- Artist
- Gilbert Bayes 1872–1953
- Medium
- Bronze and enamel on marble base
- Dimensions
- Object: 886 × 483 × 286 mm, 118.5 kg
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1910
- Reference
- N02739
Catalogue entry
N02739 SIGURD c. 1910
Inscr. around bronze base, ‘He who would win to the Heavens and be as the Gods on high/Must tremble nought at the road and the place where men-folk die’.
Bronze, with enamel on the horse's trappings, 28×19×11 1/4 (71×48×28·5), on marble base carved in relief, 6 7/8×18 1/4×10 1/4 (17·5×46·5×27·5).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1910.
Exh: R.A., 1910 (1913).
Lit: National Gallery of British Art [Tate Gallery], Catalogue, 1911, pp.8–9; Herbert Maryon, Modern Sculpture, 1933, pp.152, 173, the other version repr. pl.107 as that in the Tate; Eric Underwood, A Short History of English Sculpture, 1933, p.152.
A slightly altered version of the bronze and enamel statuette exhibited, with a different base, at the R.A. in 1909 (1834; repr. Royal Academy Pictures, 1909, p.113). In this earlier cast Sigurd holds a ring (the Niblungen ring) instead of his sword, which hangs at his side; the other hand is also different and the horse's head is held higher. In other details the two versions are identical which suggests that the artist may have reworked his original plaster.
The Tate version was first exhibited with a quotation from William Morris's Sigurd the Volsung, which quotation is also inscribed in Lombardic characters round the bronze base of the statuette. The reliefs on the two long sides of the marble base show two scenes from the same poem, Brynhilde with the Niblung brothers, Gunnar, Hogin and Guttorm, and their mother Grimhilde, and the body of Sigurd taken to burial; the patterns on the horse's trappings also contain motifs relating to the poem - for a full description see the catalogue cited above.
Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I
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