Glazed stoneware for the Ashmolean Museum

1/2/23 -  Acquisition - Oxford, Ashmolean Museum - The vast collections of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum have just been enriched by the acquisition from Brussels dealer Allan Chinn of a superb glazed stoneware ceramic, the result of a collaboration between Scottish sculptor Alexander Munro and French ceramist Clément Massier.

Alexander Munro (1825-1871) and Clément Massier (1844-1917)
Portrait of William Carruthers with bat wings
Stoneware glazed with metallic lustre - 33 cm
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum
Photo: Fred Uyt, Brussels

See the image in its page

Matthew Winterbottom [1] was given the task of building up and integrating a new collection of decorative arts into the galleries devoted to the nineteenth century. This judicious acquisition enables it to make the link between British Pre-Raphaelitism and continental symbolism. Although Alexander Munro was never officially a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he was very close to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and was closely associated with the English movement from the outset. He shared its taste for a certain formal realism, drawing its sources from the Middle Ages and literature, combined with the evocation of a rich imagination. He also taught at Working Men’s College alongside Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Ruskin. Ruskin was the godfather of one of his sons. His group Paolo and Francesca is often described as the epitome of Pre-Raphaelitism.

On the medallion acquired by Oxford, a delicate profile of a man juts out slightly from the background. Bat wings frame this handsome face, giving a sense of both movement - accentuated by the breath that seems to be passing through the hair - and strangeness. A hybrid creature that fuels legends and fantasies, the bat evokes transition, the passage from one world to another. In England, it is often associated with fairies. In this portrait, some have frequently recognised the painter John Everett Millais, who uses the flying animal as a vehicle for the spirit…