3-008-601 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: bronze statue, "The Castaway", by Charles Fuller, 1862. '...an example of the excellent casting of the Italian founder Clemente Papi...entitled in the catalogue "A Shipwrecked Man"...The only accessory is the piece of the wreck, a portion of the "crosstrees" as they are technically called, with ropes and pulley, by which the man has reached shore...He is faint, bruised, and exhausted, but he makes a desperate effort to hail for assistance. There is no certain gleam of hope in his eye, however; no expression of actual recognition in his face. He has reached a lonely, deserted, perhaps inhospitable, coast. Thus are our sympathies awakened and thus are we left to speculate, a true artist often telling most by what he leaves untold. The idea of this subject is also very happily conceived, in that it permits the introduction of the nude without any obvious improbability...The sculptor has taken advantage of this scope afforded by the subject to display, though not parade, a thorough knowledge of anatomy in every part of the modelling. There is, indeed, nothing unnatural, forced, improbable, or slighted in this very effective work...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.