An exhibition in the British countryside shows Alexander Pope's face in all its glory
By T.E.
ALEXANDER POPE once wrote that "if fame comes at all, it comes unlook'd for". Made rich by sales of his translation of Homer, he became so famous that he can realistically claim to have been the first celebrity author of the modern age. His fame, unlook'd for or not, is such that almost three centuries after his death an exhibition has been created at Waddesdon Manor, in Buckinghamshire, that is based on images of his own face and head. Even while he lived, casts of his bust were the most often reproduced and purchased by the great families of the day—outnumbering those of Shakespeare or any of the Greek poets. And yet, though Pope came to befriend most of the great figures of Enlightenment England, he was born into a modest merchant family and grew up partially crippled by a congenital curvature of the spine. He was also, equally unfashionably, a Roman Catholic, born in the same year (1688) as the "Glorious Revolution" saved England from the Catholicisation planned by James II.
At Waddesdon, the extravagant French-style chateau that once belonged to the Rothschild banking dynasty, a remarkable group of Pope busts has been gathered for the first time in one place. They are the work of a French émigré sculptor, Louis François Roubiliac (1702-1762), a man renowned for his casts of Hogarth, Newton, Handel and Shakespeare. The exhibition has been brought together by the National Trust and Lord Jacob Rothschild, who jointly run the estate, and Malcolm Baker, an art-history professor from the University of California.
Roubiliac’s skill, according to Mr Baker, was “to give the familiar form of the marble bust a new animation and intensity”. At Waddesdon, in an elegant drawing-room decorated with gilded chandeliers, the Carrara marble that Roubiliac used springs to life. The setting on the edge of the Chiltern hills vivifies the marble representations, and Pope's narrow features and slim, protuberant brow acquire a remarkable poignancy. The effect is to create a very contemporary installation. The busts are accompanied by a series of painted portraits spanning Pope’s life, from the young, effetely self-conscious poet in wig (by Charles Jervas, 1714) to a portrait from 1737 where his features show a degree of strain.
Waddesdon’s new chief executive, Sarah Weir, is rightly proud of the exhibition. “The last time anyone attempted to gather these Popes together was in 1961, at the National Portrait Gallery, but they could muster only six.” She is not fazed by the idea that a series of marble busts does not seem like an obvious crowd-pleaser. “That’s not, I think, what Waddesdon should be aiming for,” she explains. “We can do better with more esoteric exhibitions that are sympathetic to the collection here. After all, the manor was created by that great—and eccentric collector—Baron Ferdinand [de Rothschild], who very much had his own taste and interests.”
There is an echo in the show not just of Baron Ferdinand, but perhaps too of the interests and tastes of the current Lord Rothschild. It was his idea to exhibit the contemporary ceramics of Edmund de Waal at Waddesdon in 2012, a conjunction of the achingly pared-down style of a modern master with the gentlemanly obsessions of Baron Ferdinand, whose European porcelain is still a highlight of the collection.
Lord Rothschild is keen to promote Waddesdon as a place where some of history's outsiders will find a place, and where masterpieces can be reunited in collection. (Another recent show combined four oil paintings by Jean Chardin of a boy playing cards produced between 1735 and 1738.) Pope, celebrated for his epigrams and translations and kept alive by Roubiliac’s skill with the chisel, has found a very fitting temporary home here.
"Fame and Friendship: Pope, Roubiliac and the portrait bust" is at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, until October 26th
