The Rescue of Andromeda (1893), by Henry C Fehr. In TATE BRITAIN, Millbank Apses.
George P. Landow, writing in 2011 at The Victorian Web:
“Fehr’s statue differs in two obvious ways from usual representations of this popular subject in nineteenth-century painting and sculpture, the first of which is that unlike traditional versions of the Perseus and Andromeda story, such as that found in Thomas Bulfinch’s The Golden Age of Myth & Legend (1926), Medusa is beautiful rather than an ugly monster. She looks more like one of Frampton’s or Fehr’s Art Nouveau maidens than a Gorgon.
The sculptor here perhaps follows William Morris and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. In The Finding of Medusa, the fourth panel in the painter’s Perseus Series, Medusa has a face much like that of a typical Burne-Jones character. In William Morris’s version of the tale that inspired Burne-Jones — the Perseus series grew out of drawings for an unfulfilled plans for an illustrated Earthly Paradise — the cursed woman has writhing snakes that Burne-Jones doesn’t depict in her “golden tresses,”…
…In most versions, Perseus carries the head, which he uses later in the story, stored safely in a sack or bag and slays the monster with his sword, which Fehr places in his hand but hardly ready to strike.”
University of Heidelberg:
“Perseus’ equipment and its function is described in a poem from 580-570 BC….The poem quoted above also lists the following about Perseus: “The head of a terrible monster, the Gorgon, covered his whole back; shining tassels hung down from it made of gold.” The bag (kibisis) appears on one of the oldest depictions of Perseus’ adventure with Medusa from about 670 BC, the Cycladic pithos which was mentioned previously. In the painted metope from the end of the 7th century BC, Perseus flees with Medusa’s head. The kibisis is not shown here, but this could be an artistic convention: the painter shows us what is in the bag that hangs on the hero’s arm. A unique scene with Perseus storing the head of Medusa in the kibisis is seen on an Etruscan gem of 450-400 BC. Medusa’s head is facing the viewer, but Perseus glances in the other direction while handling the head to avoid her deadly gaze…
…In Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” which were published around the year 8 AD, Perseus himself tells the readers that Medusa was at first a beauty and only later a monster that he had killed. Ovid’s Perseus spoke of Medusa at a feast after Andromeda’s wedding, where one of his guests asked him why Medusa was the only Gorgon to have snakes instead of hair. Perseus explains to him that Medusa was originally a girl with beautiful hair. He claimed to have met someone who had seen her with his own eyes, meaning she had been transformed into a monster only recently. In Ovid’s myth, the transformation of beautiful hair into hideous snakes is another means of expressing Medusa’s impalpable nature…
…In the mid-5th century BC, Perseus with a winged cap on his head takes away the head of Medusa in a kibisis. She has carefully coiffured hair without snakes, a regular face, and closed eyes. Behind Perseus, her headless body with wings drops to the ground; however, she manages to maintain her female grace even after death.
Her legs are elegantly folded beneath her; the slim fingers of her hands with graceful movements touch the ground. Medusa’s attractiveness is also indicated in the fact that Perseus turns his head back to look at the beautiful decapitated body…
…Medusa’s beauty and her sleep might be connected, as both motifs appear at the same time. When Medusa closed her deadly eyes, which was her most noticeable attribute in Archaic Greece, the snakes from her head disappeared, and she turned into a beautiful girl. With Medusa, everything was the opposite.”
Jacqueline Banerjee with George P. Landow, writing in 2018 at The Victorian Web:
“Henry Charles Fehr was a noted and prolific exponent of the New Sculpture. Born into a family of Swiss origin in London’s Forest Hill, he was educated at the City of London School, before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1885. (He is thought to have trained as an apprentice in the studio of the sculptor and stonemason Horace Montford, who supported his application to the Royal Academy Schools in 1885. Wikipedia) Here he won several awards, including the Armitage Scholarship. He then worked in the studio of Sir Thomas Brock, becoming his assistant in 1893. According to Marion Speilmann, Brock probably helped to instil “some calm” into Fehr’s “exuberant energy”, and it was during this period that he produced a number of acclaimed statuettes. Spielmann lists Morning, Amphitrite, Favourettes, and others. His real break-through came in 1893, when he produced the plaster version of his best-known piece, The Rescue of Andromeda.
This was cast in bronze in the following year, and bought by Lord Leighton and the council for the Chantrey Collection for the then considerable sum of £1,200 — a good example of the way the President of the Royal Academy encouraged young up-and-coming sculptors.
The work was first placed inside the Tate Gallery, then, to Fehr’s great dismay, moved outside in 1911 to the right of the entrance. “The sculpture was not made to be “swamped” by heavy masonry,” Fehr complained; but it has stayed there ever since.
Working from his studio in the Fulham Road, Fehr went on to specialise in busts, ideal allegorical nudes, monuments and architectural sculpture. His works can be found in cities all over the country. Amongst them are the iconic Welsh dragon on the dome of Cardiff’s City Hall, and the figures of the four Winds at each angle of the clock tower there; the statues and bas-reliefs on the courthouse of Middlesex Guildhall on Parliament Square, Westminster (now the Supreme Court building), and the Queen Victoria Memorial, Hull. The Mapping English Sculpture website also lists statues of John Hampden and Lord Beaconsfield in Aylesbury; and war memorials in towns all over the country: Burton-on Trent, Eastbourne, Colchester, Portsmouth, Langholm, Lockerbie, Lisburn, Keighley and Leeds. Amongst his more noted busts are those of Morris, Ruskin, Passmore Edwards and Gladstone.”
Julia Upton 