THOMAS WREN AFTER GEORGE FREDERIC WATTS (1817-1904) A bronze equestrian reduction of 'Physical Energy'

Primarily known as a symbolist painter, George Frederic Watts started training in sculpture at the age of 10 in the studio of William Behnes. He assiduously studied the Elgin Marbles, to which he would later refer in his work. Watts began work on his monumental sculpture of Physical Energy in 1883, and based the model on his other large bronze equestrian figure of Hugh Lupus, which he finally completed in 1883, after working on it for 20 years.

Physical Energy was the culmination of Watt’s ambitions in the field of public sculpture. It was finally cast in 1902 and was exhibited at the Royal Academy that same year. The plaster model was part of the bequest to Watts Gallery after the artist’s death in 1904. The bronze cast was given to the British Government and now stands in Cape Town, South Africa. A second cast from 1905 stands in Kensington Gardens, while a third cast from 1959, commissioned by the British South African Company, is situated on the grounds of the National Archives in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Watts Gallery commissioned a fourth cast in 2017 to commemorate the artist’s 200th birthday.

Thomas Wren, who was Watts’ assistant, achieved a reduction of the gesso model in the collection of Watts Gallery in 1914 at the request of Mary Watts and the gallery trustees. The plan was to make a series of casts for commercial purposes and these copies were to be retailed from the Watts Gallery, the Fine Art Society and other outlets. Reputedly, Wren recalled that around fifty were to be cast by the Parlanti foundry but this venture was curtailed by the outbreak of war.

Until the discovery and sale of a reduction at Bonhams in 2014, and aside from the reduction in the permanent collection at the Watts Gallery, only four other reductions of ‘Physical Energy’ were known, all inscribed ‘Physical Energy, G.F. Watts’ (right side, front) and ‘T. H. Wren 1914’ (right side, rear). These are located at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, The Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and The Gibberd Art Gallery, Harlow.

Subsequent casts of the model without Wren’s name and of a slightly later date are known, including one mentioned in a 1928 inventory of the Liverpool University Gallery and another (now lost) acquired by the Fogg Art Museum in 1929. Some known examples were produced by the Morris Singer Foundry and bear the foundry mark.