Richard Cockle Lucas (1800-1883) was an eclectic artist, who worked for the architect John Nash and in the studio of the engraver John Flaxman, before joining the Royal Academy Schools around 1825- ' 30. As a sculptor he created small portraits but also large works, such as the statue of Samuel Johnson in Lichfield (1838) and that of R.C. Hoare in Salisbury Cathedral (1841). In the 1940s he worked in the British Museum to make copies of ancient sculptures and to build two scale models of the Parthenon. He became particularly famous for his wax models, making numerous portraits-cameos. In 1854 he built two Towers at Chilworth near Southampton, which he equipped as a home, studio, gallery and observatory. In the last thirty years of his life, Lucas put himself at the center of his art, conceiving dream works resulting from a mix of ideas, the unconscious, memory and occultism.
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“Over the next three decades, Lucas made a series of fifty albums and scrapbooks that he termed his 'book monument'. These books were a bricolage amassed from the fullest range of traces and fragments of his life and work: etchings, sketches, nature prints, thoughts and writings, assorted personalia, and also - through the window of photography - sculpture, architecture, and his own body. In this way, Lucas ’entire creative output was brought together and re-presented in seemingly random juxtapositions. The monumental books were repositories designed, said Lucas, to 'fall into hands who will protect them: there being much of my spirit within'. "
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This is a 50 "book monument" by Lucas, built exactly like an encyclopedic book that develops one or more mental stories of its visionary author. At the center of the volume the mythical story of Friar Bacon , or Roger Bacon (a sure alter ego of Lucas) born in 1215 in Ilchesternel Somerset; “Friar Bacon united profund science with perfect charlatism” are one of the first definitions given by Lucas of his character, who progressively, page after page, is enriched with new and mysterious connotations. His masterpiece is the Brazen Head, “a Triumph of Scientistic Skill”, which is illustrated in detail with tables, drawings, texts and photographs. Bacon progressively transforms himself into an alchemist, who invents gunpowder, and who with magic keys and other tricks manages to perform miraculous spells, all finely designed by Lucas. The story of Friar Bacon develops up to p.26, followed by a series of pages containing engravings, Some of my etchings, as they are well described on p.27v. The subjects are the most varied, taken from various series: Illustration's to Goldsmith's (1841) which portray deserted villages and countryside scenarios, all with neo-Gothic, romantic, languidly and darkly expressionist settings. It seems to see Goya and even more William Blake behind the symbolic and romantic inspiration of many tables, the most evocative certainly those illustrating the work of Tom Burns, Tam O'Shanter: A Tale of Brownyis and of Bogillis Fullis this Buke. The meaning of this black knight's journey is all contained in these few sentences: “… those who love traveled in darkness and in the tempest have had flashes of lightening for their guide , will remember the wind and fearful forms that have then been revealed… This is a fine etching transparent wierd and suggestive of the Supernatural ". & nbsp; Dozens of other plates follow, with different subjects, and a beautiful series of 11 Nature Prints.
Un monumental book, for an artist little known except by refined lovers of British symbolism and romanticism who can appreciate the design idea behind such a visionary and fantastic work, ahead of its time and even today, deeply unsettling.