle on the neckline of her dress alongside the English rose and Irish Clover. His perfectionism and anxiety over the commission is believed to have been a factor in his suicide and William finished the bust changing the form from Alexander’s idealised and regal depiction of the Queen to a far more human, warm and lifelike one.

This bust of William Brodie’s only child, Mary. She became Lady Mary Brodie Gowans following her marriage to the renowned and innovative Edinburgh architect Sir James Gowans, and for Mary he built his most famous house ‘Rockville’, in Napier Road Edinburgh

This is a unique work of art in marble, signed and dated by the artist and in excellent original condition on original marble Socle.


Dimensions are:

14 inches high, 8 inches wide, 6 inches deep.

For metric please multiply by 2.5
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