Le murmure de l’ange (The Angel’s Whisper)
By: Benjamin Spence, 1857
68cm x 72cm
White Marble
Musseo d’Orsay
Based on a poem by Samuel Lover, Le murmure de l’ange tells of an Irish belief that when a baby smiles in their sleep, they are talking to an angel as the mother watches. “Her beads while she numbered, The baby still slumbered, And smiled in her face as she bended her knee; Oh! blessed be that warning, My child, thy sleep adorning, For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.” This classical piece of work is graceful and softened by a delicate romanticism. Spence portrays the baby on a draped mattress and the adoring angel with a precise knowledge of human composition in which the infant shows a natural sleeping pose and the angel lingers quietly forming a solid and balanced structure. Spence was an admirer of Neoclassicism and gained this passion from fellow sculpter John Gibson. Carefully watching Gibson’s techniques, Spence was able to create sculptures that accurately defined form smoothly enclosed by the light. Where Gibson was rigid, Spence styled his work to encompass sentimentality. Most of his works were not like his predecessors of mythology, but rather of Shakespearean characters, romantic English literature, and the Bible.
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