Style
His style was idealised, his subject matter was drawn from the classics, scripture and poetry. He made portrait busts of the famous and some heroic statues, but most of his work was more domestic in nature being studies of women and children, often suggesting a story to be told and occasionally veering towards the sentimental. Some of his work shown at the Royal Academy was reproduced in Parian Ware, and others were designed specifically for William Taylor Copeland's Parian or 'Statuary Porcelain'.
One of Halse's few works of public sculpture was a marble group Advance Australia. This was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1865 and merited a full-page engraving and review in The Art Journal of 1866. It shows Britannia and Australia as mother and daughter flanked by a kangaroo. The reviewer commented: 'Britannia in the act of unveiling the virgin beauties of Australia, who, surprised and pleased, boldly steps out from her native wilds, into the clear open space of civilization.' Halse's group was made at about the same time as the Albert Memorial (1863–72), and makes an interesting comparison because his work emphasises the familial caring relationship of Empire. By contrast the Albert Memorial suggests Britain's power over the four continents, or the four corners of the earth, which are literally at the four corners of the monument. At this date there was vigorous debate about whether Australia qualified as a fifth continent. Halse's composition seems to contribute to this discussion.
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs.”
—Coco Chanel (1883–1971)
“Everything ponderous, viscous, and solemnly clumsy, all long- winded and boring types of style are developed in profuse variety among Germans—forgive me the fact that even Goethe’s prose, in its mixture of stiffness and elegance, is no exception, being a reflection of the “good old time” to which it belongs, and a reflection of German taste at a time when there still was a “German taste”Ma rococo taste in moribus et artibus.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)