JOHN GRAHAM LOUGH

Lough working on the  Milo

The Hatton Gallery has a useful small exhibition devoted to the Northumberland born sculptor John Graham Lough.
Studying Lough's work is made the more difficult because of the many items have been lost-often in the C20 due to municipal neglect.

The exhibition comprises small marble carvings by Lough based on Shakespeare with the addition of documentation about the the major projects and large photographs of the works in situ at Blagdon. The smaller works are surely the most successful. Some of the exhibits are on loan whilst some of the smaller items belong to the Hatton Gallery. There are no drawings.

Lough's reputation is not what it was in the C19 when he produced his monuments such as the Stephenson and the Collingwood which are among his least successful projects.His work does not compare favourably with that of earlier British sculptors.But Lough was professional enough to get some major commisssions-and not just in the North-East . He was working in the period between the age of Flaxman, Chantrey or Westmacott and that of the New Sculpture .

Rupert Gunniss says that it was the Milo which convinced him of Lough's greatness. I cannot agree.The Milo is not a common subject in art and it is not one of Lough's most successful works. The anatomy doesn't quite work, it is somewhat tortured and crude.The pose may relate to the Laocoon

Laocoon

or equally to some of Blake's over defined anatomies such as The Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve in the Tate.It is interesting that Blake's tortured anatomy is dated 1826-7. And the Milo is from 1827.Perhaps Lough had some influence on Blake. One would not expect it to work the other way. Blake's obscurity at that time was such that Lough would be unlikely to know much about him.The showing of the Milo and other works in Maddox Street, London was apparently something of a sensation. Haydon was enthusiastic. Wellington attended. Did Blake? Could he have afforded the shilling entry fee?

William Blake: The Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve (circa 1826-7)

Lough's widow had intended his work to be preserved as a kind of study centre and this was the intention behind her donation to the City of Newcastle.Lough's celebrity was greater then than it is now and the City was fulsome in its appreciation. But as the years drew on municipal and public interest declined The works long festering at Elswick Hall were given away, placed in public parks and so on. Marble sculpture-I ask you if that was wise? It is far too easily vandalised.




The exhibition ends on February 18 2012.
For further information about Lough see: John Graham Lough,1798-1876 a Northumbrian Sculptor; by John Lough and Elizabeth Merson,The Boydell Press, 1987.

post updated 16/11/13.