ROYAL STATUES
sm,--It is a pity Mr. Warren Postbridge's interesting article on the Royal Statues of London should have ascribed the best of them all—the White- hall Charles I—to the wrong sculptor. It is the work of Hubert Le Sueur and bears his signature. In the sunshine of these October days it looks beautiful indeed. It (and its lovely Portland stone base) has been finely cared for during the war and the statue has had restored to it the long missing sword and other details. Your readers may like to know that the Grinling Gibbons James H—a beautiful work of art though discussed recently in the House of Commons without a word of praise on its high artistic merits—will be balanced at the National Gallery by the George Washington on the east side, re-sited in a better position. The delicate scale of both figures is about the same and they should look well together.
Mr. Postbridge oddly forgets in speaking of Queen Victoria's statues the chief of all—Brock's immense figure on the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. And even more remarkable is his omission of that in the massive shrine opposite the Albert Hall when he lists the
tributes to her consort.—I am, &c., MUIRHEAD BONE.
[Mr. Warren Postbridge writes: "I was guilty of an unpardonable slip over Charles I. It is, of course, only Charles II and James II that are due to Grinling Gibbons. As to the Buckingham Palace Memorial and the Albert Memorial, it is true that both of these edifices embody statues. But I was really writing of what I regard as statues proper, standing on plinths without ancillary embellishment."]
Sta,—The article on royal statues, published in your isstle of October 24th, fills one with alarm. Surely the statues we are getting give no encouragement to ask for more. It is now fifty years since George Moore lamented the badness of the statues popping up in London, and suggested honouring the memory of one great man by destroying the statue of another. If we must have statues, which seem fated to be bad ones, could they not all be herded together in some "Siegersallee " where those who appreciate them could see them without journeying all over London for the purpose, while those who don't would be spared?—Yours faithfully,
Army and Navy Club, Pall Mall, S.W.'.
CLIVE GARSIA.
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