(b 2 Aug 1845; d 9 March 1916). Sculptor and writer, grandson of (1) George Granville Leveson-Gower. As a young man he sat for seven years as a Liberal MP for Sutherland. After relinquishing his seat in 1874, he began to make lengthy visits to Paris, studying sculpture in the workshop of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. He eventually took a studio of his own in Paris and, assisted by the Italian Luca Madrassi ( fl c. 1869-1914), produced a series of statues and statuettes, exhibiting them in London at the Royal Academy and the Grosvenor Gallery and in Paris at the Salon. A lively illustrative effect, a quality unusual in British sculpture of the period, is to be found in Marie-Antoinette Leaving the Conciergerie (marble; Eaton Hall, Ches) and the Old Guard (bronzed plaster; Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.), both of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877. Gower's most ambitious work was the Shakespeare monument (bronze; Stratford-on-Avon, Bancroft Gdns), inaugurated in 1888. It comprises a seated figure of the poet and four characters from his plays. Gower was one of a number of late 19th-century amateur sculptors who successfully exploited the semi-industrial methods of production devised by the sculptors of the Second Empire in France. His literary endeavours include the catalogue of his collection of engraved portraits of Marie-Antoinette.
Part of the Leveson-Gower family
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