3-028-596 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Royal Academy Prize for Sculpture; Hercules and Antaeus, by G. Brock, 1870. 'It is not always that the prize group modelled in the Academy school of sculpture can bear the test of severe criticism so well as this really admirable group by Mr. T. Brock. The spirit of the conception, and the knowledge of anatomy displayed under difficult conditions of composition and action, would not discredit an experienced sculptor of established position, and as the work, we understand, of quite a young student, it is therefore highly praiseworthy and full of promise. The prize it carried off was one of five gold medals, given in the several schools, together with a scholarship of £50...In the principal biennial competitions the Academy nominates an historical subject or thesis, so to speak, both for students of painting and sculpture. The gold medals are consequently only won by original compositions. The subject selected for sculpture in the last competition was, as we see, the old Greek fable, to which literary allusion is so often made, of Hercules strangling the mighty giant and wrestler Antaeus while holding him off the earth - his mother Earth, from whom he constantly derived fresh strength'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.