Height overall: 29cm (11.5in)
Patinated bronze. Signed to the reverse ‘C. Marochetti Pubd. Novbr 4th 1852’. Raised on a bronze socle. Mounted on a period turned ebonised base. Height of bronze 17cm (6.7in).
Baron Carlo Marochetti of Vaux, R.A. (1805-1867) was born in Turin, Marochetti studied under Baron François Boscio at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and exhibited work at the Salon of 1827. After further study in Rome, he worked on genre groups in marble and plaster, but became celebrated for his bronze equestrian statues; in Turin, Emanuel Filiberto, Duke of Savoy (1833); in Paris, the Duke of Orleans; in London at the Palace of Westminster, Richard Coeur de Lion (1860); and in Glasgow, the Duke of Wellington (1841-44). During his time in Paris (1832-1848) he created a panel for the Arc de Triomphe representing the 1792 French Revolutionary victory at Jemappes. While working on the statue of Wellington for Glasgow he simultaneously worked on an equestrian figure of Napoleon I in coronation robes and to mark the return of Emperor’s remains to France. It was not until 1861 that the full size monument was placed outside Les Invalides.
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A favourite of the French and Italian courts, Marochetti’s urbane personality and professional reputation allowed him easy access to the highest levels British patronage after he fled Paris in the wake of the 1848 revolution. His major British works include the effigies of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum, at Frogmore; the statue of Sir Colin Campbell (Lord Clyde) in Waterloo Place, London, and the bronze statue atop the Wellington Memorial Column at Stratfield Saye. He also executed the Crimean War Memorials at Scutari and St Paul’s Cathedral, as well as the Indian Mutiny Memorial at Cawnpore, India. Among the international honours bestowed upon him were a Barony of the Italian Kingdom (for which he took the name of his father’s château) and the French Légion d’Honneur. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1861, and Royal Academician in 1867, having exhibited at the R.A. from 1851.
