Nude study of a seated female figure for the memorial to Mrs. Craik, Tewkesbury, ca. 1889

Henry Hugh Armstead RA (1828 - 1905)

RA Collection: Art

This drawing showing a seated female reading a book is a nude study for a draped figure on Armstead's funerary monument to Mrs Craik in Tewkesbury Abbey. In the central section of Mrs Craik's memorial is a plaque flanked by this figure on the right and another female figure holding a small mirror on the left. Mrs Craik (1826-1887), also known as Dinah Maria Mulock, was a novelist and poet whose best known publication was John Halifax, Gentleman (1856).

In 1889 Armstead exhibited the memorial (entitled 'Mrs Craik; for Tewkesbury') at the Royal Academy. Armstead's design for this, and other memorial monuments, owes much to Italian relief sculpture of the mid-15th to early 16th century. In particular, the artist based his designs on marble tabernacles of the period and, to a lesser extent, on the decorative forms found on tomb sculpture. Armstead would have been able to study such monuments on his visit to Italy in the early 1860s and also in London collections such as that of the South Kensington Museum (V&A).