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Charles Sargeant Jagger MC ARA RBS
1885 – 1934
A nymph and satyr mocking an elderly satyr who is offering jewels to a young nymph who teases him from a tree
1921 and 1922
A pair of bronzes mounted on oak panels
Each 13.5 x 6 ins., 34.5 x 15.25 cms
Signed in the cast
About this Work
Between 1921 and 1922 Jagger modelled two bronze reliefs which had been commissioned by Sir Stephen Courtauld. The Courtauld casts were installed in cupboard doors in the library of his house at 47 Grosvenor Square in 1924. They were later transferred to Eltham Palace.
At the date he produced these, Jagger was also working on the Great Western Railway War Memorial. They therefore belong to the period when he was still primarily involved in the monumental work with which he made his name and before he took up major architectural projects. Apart from being a commission from an important patron, these panels with their lightness of touch also incorporate self-deprecating humour. Although still married to his first wife, Jagger was at this time already in contact with the much younger Evelyn Wade whom he would later marry. Ann Compton wrote that “Here, in a playful reference to Jagger’s attraction to Evelyn Wade, whose youthful charms made him act the goat, the alpha male is metamorphosed into a satyr enslaved by the pleasures of the flesh”.
The nymph and satyr panels were admired and attracted further commissions. They also led to a commission from Lady Forres for a related panel called The Mocking Birds (1930). This was an enlarged and extended version of the right-hand panel featuring the elderly satyr.
Provenance
Following Jagger’s death from pneumonia on 16 November 1934, his patrons organised a memorial exhibition of his work. This opened in 1935 at the Royal Watercolour Society Galleries and then toured. Casts of the exhibited works were offered for sale and were priced in the exhibition catalogue. Numbers 21 and 22 in the catalogue were the “small bronze plaques” executed for Stephen Courtauld. They were priced at 50gns. each.
The present casts, which do not have screw holes through the corners, were the property of Mrs. Evelyn Jagger-Clarke, the sculptor’s widow.
They were then with The Fine Art Society, London, in 2001.
Ann Compton included a catalogue raisonne in her 2004 book. She wrote that there was no detailed record of edition sizes and sales. The majority were made posthumously at the direction of Jagger’s widow Evelyn in response to sales from the 1935 memorial exhibition; orders were taken up to 1939. Evelyn made a set of casts when she moved to the USA in 1937. The plasters were stored with James Bourlet from 1939 until 1963, when they were destroyed.
In the catalogue raisonne Ann Compton does not list any other known casts of this pair of reliefs.
The pair made for Stephen Courtauld were apparently offered for auction at Bonhams in New Bond Street on 16 November 2011, provenanced to a UK Private Collection. Not mounted on oak panels, each was drilled with four holes through from the front to take fixing screws with round heads although the backs of the casts had integral threaded holes to receive fixings from the back. The other damage to them was that one cast had a deep gash on the cheek of the main figure.
If it is correct that there are only two pairs of these casts, the present bronzes are the only ones now in undamaged condition.
Exhibited
Imperial War Museum, London and Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield: Charles Sargeant Jagger, War and Peace Sculpture, Centenary Exhibition 1885-1985.
1985-86, cat. number 46, figs. 37 & 38. It seems that it was the original Courtauld casts which were exhibited as the illustrations in the catalogue show screw holes in each corner of the casts. However, Ann Compton has confirmed that in her later book with a catalogue raisonné she illustrates the present panels which originally belonged to Evelyn Jagger-Clarke.
The Fine Art Society
The Fine Art Society Story, Part 2. September-October 2001, number 72.
Literature
Ann Compton, The Sculpture of Charles Sargeant Jagger, Henry Moore Foundation/Lund Humphries, 2004, no. 50 page 119.