Queen Victoria - A Royal Presentation Diamond Jubilee Bust, 1897

Queen Victoria - A Royal Presentation Diamond Jubilee Bust, 1897.

Overall height: 49cm (19.2in).

Patinated bronze. Queen Victoria wearing a widow’s veil, sash and star of the Order of the Garter, Sovereign’s badge of the Order of Victoria and Albert. Signed to the reverse ‘Boehm / fecit’.  Raised on a turned ebonised socle applied with two silver plaques, the first inscribed ‘VRI’ for Victoria Regina Imperatrix; the second, ‘To Victor Alexander Charles Harbord from his Godmother V.R.I October 18th 1897'.

Victor Alexander Charles Harbord (1897-1943) was the eldest son of Charles Harbord, 6th Baron Suffield and his wife Evelyn Louisa. His father was a close friend to the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) and Queen Victoria consented to become Victor's godmother. In 1910 Victor was appointed a page of honour to George V for five years. After Eton and Sandhurst, Victor was commissioned into the Scots Guards but at seventeen he was deemed too young for the Western Front. He served instead with the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion in London until December 1916 when he transferred to the 2nd Battalion and sailed for France. He was invalided from the Third Battle of Ypres on 24 July 1917 as a result of a gas attack and evacuated home. He returned to the 3rd Battalion until February 1918, when he rejoined the 2nd Battalion in Flanders. On the 13/14 September 1918 he was gassed at Mouevres, again as the result of a gas attack, whilst serving with the Scots Guards. He resigned his commission in 1924, shortly after the death of his father. He married Olwen Gwyne Phillips in 1925 and obtained a divorce from her on the grounds of her adultery in 1937. In December 1939, he was commissioned in Royal Norfolk Regiment but on 5 July 1940 he was recorded unfit for active service. He died whilst serving as a Major with the Home Guard, at Cromer, Norfolk, and was succeeded in the barony by his brother, the Hon. John Harbord.

Lord Suffield at the Guards Boat Club, Maidenhead.

Sir Edgar Boehm, Bt., R.A. (1834-1890) was born in Vienna, the son of the director of the Austrian Imperial Mint. He came to London 1848 and studied for three years, mainly at the British Museum; and afterwards in Italy, and at Paris, and Vienna, where he won the First Imperial Prize in 1856. In 1862 he settled permanently in London and later the same year first exhibited at Royal Academy. He took British nationality in 1865, and was appointed A.R.A. in 1878 and R.A. in 1882. He was a Lecturer on sculpture at Royal Academy and received the membership of several foreign academies.

Boehm enjoyed a constant flow of commissions for public monuments, portrait statues and busts and became Sculptor in Ordinary to Queen Victoria in 1881. His notable works include Lord Napier of Magdala in Queen’s Gate, Kensington; the Prince Imperial (killed in the Zulu War of 1879-80) in St George’s Chapel, Windsor; Gordon of Khartoum in St Paul’s Cathedral; Thomas Carlyle on Chelsea Embankment; the free standing figures of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales on Temple Bar Memorial, Fleet Street; and the portrait head of Queen Victoria for the 1887 coinage. Boehm was closely linked to Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's artistic daughter, who apparently was the first to find Sir Edgar’s dead body in his studio off the Fulham Road.

Price

£4200.00

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance