Herbert Ward: Sculpture in the Circum-Atlantic World
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14714781003785196
ISSN1941-8361
Autores ResumoAbstract The English imperial adventurer, writer and late new sculptor Herbert Ward (1863–1919) was an important international artist and turn-of-the-century society figure. Depicting Congolese tribespeople in nineteen bronze sculptures and two popular books inspired by his five-year exploration of the then-Belgian-controlled Congo Free State during 1884–9, Ward won two Salon gold medals for his monumental bronzes. Ward’s sculptures and extensive collection of Congolese artefacts were subsequently bought and exhibited both privately and publicly across the circum-Atlantic world, where they were employed in a range of often contradictory ways ranging from formal art exhibitions at the Paris Salon through imperial apologetics in Brussels to didactic ethnographic displays at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. And yet, Ward’s sculptures hardly appear in the extant scholarship on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sculptural history, while previous museological writings on Ward’s exhibitions have focused on the utilization of the sculptor’s Congolese collection, rather than on the exhibition of Ward’s sculptural oeuvre. In this article, I address these issues and omissions by exploring the differing sculptural encounters that were provided through Ward’s statues as they were exhibited across Europe and America. Comparing the domestic display of Ward’s newly created sculptures at his Parisian home from 1910 onwards, with both the Brussels exhibition of his works in the palace of King Leopold II and the public, didactic exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History from 1921, I examine how the visual relationships between the Congolese objects and Ward’s bronzes generated very different sculptural and ideological effects, with far-reaching consequences for the history of Ward’s sculptures, collection and reputation. Acknowledgements I wish to thank the guest editors, Jason Edwards and Michael Hatt, and my fellow contributors, for their very insightful and constructive comments. Notes 1 Herbert Ward, American Lecture Tour Transcript, 1913, Herbert Ward Papers, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium, 2. 2 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage Books, 1994), 21. 3 Henry Morton Stanley, How I Found Livingstone: Travels, Adventures and Discoveries in Central Africa, 3rd edn (New York: Cosimo, 2005 [1869]), 339. 4 Sarita Ward, A Valiant Gentleman, being the Biography of Herbert Ward (London: Chapman & Hall, 1927), 11. 5 Ibid., 16. 6 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Boston, MA: Mariner Press, 1998), 86. 7 Herbert Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals (London: Chatto & Windus, 1890), 17. 8 Herbert Ward, ‘The Real African’, Scribner's Magazine 48 (October 1910): 449. 9 Ibid., 451. 10 Daniel Liebowitz and Charlie Pearson, The Last Expedition: Stanley's Fatal Journey through the Congo (London: Portrait Publishing, 2005), 7. 11 For more information on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, see Tony Gould, In Limbo: The Story of Stanley's Rear Column (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979). 12 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, 259. 13 Herbert Ward, A Voice from the Congo (London and New York: Scribners, 1910), 320. 14 Hugh Marles, ‘Arrested Development: Race and Evolution in the Sculpture of Herbert Ward’, Oxford Art Journal 19, no. 1 (1996): 16. 15 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘A Distorted Mirror: The Exhibition of the Herbert Ward Collection of Africana’, in Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture, ed. Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer and Steven D. Lavine (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 1992), 452–3. 16 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘Where Art and Ethnology Met: The Ward African Collection at the Smithsonian’, in The Scramble for Art in Central Africa, ed. Enid Schildkrout and Curtis A. Keim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 211. 17 Christopher Frost, A History of British Taxidermy (Long Melford: C. Frost, 1987), 107. 18 For more information on John, see Fiona Pearson, Goscombe John at the National Museum of Wales (Cardiff: National Museum of Wales, 1979), and David Pickup, ‘Sir William Goscombe John: “Imbued with the Artistic Spirit”’, Medal 31 (Autumn 1997): 68–72. 19 Herbert Ward, ‘The Real African’, Scribner's Magazine 48 (October 1910): 457. 20 For more information on the Académie Julian, see Overcoming all Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian, ed. Gabriel Weisberg (New York: Rutgers University Press, 1999). 21 Sarita Ward, A Valiant Gentleman, 166. 22 Hugh Honour, ‘Black Models and White Myths’, in Image of the Black in Western Art, From the American Revolution to World War I, Vol. 4, part 2, ed. Ladislas Bugner and Karen C.C. Dalton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 222. 23 Ibid. 24 Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1872–1912, 3rd edn (London: Perennial Press, 2003 [1991]), 21. 25 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘Where Art and Ethnography Met’, 202. 26 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘A Distorted Mirror’, 440. 27 Hugh Honour, ‘Black Models and White Myths’, 222. 28 Benedict Read, Victorian Sculpture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 100. 29 Maarten Coutenier, interview with writer, 16 July 2009, Musée royale de l'Afrique centrale, Tervuren. 30 Tony Robert-Fleury, Société des Artistes Français, Catalogue Illustré du Salon 1908 (Paris, 1908), 10. 31 Sarita Ward, A Valiant Gentleman, 164. 32 Petrine Archer Straw, Negrophilia: Avant-garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 37. 33 The full photographic collections are held at Stanley Colonial Archives, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium and the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 34 Annie Coombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 5–6. 35 Sarita Ward, A Valiant Gentleman, 164–5. 36 Joseph Bristow, Imperial Boys: Adventures in a Man's World (London: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 12. 37 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘A Distorted Mirror’, 422. 38 For more information on French imperialism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Winifred Baumgart, Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial Expansion 1880–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) and S.H. Roberts, History of French Colonial Policy 1870–1925 (London: P.S. King, 1963). 39 For more on the relationship between primates and the Western sculptural ideal, see David Bindman, From Ape to Apollo: Aesthetics and the Idea of Race in the 18th Century (London: Reaktion Books, 2002). 40 Maarten Coutenier, interview with writer. 41 Herbert Ward, A Voice from the Congo, 208–9. See also: Herbert Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, 128–32. 42 Thanks to Jason Edwards for suggesting this reading. For more information on miscegenation and hybridity, see Robert J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), Werner Soilors (ed.), Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature and Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Elise V. Lemire, “Miscegenation”: Making Race in America (Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002). 43 Sarita Ward, A Valiant Gentleman, 201. 44 Anon., ‘Presentation to Mr. Morel: Lord Cromer on His Work for Congo Reform’, The Times, May 30, 1911, 7. 45 Roger Casement, Report of the British Council, Roger Casement, on the Administration of the Congo Free State (London: British Parliamentary Papers LXII, 1904), 145. 46 Stuart Helig, ‘Unique Gift to the Smithsonian’, Washington Sunday Star, March 16, 1913, 2–3. 47 George Brigham, ‘Smithsonian Institution Receives Herbert Ward Statues of African Jungle People’, Christian Science Monitor, March 15, 1912, 8–9. 48 E.F. Baldwin, ‘Herbert Ward: Explorer, Sculptor, War Worker’, The Outlook (New York), February 8, 1913, 224–6. 49 Hugh Marles, ‘Arrested Development: Race and Evolution in the Sculpture of Herbert Ward’, 17. 50 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘A Distorted Mirror’, 441. 51 G. D. Gibson Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 3. 52 Elbert Francis Baldwin, ‘Herbert Ward: Explorer, Sculptor, War Worker’, The Outlook, February 8, 1913, 224. 53 Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 7. 54 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London and New York: Verso, 1993), 3–4. 55 Sarita Ward to William Henry Holmes, January 27, 1921, William Henry Holmes Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. 56 Mary Jo Arnoldi, ‘Where Art and Ethnography Met’, 211. 57 Sarita Ward, A Valiant Gentleman, 164. 58 Walter Hough, The Herbert Ward African Collection Exhibition, exhibition catalogue (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1924), 6. 59 Dirk Thys, ‘Introduction’, in Le Musée Royal de l'Afrique centrale a´ Tervuren 1898–1998, ed. Dirk Thys (Brussels: MRAC Press, 1998), 14. 60 Ibid., 27. 61 The full collection of letters and writings are held at Stanley Colonial Archives, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, Tervuren, Belgium. 62 Elbert Francis Baldwin, ‘Herbert Ward: Explorer, Sculptor, War Worker’, 224. 63 Sarita Ward to H. Schouteden, October 9, 1933, Herbert Ward Papers, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale. 64 H. Schouteden to Sarita Ward, October 29, 1933, Herbert Ward Papers, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale. 65 Charmaine Nelson, The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), xxiv. 66 H. Schouteden to Colonies Minister, January 19, 1934, Herbert Ward Papers, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale. 67 Maarten Coutenier, interview with writer, 16 July 2009. For more information on Dupagne and Jespers, see Gaston-Denys Periér, La Nervie: Le Congo, Interprété par les artistes (Brussels: Nervie, 1927), J.M. Jadot, Le sculpteur Dupagne (Brussels: L. Cuypers Editions, 1961), Robert Hoozee (ed.), L'Art modern en Belgique 1900–1945 (Brussels: Fonds Mercator, 2000). 68 Michel Rassenfosse, ‘Le Sculpteur Arsène Matton’, l'Expansion Belge no. 2 (1929): 26. Although commissioned by King Albert I in 1911, Matton's four plaster groups were not displayed in their purpose-built niches until 1924. 69 J.S. Haller, Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 126. 70 Jan Nederveen Pieterse, White on Black (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 37. 71 Transcript of Geographical Conference opening speech, September 1876, Stanley Colonial Archives, Musée royal de l'Afrique centrale, 4. See also, Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa, 3rd edn (London: Perennial Press, 2003 [1991]), 21 and Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Boston, MA: Mariner Press, 1998), 44–45. 72 H. Schouteden to H. Rouard, August 11, 1933, Herbert Ward Papers. 73 Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost, 72. 74 George Ansley Martelli, From Leopold to Lumuba: A History of the Belgian Congo, 1877–1960 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1962), 125. 75 Dirk Thys, ‘Introduction’ in Le Musée Royal de l'Afrique centrale á Tervuren 1898–1998, 27.
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