Introduction
Figs 1, 2, and 3: Lough, Lawrence.
The standing, white marble portrait statue to Anglo–Irish, East India Company army officer Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, of Lucknow, (June 18 1806 – July 4 1857) by John Graham Lough (8 January 1798 – 8 April 1876) can be found against the west wall of the East Aisle of the North Transept.
The statue was the second of two Cathedral commissions for Lough, following the significantly more evangelical and baroque, c.1829 – 1832 memorial to the second Bishop of Calcutta, Thomas Fanshawe Middleton, to which we shall return, and whose frankly mannerist” plaster had been first exhibited at the Egyptian Hall in 1830 (Boase, 35; Roscoe, 752) (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Lough, Middleton.
The monument was funded by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. T.S.R. Boase praises the way the Bishop’s “lawn sleeves are elaborately cut with deep curved indentations suggestive of baroque drapery”, as well as the “sensitively modelled and highly finished” Hindu figures, but notes that Middleton’s eyes are “staring upwards with an expression half–way between ecstasy and eccentricity: his long neck” in the “tradition of semi–distortion that had been popularised in England by Fuseli and his followers” (Boase, 35); tropes that Lough would return to in his Lawrence, as we shall see.
In the East Aisle, Lawrence was located beneath Francis Chantrey’s c.1814 – 1822 mural monument to Colonel Henry Cadogan. Like Cadogan, Lawrence is depicted in lost left profile. Cadogan’s falling form, meanwhile, represents a kind of mean between Lawrence’s twin standing and seated forms below (Figs 5 and 6).
Figs 5 and 6: Chantrey, Cadogan.
Indeed, in 1862, the Illustrated London News compared the similarly humble origins of the two artists, as allegories of mid–Victorian self–help. (1 November 1862).
In the East Aisle, Lawrence is also located opposite William Behnes’ c.1843 portrait statue of Major General Sir John Thomas Jones, an artist under whom Lough had studied (Read, 69). The two statues may well have been designed as a mirroring pair, with Lough echoing Behnes’ earlier white marble, standing portrait statue mode, with both subjects adopting an easy, striding contrapposto, breaking the bounds of the pedestal with one foot. Both men are also depicted in army uniform and a cloak, with one arm raised and one arm pendant, looking up to the heavens (Figs 7 and 8).
Figs 7 and 8: Lough, Lawrence; Behnes, Jones.
Jones is located beneath Josephus Kendrick’s mural monument to Major General Robert Ross (1815 – 1821). Whilst Kendrick’s multifigure, allegorical, mural monument is again significantly more baroque than Lough’s simple, standing figure, both Lawrence and Ross look up above and to the left of the viewer (Figs 9 and 10).
Figs 9 and 10: Kendrick, Ross.
Completing the ensemble, from 1916, was Stanley Nicholson Babb’s memorial to the Antarctic Expedition Party Under Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Whilst there is an evident difference in materiality, Lawrence’s white marble contrasting with Scott’s black bronze, both monuments centre on a portrait of their respective sitters looking up to the viewer’s left, above a multifigure relief immediately below (Figs 11 and 12).
Figs 11 and 12: Babb, Scott; Lough, Lawrence.
The Life and Works of Henry Montgomery Lawrence
Early Life and Education
Fig. 13: Lough, Lawrence.
(Fig. 13) Henry Montgomery Lawrence, of Lucknow was born on 18 June 1806, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, in Matura, Ceylon, the fourth son of an East India Company officer.
Following the family’s return from India in 1808, Lawrence was educated at Foyle College, Londonderry, then at the Revd. James Gough’s school in Bristol.
Joins the East India Company Army
Fig. 14: Anon, Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, oil on canvas, c. 1827, NPG 1990 (© National Portrait Gallery, London; CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
(Fig. 14) In August 1820, Lawrence matriculated at the East India Company’s Addiscombe College, near Croydon, a hard–working but not starry student.
The newly commissioned second lieutenant in the Bengal artillery sailed for India in May 1822, arriving at Calcutta the following February. While serving at Dum–Dum, he became increasingly devout, as Lough’s statue quietly suggests, Lawrence’s eyes staring up to the heavens like Christ on the Cross, or a baroque saint (Fig. 15).
Fig. 15: Lough, Lawrence.
The Anglo-Burmese War
Lawrence departed for Burma in March 1824, after war broke out, taking part in the capture of the Arakan, for which the 18–year–old subsequently received the India medal, with Ava clasp. He was then appointed deputy ordnance commissary at Akyab, an appointment cut short by malaria and dysentery, forcing him to take furlough in England for two and a half years.
During this period, Lawrence joined the trigonometrical survey in the north of Ireland. Whilst home, Lawrence also seems to have sat for a dashing Regency portrait, now in the National Army Museum, which suggests the physical toll his later life took on him, if the hollower visage of the Cathedral statue is anything to go by (Figs 16 and 17).
Figs 16 and 17: attributed to James Heath Millington, Lieutenant (later Brigadier-General Sir) Henry Montgomery Lawrence (1806-1857), oil on canvas, c. 1828, NAM.2000–04–129–1 (© National Army Museum, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0); Lough, Lawrence.
Northwest Frontier
Lawrence returned to India in September 1829, posted to the Northwest frontier, where the Company feared Russian expansion into central Asia. Seeking a civil appointment, Lawrence studied a range of Indian languages, like William Jones before him, commemorated on the Cathedral floor in a more classicising and Orientalising c.1796 – 1804 memorial by John Bacon (Figs 18 and 19).
Figs 18 and 19: Bacon, Jones; Lough, Lawrence.
If Jones is emblematic of the so–called Oriental Renaissance of the late 18th century, and Lawrence the more Utilitarian, reformist ethos of the early–nineteenth–century Raj, the two are evidently designed as a pair. Lough adopts Bacon’s earlier formal decisions in favour of white marble; a standing portrait statue with a relief below; a figure looking up to the viewer’s left; in a striding contrapposto, right foot forward and breaking the bounds of the pedestal; and right arm raised to approximately hip height, and left pendant. In addition, both figures lean upon books, and carry scrolls, Lawrence in his right hand, Jones in his left.
The 1830s
Fig. 20: W. Joseph Edwards, after unknown photographer, Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, stipple and line engraving, 1840s-1850s, NPG D5026 (© National Portrait Gallery, London; CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Fig. 20) In Autumn 1830, Lawrence visited the Company’s summer outpost of Simla, stopping to admire a large irrigation works on his return journey.
In 1831, Lawrence was posted first to Meerut and then Cawnpore, passing exams in Urdu, Persian, and Hindi in 1832, and recommended for the post of interpreter as a result.
In 1833, Lawrence became assistant revenue surveyor in the North–West Provinces. During the first Anglo–Afghan War, he was assistant to the Governor–General’s agent for the affairs of the Punjab and Northwest frontier. During this period, Lawrence administered the Ferozepore district, overseeing the town’s rebuilding with a wall and fort, widening the roads, improving drainage, and writing articles for the Delhi Gazette.
The 1840s
In 1842, Lawrence took command of a Sikh contingent of the province’s army, taking part in the battles of Tezin and Haft Kotal. For his pains, he received a sword, in gratitude, from the Maharaja of Lahore, perhaps the sword Lough depicts (Figs 21 and 22).
Figs 21 and 22: Lough, Lawrence; Forsyth, Browne.
In 1843, Lawrence successfully settled the Kaithal region, annexing it for the British, following the controversial doctrine of lapse, which meant that the lands of Indian royals without heirs recognised by the British became Company territory.
Lawrence then took up a new post as the resident at the court of Nepal, where he maintained a quiet presence, as instructed, writing articles for the Calcutta Review, and founding a school, the Lawrence Asylum for the children of Europeans, which he continued to fund throughout his life; the subject alluded to on Lough’s pedagogic pedestal (Fig. 23).
Fig. 23: Lough, Lawrence.
First Anglo-Sikh War
Lawrence took part in the First Anglo–Sikh War, (1845 – 1846) was present at the battle of Sobraon in 1846 and the later occupation of Lahore, helping negotiate the treaties of Kasuri and Amritsar (Fig. 24).
Fig. 24: The Signing of the Treaty of Bhairowal on 26 December 1846 (Henry Lawrence, Lord Gough, Lord Hardinge, Sheik Imam ud–Din, Ranhir Singh, Dalip Singh, Frederick Currie), paint on paper, 1846–1847, painted in the Punjab Hills, BM. 1948,1009,0.109
(© The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Lawrence opposed annexation, feeling confident the British could rely on Sikh support, although pensioning ruler Lal Singh, to give himself greater powers in the region, and separating the youthful Dulip Singh, incoming maharajah, from his mother Maharini Jindan, who was exiled. (Singh would visit St Paul’s during his subsequent period in London and so could have easily seen Lough’s monument) (Figs 25 and 26).
Figs 25 and 26: Richard James Lanes, after Franz Xavier Winterhalter, Maharaja Duleep Singh, lithograph, 1854, NPG D22439, (© National Portrait Gallery, London; CC BY-NC-ND 3.0); Lough, Lawrence.
In 1847, Lawrence’s portrait was painted in watercolour on ivory by an unknown artist, perhaps an Indian Company artist, given the media, (Dalrymple) and revealing Lawrence’s hair and beard to have been red. The similarities between the portrait and Lough’s statute might indicate an indigenous Indian genealogy for Lough’s iconography (Figs 27 and 28).
Figs 27 and 28: Anon, Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, watercolour on ivory, c. 1847, NPG 727 (© National Portrait Gallery, London; CC BY-NC-ND 3.0); Lough, Lawrence.
Following a health crisis in November 1847, Lawrence returned to Ireland and England where he received a KCB in April 1848, making him a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, a medal unusually not depicted on his perhaps surprisingly brawny chest on Lough’s memorial, and thereby suggesting a man of action, rather than decoration (Fig. 29).
Fig. 29: Lough, Lawrence.