3-008-634 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: marble statue - "Sardanapalus" (from Byron's Tragedy), by H. Weekes, A.R.A., 1862. '...one of the single-figure statues commissioned for the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House...Mr. Weekes has wrought out the poet's conception very admirably in the animated, defiant attitude and the mixture of scornful and almost hilarious expression in the face...The technical merits of this statue are of a very high order, and place it among the best modern sculptures. The action of the upraised arm is given with great anatomical truth. When the arm is raised in this position the serrati muscles and the ridge of the false ribs with their cartilaginous attachments would be brought into unpleasant relief if not, as here, treated very judiciously. The difficult anatomy of the olecranion or elbow and the joint of the ulna and humerus in this position of the arm is also perfectly mastered. Throughout the figure there is that due discrimination between the hard, knobby markings of the osseous structures, the flatnesses of the tendinous portions, and the double curves of the muscles which Haydon so justly admired in the Elgin marbles. The drapery is also very skilfully "cast".' From "Illustrated London News", 1862.