Everyone’s familiar with the large four bronze Lions at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. They are an iconic and much-loved London sight.
Their job is to guard the statue of Admiral Nelson who gave his life to win the battle of Trafalgar. Close up they are majestic. You can almost feel them roar their disapproval if you get too close.
Lions of course are a symbol of this country – their bravery and sense of fortitude, something we Brits pride ourselves on. And when you discover that the Lions were cast of French and Spanish ships defeated in the naval battle – well, it would make any red-blooded Englishman well up with tears of pride. And the legend that if Big Ben ever strikes 13 times by mistake, the lions will get up and dance around the column, makes everyone smile.
But you know what I’m going to say don’t you.? The story behind these famous lions is not so impressive.
Even though the plan was always to include lion sculptures at the base of the column, because of internal wrangling in various planning committees over cost, it took over 12 years for work on the lions to even start.
And the choice of sculptor? That was controversial too. Instead of putting it out to tender as recommended by the Board of Works, Edwin Landseer was chosen for the job. Why? Because he was famed for his portrait work of Queen Victoria. Figures.
Okay, he also drew pretty pictures of animals, but as a sculptor, he was largely untested. The other problem, was that he was old and infirm and more delays blighted the project, meaning that the statues weren’t finally unveiled (to a mixed receptions it’s got to be said) until 1867 – twenty-eight years after they should have been.
But the best bit of this story is this.
Landseer had never seen a lion in real life before, so he persuaded London Zoo to provide him with a dead lion to take home to copy from. Imagine when he took that home!
The only trouble was, that Landseer was a notoriously slow worker and took ages to complete sketching. So long in fact, that the lion began to decompose, and by the time he got to sketching the beasts’ paws, they had more or less disintegrated. So, he had to get creative, and sketched his house cats’ paws instead, and included them in the final design.
Not that the many tourists flocking around the lions on a sunny day care too much, but it’s a funny story all the same.