THE LIONS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE. 



7' 



then at the head of the Board of Works, he stated that "a sum of/4,000 was required 

 to complete the column in Trafalgar Square, but that the Government did not consider 

 it advisable to put in a claim for it during the present year." How it was that 

 Mr. Lough, to whom the lions were originally consigned, and who is living, I believe, 

 at the present time, did not receive a commission to proceed with them, was not 

 explained till Parliament met in 1859, when Lord John Manners stated that the 

 " Government had selected Sir Edwin Landseer because they considered him the most 

 competent to undertake the task ; that he was then engaged in modelling the animals, 

 which it was expected would be in their places at no distant day." 



Towards the close of the year 1858 the public gradually became aware that the 

 work was placed in the hands of Landseer, and that the sum of /6,ooo was to be the 

 sum paid to him. The statement was received with very general surprise, for no one 

 supposed that, however skilled he was in painting such, animals, he would be able, or 

 even willing, to model them in the clay. Had it been intended to execute them in 

 stone or marble it is self-evident the work must have been performed by a sculptor ; 

 but as they were to be of bronze, Landseer' s task was merely to get them modelled, 

 after his own designs and under his superintendence, by men accustomed to such 

 labour. Granite was, if I am not mistaken, the material of which originally the 

 animals were to be sculptured ; the change was made to meet the difficulty of Land- 

 seer's position ; for another reason, moreover, it was, perhaps, a judicious one, as 

 the bronze would better harmonise with the bas-reliefs. 



Nothing more, definitely, was heard in the matter, though the public journals of 

 every kind were expressing impatience of the delay, till 1 860, when it was stated that 

 the painter had completed drawings of a lion which, having died in the Zoological 

 Gardens, had been removed to Landseer' s stables to serve as a study. These drawings 

 it was also said were then in the studio of Baron Marochetti, the sculptor, who was 

 actively employed in modelling the lions from them. Marochetti subsequently admitted 

 that, though he had aided with advice, the work was entirely Landseer's. 



What was actually being done in the matter seemed yet a mystery. Judging from 

 what was said in the House of Commons, in 1 861, it maybe remarked that the progress 

 was a backward one ; for Mr. Cowper, then Chief Commissioner of Works, stated, in 

 answer to a query put by Admiral Walcott, that "Sir Edwin Landseer was now very 

 accurately studying the habits of lions, and was to be seen in the Zoological Gardens 

 making himself thoroughly acquainted with their attitudes." Well might Lord Henry 

 Lennox say in the House that the public was "bamboozled" in the whole affair; and 

 well, too, might one of the journals of the day remark,—" We had, in our innocence, 

 always thought the work had been entrusted to Sir Edwin, because he' was so pro- 

 foundly versed in lionology; but it appears that after studying, as may be presumed, the 

 science for four years he does not yet feel himself in a position to undertake the task." 



