Arthur George Walker

London, The Royal Academy, 1906, inv. no. 1724

Born in Hackney, London, the son of a ship surveyor, Arthur George Walker attended the Royal Academy between 1883 and 1888. He was virtuosic in his artistic abilities as a sculptor, illustrator, ivory carver, and mosaicist. He completed numerous mosaics and sculptural commissions including prominent memorials for the Marchioness of Lothian at Blickling Hall, Norfolk, and for Lady Tollemache at Helmingham. Walker’s most famous public sculptures are of Florence Nightingale in Waterloo Place, Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Park Gardens, and two niche figures for the front of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Walker exhibited at the Royal Academy numerous times between 1884 and 1937. The present model of Cymon finding Iphigenia asleep was exhibited at the summer exhibition in 1906 as no. 1724.

The tale of Cymon and Iphigenia, drawn from Boccaccio’s Decameron, tells of a coarse and unrefined nobleman, Cymon, who is transformed by love upon seeing the beautiful Iphigenia asleep in a meadow. Struck by her beauty, he reforms his manners and character to win her affection, turning from brutishness to grace.

RELATED LITERATURE

Catalogue of the Spring Exhibition, The City Art Gallery, Leeds 1909, p. 47 no. 534