In 1887 Gilbert sculpted the Queen Victoria Jubilee Memorial, which is now in the Great Hall at Winchester Castle. He exhibited the full-sized plaster at the Royal Academy a year later. The present work is a reduction of the figure of Victory, which stands on the royal orb, held by Queen Victoria, in the monument.

Unfortunately for Gilbert, the original model of Victory was broken off and stolen from the monument when it was first unveiled at Winchester Town Hall. The damage was perceived as a protest, not against the Queen or Gilbert, but rather against William Ingham Whitaker, who had funded the monument and was unpopular with the public at the time. Fortunately, the figure was recovered and restored by Gilbert and the monument was eventually moved from the Town Hall to the Great Hall at Winchester castle, where it remains to this day.

The reduction of Victory was cast in several sizes, the present being the smallest and most popular. Gilbert gave examples of the model to a number of friends, including John Singer Sargent, Seymour Lucas, Henry Irving and Mark Senior. Other casts of Gilbert's Victory are part of the collections of the Royal Academy of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum as well as the Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the Leeds City Art Gallery.

...

Download pdf for full cataloguing of this artwork