A model performance

Back in September, I blogged about my catalogue project The English Choral Tradition. Part II: The Victorians and beyond is now available and I thought I’d highlight one item in it.

This little card (it measures only 62 × 99 mm; I’ve enlarged it here so you can see the performers) shows what looks like a huge choir and orchestra, a very Victorian kind of affair. However, it turns out the photograph, which is pasted to the printed card, doesn’t actually show real people at all. Amazingly, it’s in fact a model originally made in 1862 by the Scottish sculptor William Beattie (c.1802–1867; no relation as far as I’m aware) to advertise the Handel Festival of that year.  ‘The number of figures is somewhat under 4000, but they are so well arranged that they scarcely appear half so many.  There are ten on every eight inches square …’ (Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 3 May 1862).  Presumably it was impractical to photograph the actual performers and so the photographers chose the model instead.  Beattie’s ‘ingenious and picturesque model’ remained in situ for many years, but was lost in the Crystal Palace fire of 1936.

For more details, see the catalogue. And Part I: The Long Eighteenth Century is available here.