Ronald Sutherland Gower

London, 1845 - 1916, Tunbridge Wells, Kent

BiographyLC name authority rec. n82254785
LC Heading: Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord, 1845-1916
Biography:
Gower, Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson- (1845–1916), sculptor and author, was born on 2 August 1845 at Stafford House, London, the youngest of eleven children of George Granville Leveson-Gower (Sutherland-Leveson-Gower from 1841), second duke of Sutherland (1786–1861), and his wife, Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson-Gower (1806–1868), mistress of the queen's robes, daughter of George Howard, sixth earl of Carlisle, and his wife, Georgiana. After being educated privately and at Eton College from 1859, he matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1865, but his studies were much interrupted by social activities and foreign travel, including a visit to Garibaldi's camp at Rocco d'Anfo in July 1866. A taste for travel and a cosmopolitan interest in art were inherited from his parents, whose frequentation of European studios had assisted them in decorating their substantial properties: Dunrobin Castle (Sutherland), Trentham Hall (Staffordshire), Cliveden House (Buckinghamshire), and Stafford House (later Lancaster House) in London. Lord Ronald's cultural interests had no such practical application, and indeed were at first accompanied by a feeling of vocational vacuum, the dilemma of aristocratic younger sons. Among the conventional alternatives the church was discounted, since promotion was dependent on marriage, and Gower was attracted to his own sex. The army was a more inviting prospect, but his brother Frederick's death from fever during the Crimean War caused his mother to dissuade him from taking this step. Instead, he decided not to graduate, and entered parliament, elected as a Liberal for Sutherland in 1867. In a parliamentary career lasting eight years he spoke only once (28 May 1869), in the debate on the Scottish Reform Bill, and then only to defend his constituency against the threat of amalgamation with neighbouring counties. However, as a diarist, Gower was a dedicated spectator of events both in and outside the house. In 1868 he paid another visit to Garibaldi in self-imposed exile on the island of Caprera, and in 1870 accompanied the Times correspondent W. H. Russell on a journey from Berlin to Paris via the front, witnessing some of the carnage of the Franco-Prussian War and the confusion of Paris after the flight of Napoleon III.

During his years in the house, what seemed more suitable activities presented themselves to Gower, in the form of sculpture and historical research. It was while supervising the execution by the sculptor Matthew Noble of a tomb effigy for his mother in 1868 that Gower conceived the possibility that he might do such things himself. At the same time, the collecting habits of his extended family, and his father's and grandfather's experiences in France immediately before the terror, were to inspire a series of art historical and biographical projects. Lord Ronald was an avid researcher and collector of memorabilia relating to his preferred subjects, in particular Marie Antoinette, Joan of Arc, and Shakespeare. In 1874 he did not stand at the general election so as to devote himself full-time to these activities. Spending long periods in Paris over the ensuing decades, he worked as a sculptor, first in the studio of the prolific French sculptor and decorator Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, then in studios of his own. With the assistance of one of Carrier's praticiens, Luca Madrassi, he created a number of original pieces, exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Grosvenor Gallery, and the Paris Salon. He contributed reviews on artistic topics to the magazine Vanity Fair, under the anagrammatical pseudonym Talon Rouge, made the acquaintance of prominent figures in Parisian artistic life, such as Gustave Doré and Sarah Bernhardt, and in England entered a circle of young ‘aesthetes’, including Oscar Wilde. Friends were entertained by him in his ‘house beautiful’, Gower Lodge, Windsor, the furnishings of which were comprehensively described by Lord Ronald in Bric-a-Brac (1888).

In 1877 Lord Ronald made his Royal Academy début with the marble statue Marie Antoinette Leaving the Conciergerie. He had already started work on what he habitually described as his magnum opus, the Shakespeare monument. In the following year, returning from a tour around the world, he found that his ‘moral character’ had been impugned in the press. He was dissuaded by the lawyer Sir Henry James from initiating a libel action, and returned to work on his sculpture. The Shakespeare monument took him ten years to complete, and cost its author, at his own estimate, £500 annually. In its original form, the plaster model exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1881, it differed greatly from the version finally erected. Its central feature, instead of the eventual full-length seated figure of the playwright, consisted of an allegorical group, with Shakespeare's bust crowned by figures of Comedy and Tragedy. In this form it was memorably written off by the caustic Emilia Pattison (the future Lady Dilke) as a ‘Brobdingnagian Twelfth-cake’ (Academy, 11 June 1881, 439). Oscar Wilde gave a far more generous account of the final version when speaking at the unveiling ceremony in Stratford upon Avon on 10 October 1888. Of the sculptor himself, Wilde claimed in his speech that ‘there were few things he did not touch, and everything he touched he adorned’ (Birmingham Daily Post). The monument remained in Stratford, though not on its original site in the Memorial Gardens. In 1933 it was removed to a more accessible position in Bancroft Gardens. It consists of the seated figure of Shakespeare and accompanying statues of Prince Hal, Lady Macbeth, Falstaff, and Hamlet, all in bronze.

After the unveiling Lord Ronald bade farewell to sculpture and turned his attention to writing. In 1883 he published My Reminiscences in two volumes and in 1902 Old Diaries, 1881–1901; these were consolidated as Records and Reminiscences (1903). His lively pen and wide experience of the court, liberal politics, and artistic circles made him an attractive observer of the Victorian scene. He also wrote such popular historical works as The Last Days of Marie Antoinette (1885) and Joan of Arc (1893), and was the author of a series of art historical monographs, including Michelangelo Buonarroti (1899) and Sir David Wilkie (1902). From 1874 he had been a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, and on 4 May 1896, as the only trustee present on the occasion of the opening of its new premises, he personally unlocked the bronze doors to admit the small crowd waiting outside.

In 1898 Lord Ronald adopted as his son a young journalist Frank Hird, who was his companion in his remaining years. When not travelling, Lord Ronald and Hird resided at Hammerfield, Penshurst, Kent, until 1911. In that year, with his mental powers already impaired by falls suffered during epileptic fits, Lord Ronald was bankrupted after entrusting his financial affairs to a confidence trickster. He was obliged to sell his home and collections, and ended his life in greatly reduced, though still comfortable, circumstances at 66 Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells. In his later years he had been a crusader for cremation, and after his death on 9 March 1916 his body was cremated at Golders Green, and his ashes were interred at Rusthall, Kent, on 14 March 1916.

P. Ward-Jackson
(“Gower, Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson- (1845–1916),” P. Ward-Jackson in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, Oxford: OUP, 2004, Accessed August 2015. www.oxforddnb.com)

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