October 23, 2009

As the Queen unveils a bust of herself by the late Oscar Nemon, Christopher Hope tells the sculptor’s story.

 

By Christopher Hope


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UK Telegraph (21 Oct 2010) – Nowadays, not many people know who Oscar Nemon is – but they almost certainly know his work. His statue of Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery stands outside the Ministry of Defence, gazing unblinkingly at the Cenotaph on Whitehall. Nemon’s statue of Winston Churchill, striding through the rubble of London in the Blitz, is in the House of Commons where his foot is polished by MPs for luck.

 

During a lifetime that spanned most of the 20th century, Croatia-born Nemon, who fled to Britain before the Second World War, sculpted dukes, kings, queens, lords and field marshals. Nemon collected famous subjects like Fabergé eggs: from American aviator Charles Lindbergh and the King of Belgium in the Twenties; Sigmund Freud in the Thirties; Max Beerbohm in the Forties; Churchill, the Queen and Monty in the Fifties and Sixties; to Margaret Thatcher and Diana, Princess of Wales in the Eighties.

The Queen was a particular fan. Last night, she was at the House of Lords to unveil a bronze bust of herself that Nemon sculpted in the Sixties. She regularly invited the artist and his wife, Patricia, to parties, and leant him an old storeroom that he turned into a studio at St James’s Palace. Its doors opened onto the garden of the Queen Mother, whom he sculpted, and who would often pop in to see how he was doing.

 

He came into contact with the Queen through Churchill, whom he met while on holiday in Marrakesh in the late Fifties. Nemon secretly made a small bust of Churchill, which his wife, Clementine, adored.

 

Read the full article here.

 

© UK Telegraph

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