Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 48

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48

A coin in three
fountains
At some point most people
face the problem of what to
buy for the person who has
everything. This no doubt
taxed the minds of Prince
Wilhelm and Princess Augusta
of Prussia when they came to
visit Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert in 1851. They came in
May, the month of Victoria’s
thirty-second birthday and
wanted to make a good
impression because they had
their eye on Princess Vicky, the
eldest child of Victoria and
Albert as a suitable match for
their son Friedrich.
The Prince and Princess
no doubt considered all the
usual things – a nice vase, an
oil painting – after all there
was plenty of wall space
in Victoria’s new marine
residence of Osborne. In
the end they settled upon
something for the garden and
ordered a fountain.
As it happened a very
superior fountain already
held centre stage on the lower
terrace at Osborne. Situated
outside the Council Room
the feature was surrounded
by eight bronze infants riding
astride monsters guarding
the centrepiece. It was this
central figure that held the
eye - a beautiful, sylph-like,
naked bronze woman called

By Jan Toms
Andromeda.
The legend states that
Andromeda had a pushy
mother who boasted that
she and her daughter were
prettier than the offspring of
the sea-god Poseidon. It was
a bad move and in order to
placate the king of the sea,
Andromeda’s father chained
her to a rock preparatory to
sacrificing her. Fortunately,
along came Perseus who was
the son of Zeus, arriving in
the nick of time to rescue
Andromeda from a fate – well,
not exactly worse than death –
more death itself.
It was Prince Albert who
designed the layout of the
Osborne gardens along with
one of his favourite artists,
Ludwig Gruner. The figure of
Andromeda was sculpted by
another favoured artist, John
Bell while a third, William
Theed created the infants.
This was a good time for
sculptors and painters as the
royal couple ordered more and
more objets d’art for their new
home.
Some of us might think twice
about displaying a naked
woman in shackles outside
the front room window but
the Victorians were not shy.

Andromeda stood on a rock
gazing into the metallic basin,
raised on a red granite plinth.
The gentle tinkling of water
suggested mountain waterfalls
and bubbling brooks.
Perhaps inspired by the
Prussian gift, Albert decided
that yet another fountain was
needed and he ordered one
for his wife for Christmas
1852. There was no mistaking
the message. This time the
central figure, unusually cast
in zinc and electro- plated with
bronze, was of Venus resting
one foot on the helmet of the
goddess Minerva and wearing
the diadem of the goddess
Juno. The whole stood on
a red marble base. As with
Andromeda, the picture tells
a story in this case recalling
how the Trojan Prince Paris
when asked to judge who was
the most beautiful of the three
women, chose Venus, being the
undisputed goddess of bloom
and beauty and the protector
of gardens. This, no doubt,
was Albert’s tribute to his own
Eve and their Garden of Eden.
The new gift was erected on
the upper terrace.
The fountain presented by the
Prussians features two bronze
figures of a boy and a goose,
made by the firm of Geiss of
Berlin while the basin was the

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