Execution of the Monument
The monument as it was executed, however, was shorn of most of its violence, and its West Indian specificity. John Bacon Sr signed his Articles of Agreement with the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury on 20th December 1798. The winning design was appended to the contract, and Bacon undertook to prepare a model and execute the monument in accordance with this design. The pedestal was to be seven feet six inches high, and the monument was to be twenty–one feet high in total. Britannia was seven feet eight inches (the same height as Howard and Johnson, now established as the standard height for principal statues). ‘Sensibility’ was to be six feet high, and all the rest of the design in proportion as they appeared in the drawing. Bacon was to complete the work in four years and would ‘spare no pains’ to make it ‘as perfect as he is able’. He was to be paid £3150 in three instalments of £1050; the first to be paid immediately, the second on 24 December 1800, and the last when the monument was executed. It was to the Lords Commissioners that fell the task of deciding where the ‘proper place’ within St Paul’s would be (the Royal Academy are not mentioned), and the Lords Commissioners were to pay any fees arising to the Dean and Chapter (Articles, MPD 1/78).
Contracts were signed at the same time with Thomas Banks for the monument to Burges, and with Rossi for the monument to Faulknor. The Dundas and the Faulknor designs (Figs. 22, 23 and 24) clearly had close affinities: a high pyramidal composition, dominated by lithe figures of Britannia in empire–line dresses, a lion, a central figure crowning the hero with laurels. The action of crowning runs from left to right in the Dundas and right to left in the Faulknor, suggesting that the two were perhaps chosen to mirror each other in the St Paul’s space. The Burges monument, on the other hand was different: a very high and richly–carved pedestal was surmounted by two central, and conspicuously classicised, figures.
Figs. 22, 23 and 24: Thomas Banks, Design for the Monument to Richard Rundle Burges, 1798; John Bacon Sr, Design for the Monument to General Thomas Dundas, pencil and pen, 1798 – both The National Archives MPD 1/78 (M. G. Sullivan, reproduced courtesy of The National Archives, UK); Robert Smirke and J.C.F. Rossi, Design for the Monument to Captain Faulknor, pencil and wash on paper (St Paul’s Archive, SPCAA/CR/1/2).
Bacon received his first payment of £1114 14s (paid out of the Civil List revenues) by May 1799. Bacon had much other work underhand and seems not to have commenced work on the monument immediately. His many commissions in progress included the statue to William Jones, as well as the monument to Captains Harvey and Hutt for Westminster Abbey. In August of that year the 58-year-old sculptor died of an ‘inflammation of the bowels’ (Farington, 4, p.1264). His Royal Academy colleagues, including the President Benjamin West, expressed their sorrow and sat together at the Royal Academy meeting in remembrance.
The death of Bacon meant that the commission passed, as per the contract, to his heir, which was John Bacon Jr. Although a younger son, and only 22 years old, the younger Bacon received the running of the workshop in his father’s will, after having been a key figure in the family business for several years. Reportedly he had modelled and finished every major work in the studio since 1792, and his father, indeed, credited him with assistance on the Howard and Johnson monuments. The younger Bacon soon seems to have come under pressure from Benjamin West to change key aspects of the Dundas monument. In December 1799 West appears to have felt the three new monuments to Dundas, Faulknor and Burges needed to correspond a little more closely in their designs, and he pushed for changes. The solution, if the final execution of the works is the guide, seems to have been to radically alter both the Dundas and the Faulknor to make them correspond more closely to the Burges. Banks was the more respected, elder sculptor in this trio, and his design, apart from a slightly larger base, remained unchanged whilst the other two designs were overhauled (Figs 22 – 27).
Figs. 22, 23 and 24: J.C.F. Rossi, Monument to Captain Faulknor; Bacon, Dundas; Thomas Banks, Monument to Richard Rundle Burges.
Figs. 25, 26 and 27: J.C.F. Rossi Design for Monument to Captain Faulknor, pencil and wash on paper, St Paul’s Cathedral Archive, SPCAA/CR/1/2; (author photo); John Bacon Sr, Design for the Monument to General Thomas Dundas, The National Archives, MPD 1/78, pencil and pen; Thomas Banks, Design for Monument to Richard Rundle Burges, 1798, The National Archives, MPD 1/78 (both M. G. Sullivan, reproduced courtesy of The National Archives, UK);
The most radical alteration was to change the pyramidal composition of Faulknor and Dundas. The Dundas design lost its towering column on the left and the pyramid obelisk backdrop. The aim of the Academicians was clearly to change the rather conventional eighteenth–century designs into the purer classical format of the Banks monument. All three monuments now reach their full height with the central figures, and all are about the same overall height. Also notable was the evisceration of much of the violence that was explicit in Bacon the Elder’s conception: Samson slaying the Philistine, which provided a typological Christian story as a key to reading the Dundas story, was completely removed, as was the slightly grotesque detail of the dead man’s feet emerging from a broken sarcophagus. Oddly the West Indian specificity of the palms was also erased (although the Faulknor gained some specificity with the introduction of the Mahi–Mahi fish), and the billowing foliage was stripped back to leave a much starker execution. Only the allegory of French murder, hypocrisy and anarchy remained as testament to the original conception. The Dundas monument was, in short, robbed of much of its particularity and, arguably, its character, in pursuit of a stricter neoclassical ideal.
How Bacon Jr felt about this flexing of aesthetic muscle by the Royal Academy committee, which still held some considerable sway over the progress of St Paul’s commissions, is not recorded. Much later, in 1843, Bacon junior was to rail extensively against the interference of the Committee of Taste for national monuments that was instituted in 1803, especially for their attempts to change his monument to Sir John Moore, but Bacon did not seem to remain embittered by this earlier example of Royal Academy interference. Nevertheless, it may be telling that his relationship with the Royal Academy was never good: he was refused even an Associate Membership of the RA on several occasions, and never attained the status of a full academician.
Despite the struggles behind the scenes, there was some public, patriotic, excitement at the prospect of Dundas, Faulknor and Burges becoming the first heroes to have monuments erected to them in the Cathedral. In 1799 the collector and dealer Noel Desanfans related how he had been inspired by the news of the monuments:
I felt a secret pleasure on reflecting that those brave officers, who fell in defence of their King and Country, will live in marble, and serve as memorials of patriotism, loyalty and heroism. Gratitude has ever been the characteristic of Great Britain; in no country are merit and services rewarded with more zeal and promptitude, the common men are equally with the Commanders the objects of her solicitude; and when their wounds or advanced years call them to retirement, she provides them an asylum, where they are supplied with the necessaries of life; but if anyone should fall an honourable victim to his courage, his wife and children are immediately provided for by some of those laudable subscriptions that are invariably raised after an action. Besides, the tribute of a monument erected in remembrance of an Officer is alike sacred to all the valiant men who fought and fell with him.
(Whitehall Evening Post, 12 – 14 February 1799)
Desanfans suggested that a National Portrait Gallery be assembled to exhibit portraits of heroes and encourage every class of men, especially Army and Navy men, to devote themselves to their country. The Whitehall Evening Post suggested that as France had now stolen so much Italian art, the raising of the arts in this country was a vital national concern as Britain would inevitably lose students to Paris if the training in London did not improve. Although it was many more decades before the NPG came into being, it was indicative of the type of expectations that the transformation of St Paul’s into a pantheon of heroes was begetting.
In 1803 the Academician Prince Hoare published the first full description of the monument in what appears to be its final composition, a description that Hoare had clearly got from Bacon Jr, as it corresponds to the artist’s later wordy descriptions. The account, which was written during the temporary cessation of the wars with France in the Peace of Amiens (1802 – 3), placed a new stress on the peaceable elements of the composition. The figure of Sensibility was there to ‘express a pathetic sentiment, justly the companion to Britannia,’ whilst the putto, who seems in the original design to have a spray of laurel, is now holding an olive branch: ‘indicating that the only just object of war, is the attainment of lasting and honourable peace’ (Hoare Academic Correspondence, 1803, p.28 quoted in Hoock 2003).
In 1804 Bacon received the second payment for the monument, of £1112 15s, and a year later he had completed and erected the artwork in the Cathedral. The Times carried the news in late 1805:
Yesterday was opened to public view, in St Paul’s Cathedral, a monument in commemoration of the late General THOMAS DUNDAS, who died in the West Indies in the last war. This monument was erected by a vote of Parliament, as a testimony of national gratitude for his signal military achievements. It consists of a colossal statue of Britannia placing a wreath of laurel on the bust of the General which is erected on his tomb. Britannia is associated with a figure of Sensibility. To the right of the last named figure is the Genius of Britain presenting an olive–branch, in allusion to the object of our exertions in war; viz, the attainment of a just and honourable peace. Some military trophies are placed on the tomb, which is enriched by an alto–relievo representation of Britannia in the act of protecting Liberty from Anarchy and Hypocrisy.
(The Times, 14 November 1805)
Thus the monument had finally arrived in the public sphere, shorn of much of its violence and desire for vengeance, or even any reference at all to the desecration of Dundas’s remains that energised the original commission. Now the monument was a paeon to Peace, the ultimate aim of War. Other notices appeared in the Aberdeen Journal – where it would have been of interest to Dundas’ compatriots – and in the regional English press. Bacon, no doubt keen to cement his reputation in the art world, has added one of the most prominent signatures seen in the Cathedral (without mention of his father’s involvement in the design). The public opening of the monument did not excite as much interest as earlier monuments to Johnson and Howard, although this may partially have been due to the public outpouring of grief in response to the death of Admiral Nelson the previous month, and the build–up to Nelson’s funeral in the Cathedral.
Fig. 28: Detail from Monument to Major–General Thomas Dundas (1750 – 1794).
The Dundas monument was the last of the three pioneering monuments to the heroes of the Revolutionary Wars to be erected. Burges had been completed in 1802, and Faulknor in 1803. Those two monuments stood opposite each other in the central aisle of the South Transept. Now Dundas was erected across the aisle in the corresponding position in the North Transept, where it still stands today. The Faulknor and the Dundas were clearly developed in order to visually complement each other either side of the crossing as the viewer faces the altar. The gesture of the female figures crowning the heroes with laurel are in reverse and mirror each other, the gentle twisting contrapposto of Bacon’s Britannia is echoed in the more dramatic torsion of Neptune in Rossi’s monument. Britannia’s Lion is answered by the Mahi–Mahi fish and both give an animal centre stage, and the bases of the monument are of similar design and proportion. The surviving design for these pedestals show that their solidity is an illusion, as it actually consists of several upright facing panels of marble built around a hollow core (Figs 29 – 32).
Figs. 29 and 30: Bacon, Dundas; J.C.F. Rossi, Captain Faulknor.
Figs. 31 and 32: John Bacon Sr, Design for Pedestal of the Monument to Major–General Dundas, pencil and pen, 1798, The National Archives MPD 1/78 (M. G. Sullivan, reproduced courtesy of The National Archives, UK); Bacon, Dundas.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of the monument, and which distinguishes it from the Faulknor monument, is the fine detailing, gentle lines, expression, and variegated textures. Rossi’s execution is much broader in its details, with the faces of the hero and allegories alike stern and generalised, but every centimetre of Bacon’s monument shows precision, skill and animation, and it repays close viewing. The gap between the hand of Britannia and Sensibility gives an effable sense of gentleness that reinforces the message of British sensitivity, whilst the pictorial bas–relief has sharp diagonals and harsh action that visually implies the French opposite. There is virtuoso carving in the undercutting of the leaves in the pot plant, and in the rendering of the shaggy fur of the lion, whose overhanging paw propels a pictorial group into the viewing space of the observer. Bacon’s putto, in a nod to the architectural environment, has a face and mien close to that of Grinling Gibbons’s putti in the choir (Figs. 33-37), whilst the pedestal takes the simple mouldings of Wren’s wall panel, and projects them horizontally to suggest a continuation of the architectural setting. As is made clear in an 1825 engraving, the projected base of the monument was intended to form a continuous architectural line with the bases of Wren’s columns (Fig. 38).
Figs. 33, 34 and 35: Bacon, Dundas – sculptural details.
Figs. 36 and 37: Comparison of putto (Bacon, Dundas), left, with, right, Grinling Gibbons, Putti with Crown and Sword, Quire, St Paul’s Cathedral, wood, c.1696.
Fig. 38: Augustus Pugin and J. Le Keyse, St Paul’s Cathedral Church, View of the Interior Taken from the North Transept, from John Britton, Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London, London, 1825, plate 6 (Archive.org).
The engraving also shows Thomas Banks’s monument to George Blagdon Westcott in its original positioning, opposite the Dundas. Although it was commissioned five years after the Dundas monument, Banks efficiently completed his work around the same time, and it was thus unveiled the same year, 1805. Although Banks must have known the design of the Dundas monument he made little attempt to mirror or complement it, beyond the laurel wreathing. Instead, he produced an experimental diagonal drama, and incorporated a richly encrusted oval base, mirroring instead his own monument to Burges across the aisle (Figs. 39 and 40). The intricate bases showed a better understanding of the viewing conditions in St Paul’s because the high format, as the print from Britten shows, would have originally put the carved base at the viewer’s eye–line. The Westcott was perhaps more of an upstaging than a complement to Bacon’s Dundas.
Figs. 39 and 40: Bacon, Dundas; Thomas Banks, Monument to Captain George Blagdon Westcott, marble, St Paul’s Cathedral, 1803 – 1805.
In 1810 Bacon’s Dundas monument was to be joined by a carved panel above it, one that provided a tasteful continuation upwards of visual themes developed in the work. The monument to Mackenzie and Langwerth above was completed by John Bacon Jr’s business partner, Charles Manning, in 1810 (Figs 41 and 42).
Figs. 41 and 42: Bacon, Dundas with, above it, Samuel and Charles Manning, Monument to Major-General Mackenzie (†1809) and Brigadier-General Langwerth (†1809), marble, St Paul’s Cathedral, 1810, and close up.
The Manning firm largely traded in designs that had been supplied by John Bacon Jr, and were often based on earlier designs by John Bacon Sr. Not surprisingly, then, there was a sensitive continuity between the two works. Manning’s relief features two very–near relatives of the putto in the Bacon monument to Dundas, one of whom wears a helmet close to the design of Britannia’s below. The two putti are playing with a shield and standard that also lie in the background of the lower work (Figs 43 and 44).
Figs. 43 and 44: Comparison of putti on Monument to Thomas Dundas and Monument to Mackenzie and Langwerth.