Bronze Plaque James Pittendrigh MacGillivray

Description

Exhibited at Dundee Fine Art Exhibition

From our Sculpture collection, we are delighted to introduce this Bronze Plaque by James Pittendrigh MacGillivray. The plaque of domed shape mounted in a wooden ebony frame with a stepped plinth base and shaped backplate almost resembling a lantern with a loop metal fixing hole to the top. The Bronze Plaque features a cast male on a pilgrim with long walking staff and backpack filled for the trip. To the rear of the Bronze plaque is the original exhibition label for ‘Dundee Fine Art Exhibition’ with the artists name and address, number, title, price and the agents name. Retailing at £5 around the turn of the 20th century. The Bronze Plaque dates to the Arts and Crafts period circa 1900.

Provenance Dundee Fine Art Exhibition £5 (today that would be equivalent of approximately £770!)

James Pittendrigh MacGillivray ‘Scotland’s greatest sculptor’ (1856-1938) was a well known Scottish sculptor poet, painter, printmaker and photographer born in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire. He apprenticed to William Brodie a cabinet maker (1741-1788) and also worked for James Steel and John Mossman (1817-1890) in Glasgow. His works include public statues of Robert Burns in Irvine, Lord Byron in Aberdeen, the 3rd Marquess of Bute in Cardiff, John Knox in Edinburgh’s St Giles Cathedral, and William Ewart Gladstone in Coates Crescent Gardens, Edinburgh. Throughout the last quarter of the 19th century he spent his time undertaking multiple commissions and exhibiting across Scotland and London which lasted until the early 1930s art deco period. His Glasgow work included monuments at the Necropolis, Cathcart and Lambhill cemeteries and in Glasgow Cathedral. Two large-scale public works in Edinburgh included six statues for the facade of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, John Knox at St Giles (1906) and the nationally significant nine-figure monument to William Gladstone (1904-13). He made a large-scale monument to Robert Burns for Irvine (1894/5), a sculpture at Dumfries Public Library (1904) and a monument to Lord Byron for Aberdeen (1911).

Arts and Crafts Movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the United Kingdom spreading to the rest of Europe and America.

Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper with approximately 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such as arsenic or silicon depending on the age of the bronze and its origin. The additions of other metals produce a range of alloys that are usually harder than copper alone and carry useful properties such as strength. The earliest known use of bronze dates to the 5th millennium BCE from Iranian plateau, the bronze mix consists of arsenical copper and copper-arsenide. The earliest tin-copper-alloy recovered is dated to circa 4650 BCE and was found in Plocnik, Serbia. It is believed to have been smelted from a natural tin-copper ore.

Measurements 30.5cm High x 16.5cm Wide x 6cm Deep Plaque only 17cm High x 10.5cm Wide (Domed) ( 12 x 6.5 x 2.36 Inches)

Condition Excellent condition with very little wear to the front. Exhibition plaque worn to the rear.