Charles Bennet Lawes as a Victorious Athlete in Repose

Charles Bennet Lawes (Teignmouth, Devon, 1843 – Rothamsted, Harpenden, 1911) was an athlete, sculptor and art collector, and a member of a prominent British family. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he excelled in sport from an early age. He won virtually every competition he entered from 1858 onwards. His successes were memorable in British sporting history, and his achievements were frequently recognised in various rowing disciplines and in steeplechase. Later, in his fifties, he also won cycling events. In addition to the sporting commitments which occupied him throughout his youth, Lawes was a sculptor. He trained with John Henry Foley in London, whose workshop he joined in around 1868–9. For a few months in 1869 he studied in Berlin with Hugo Hagen (1818–1871), a German sculptor with many links to British sculpture. Soon after, Lawes established his own workshop in Chelsea.

At the time of this work, Foley’s subject was a great athlete in good physical shape, but by the time he was completing the statue Lawes was almost 30 years old. It is clear that the sculptor was inspired by classical and neoclassical art, which always depicts youthful models. He did not, however, approach it as an idealised nude, nor did he try to equate it with an overtly muscular adolescent model. He instead designed the material dimension with a candid and, one might say, unusual naturalism, in which the body represents that of an adult. The pose is that of a classical nude athlete, covered only by a fig leaf and holding a laurel wreath in his hand, comparable to those worn by victorious Greek sportsmen at the Olympic Games. His wavy hair is well-crafted and modern, and his body rests on his right leg in a pose of certain indolence, elegance and serenity. His left hand rests lightly on a tree trunk, in the style of ancient nude models.

A certain Praxitelian curve can be seen, which is particularly visible when the nude is viewed from behind. However, it embodies many elements of realism: for instead of depicting – as Foley indeed knew how to do – youth and physical energy, or even the strain of an athlete in motion, he opted for a completely natural position, balanced and resting. Foley considered that the value of understanding classical sculpture was precisely the possibility of reimagining it from the perspective of his era. He projected it with great realism, but all while illustrating the essence of sculpture. His pose, which he presents in a somewhat phlegmatic manner without the energy of an athletic young man, deals with masculine beauty by emphasising the materiality of the body. However, he had to somehow portray both the heroism of a competitive winner who had won numerous sporting prizes throughout his life as well as the celebrity status he had achieved. He sought to convey dignity within the strict realist approach he applied to all of his works, combined with a hint of classical idealism. This is most noticeable in the ideal beauty of the subject’s face.

He may have drawn classical inspiration from various sculptures. These were perhaps the sculptures most accessible to him, including Dionysus which followed a Hellenistic model, made in the 2nd-century AD now in the Louvre, and of which there was a version in the magnificent collection at Woburn Abbey. There was also another example restored and completed in the 19th century in the outstanding collection at Petworth House. He also availed himself of neoclassical art, much closer to his work in both period and style. Examples include the nude in Hyacinthus by the Scottish neoclassical artist Lawrence Macdonald (1799–1878), who was trained in Rome. In 1852, Queen Victoria commissioned a version of Macdonald’s original 1846 work as a Christmas present for her husband; it is now in Buckingham Palace. The naturalist nature with which Macdonald depicts Apollo’s beautiful young lover coincides with Lawes’s sculpture in its positioning of the legs and left arm. However, it has a rather more defined contraposto and almost exactly replicates the Roman Dionysus according to the Hellenistic model in the Louvre, albeit with an adolescent body. The essential difference with all these marble models lies in the fact that they were all adolescent bodies sculpted with a slight contraposto and positioned next to a tree trunk in a reflective pose, a common trope.

Foley was ahead of his time on a subject that would become very popular from the 1890s onwards and that was closely associated with sporting culture. Shortly afterwards, it was also propagated through Physical Culture magazine, published in New York in 1899. Athletes were modelled by other sculptors, especially in subsequent years. They were preferentially sculpted in bronze, in both small and large models. This was within the movement – characterised by vibrant and dynamic works – known as New Sculpture, a term coined in 1894.

Azcue Brea, Leticia, Una escultura de John Henry Foley en España: Charles Bennet Lawes como atleta victorioso en reposo. Boletín del Museo del Prado, 2019-2021, p.151-166 fs. 1 a-b, 2 a-b, 8 a-b, 9