Charles Sargeant Jagger

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Charles Sargeant Jagger
Detail from Jagger's Royal Artillery Memorial
Born	17 December 1885 Kilnhurst, Rotherham, Yorkshire, UK
Died	16 November 1934 London, UK
Nationality	British
Field	sculpture, relief
Training	Sheffield School of Art, Royal College of Art
Works	Royal Artillery Memorial, London
Patrons	Imperial War Graves Commission
Influenced by	New Sculpture
Awards	Prix de Rome, Military Cross

Charles Sargeant Jagger MC (1885-1934) was a British sculptor who, following active service in the First World War, sculpted many works on the theme of war. He is best known for his war memorials, especially the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner and the Great Western Railway War Memorial in Paddington Railway Station, both of which are in London, and he also designed several other monuments around Britain and other parts of the world.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Military service 3 Work as a sculptor 4 Selected works 5 Image gallery 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Biography

Charles Jagger was born in Kilnhurst, near Rotherham in Yorkshire in 1885. He was the son of a colliery manager, and was educated at Sheffield Grammar School. At the age of 14 he became an apprentice metal engraver with the Sheffield firm Mappin and Webb^[1].

He studied at the Sheffield School of Art before moving to London to study sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1908–11) under Edouard Lanteri. Jagger worked as Lanteri's assistant, and also as instructor in modelling at the Lambeth School of Art. He counted among his friends William Reid Dick and William McMillan^[1]. His early works dealt with classical and literary themes and were influenced by the New Sculpture movement in the focus on medievalism and on surface qualities.^[2] His student work won him a travelling scholarship that made it possible for him to spend several months in Rome and Venice. In 1914 he won the Prix de Rome.^[3]

[edit] Military service

When war broke out in 1914, Jagger gave up the Prix de Rome to join the army. At first, Jagger joined the Artists' Rifles, and in 1915 he was commissioned in the Worcestershire Regiment. Jagger served in Gallipoli and on the Western Front, and was wounded three times. He was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.

[edit] Work as a sculptor

Jagger's style tended towards realism, especially his portrayal of soldiers. The fashion at the time was for idealism and modernism in sculpture, but Jagger's figures were rugged and workman-like, earning him a reputation for 'realist' sculpture^[4]. Although Jagger was commissioned as a sculptor of a variety of monuments, it is for his war memorials that he is chiefly remembered.

Whilst convalescing from war wounds in 1919, he began work on No Man's Land, a low relief which is today is part of the Tate Collection.^[5] It depicts a "listening post", a technique of trench warfare in which a soldier would hide among the corpses, broken stretchers and barbed wire of No Man's Land, in order to listen for the enemy.

His Royal Artillery Memorial (1925) at Hyde Park Corner in London is one of his best-known works. It features a giant sculpture of a howitzer surrounded by four bronze soldiers and stone relief scenes, and is dedicated to casualties in the British Royal Regiment of Artillery in World War I^[1]. When Jagger was commissioned to work on the Royal Artillery Memorial, he remarked to the Daily Express the "experience in the trenches persuaded me of the necessity for frankness and truth"^[4].

Monumental works of the period used symbolic figures rather than actual depictions of soldiers. Furthermore, during the war years, a government edict had banned images of dead British soldiers. Jagger defied both these conventions by creating realistic bronze figures of three standing soldiers and the body of a dead soldier laid out and shrouded by a greatcoat^[4].

Jagger was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1926.

After the demand for war memorials had subsided, Jagger continued to receive important commissions and his works were increasingly influenced by Art Deco. Some of his works include allegorical stone figures at Imperial Chemical House, London (1928) and The Kelham Rood (1929).

In 1931 Jagger was commissioned by architect Edwin Lutyens to design a sculpture of Christ the King for the designs for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The sculpture did not meet with the approval of the cathedral authorities and was never executed. A model of Lutyens' unrealised building is displayed in the Walker Art Gallery ^[6][7]. Jagger was also commissioned to provide sculptures of elephants and imperial lions for Lutyens' government buildings in New Delhi, India^[1][8].

Jagger produced many smaller works, such as busts, statuettes, reliefs, and exhibited them at the Royal Academy 1913-35, and in the Glasgow Empire Exhibition in 1938^[1].

Charles Jagger died in 1934.

A retrospective exhibition of Jagger's work was held in 1985-6 at the Imperial War Museum, with the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield^[1].

[edit] Selected works

Some of Jagger's major commissions include the following^[1]:

London, United Kingdom
Work	Date	Image	Description	Location	Notes
No Man's Land	1919–20		Bronze relief of a soldier hiding among the dead bodies, broken stretchers and barbed wire of No Man's Land at 'listening post'.	Victoria & Albert Museum	Original plaster had a verse: "O, little mighty band that stood for England That with our bodies for a living shield Guarded her slow awakening" (removed in the bronze). On loan from the Tate Collection [1]
Great Western Railway War Memorial	1922		Bronze statue of a soldier reading a letter from home	Platform 1, Paddington Station
Royal Artillery Memorial	1925		Four bronze figures on Portland stone plinth	Hyde Park Corner
Ernest Henry Shackleton			Bronze figure mounted in wall alcove	Royal Geographical Society
The Builder, Marine Transport, Agriculture and Chemistry	1928		Portland stone figure groups on 5th floor balustrade	Imperial Chemical House, Millbank
St.George and Britannia	1928		Portland stone figures on entrance gate	Thames House, Millbank
The Kelham Rood	1929		Bronze Crucifixion triptych group of Christ, Mary and Mary Magdalen	St John the Divine, Kennington	Originally sculpted for the chapel at Kelham Hall, Nottinghamshire
United Kingdom outside London
Work	Date	Image	Description	Location	Notes
Torfrida	c.1911			Clifton Park Museum, Rotherham
Guildhall Square Cenotaph	1921		Two stone statues of machine gunners	Guildhall Square, Portsmouth	[2]
Sculpture of a Sentry	1921		Bronze soldier wearing greatcoat and helmet, holding a bayonet	Watts Warehouse (now the Britannia Hotel), Manchester	A maquette of the Manchester Sentry can also be seen at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Bedford War Memorial	1921		Stone figure of a knight vanquishing a dragon	Bedford	The monument stands on the Embankment opposite Rothsay Gardens[9]
Hoylake and West Kirby War Memorial	1922		Two 3m bronze figures against an 11.5m granite obelisk - hooded woman and infantry soldier holding a bayonet rifle	Grange Hill, Hoylake, Merseyside	The soldier's bayonet has been removed due to previous vandalism, but is reinstated annually for the Armistice Day Memorial Service. [10]
Brimington War Memorial	1921		Marble Britannia figure, winged helmet, sword and shield; shield decorated with lion, scales and wreath	Church of St Michael and All Angels Brimington, Derbyshire	The figure originally stood on a plinth which was later stolen [11]
Monument to Charles Pelham, Lord Worsley	1914		Marble relief of Lord Worsley kneeling at prayer	All Saints Church, Brocklesby, Lincolnshire	Monument is in the 17th century style to complement the adjacent Pelham family tomb of 1629[12][13]
Christ the King	1931		Maquette for Lutyens' model of his proposal for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral	Liverpool	Commissioned by Sir Edwin Lutyens and intended for the top of the west front; not executed, but several posthumous metal casts exist[14]. Lutyens' model is at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Worldwide
Work	Date	Image	Description	Location	Notes
Anglo-Belgian Memorial	1923			Brussels, Belgium	Casts of the reliefs are held at the Imperial War Museum, London
British Memorial, Nieuwpoort	1928		Three stone lions standing guard around a cenotaph	Nieuwpoort, Belgium	Memorial commemorates 566 soldiers from the Antwerp Expedition of October 1914 and subsequent battles in the area in July 1917[15].
Cambrai Memorial	1928		Two stone reliefs depicting soldiers fighting and carrying the wounded in the trenches	Louverval Military Cemetery, Cambrai, France	Memorial commemorates over 7000 servicemen of the United Kingdom and South Africa who died in the Battle of Cambrai in November and December 1917[16]
Port Tewfik Memorial	1926			Originally at Port Tewfik (or Port Taufiq), Suez Canal, Egypt	Jagger's work was destroyed in the Israeli-Egyptian fighting (date uncertain); the memorial was relocated to the Heliopolis War Cemetery[17].
Shrine of Remembrance			Two bronze soldiers - Driver holding a horse bridle, and British infantry soldier standing guard with rifle and bayonet.	Melbourne, Australia	The "Wipers" figure is a re-casting of the soldier from the Hoylake and West Kirby memorial, and the "Driver" is a re-casting from the Royal Artillery Memorial in London[18].
Viceroy's House and the Jaipur Column	1929		Mughal-style Elephants in the outer walls; bas-reliefs on the Jaipur Column	New Delhi, India	Commissioned by Sir Edwin Lutyens[19]

[edit] Image gallery

Detail from the Royal Artillery Memorial	Detail from the Royal Artillery Memorial	Statue of Shackleton at the Royal Geographical Society	"The Sentry" in Watts Warehouse, Manchester
The Kelham Rood	GWR War Memorial	St. George figure Thames House, London	Britannia figure on Thames House, London
"Marine Transport" on Imperial Chemical House	"the Sower" on Imperial Chemical House	"Chemistry" on Imperial Chemical House	"the Builder" on Imperial Chemical House

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

N Penny, English Sculpture and the First World War, pp36-42, Oxford Art Journal, November 1981.

ed. Ann Compton, Charles Sargeant Jagger: War and Peace Sculpture, Imperial War Museum, 1985. (exhibition catalogue) ISBN 0901627313

Ann Compton, The Sculpture of Charles Sargeant Jagger, Ashgate Publishing, 1985. ISBN 0853318646

[edit] External links

• Great Western Railway War Memorial - York University Institute of Railway Studies and Transport History
• Charles Sargeant Jagger. Sculptor (1885-1934) - extensive summary of works on the National Archives wiki
• Brits Oorlogsmonument/Monument britannique - the Jagger's Brussels Monument (Dutch language)
• No Man's Land in the Tate Collection (with biography)

Persondata
NAME	Jagger, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Jagger, Charles Sargeant
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH	30 July 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kilnhurst, United Kingdom
DATE OF DEATH	1934
PLACE OF DEATH	London, United Kingdom