Footnote 12 The 3D reconstruction is essential for testing hypotheses and to contextualize artifacts, buildings, places, the flow of pedestrians and above all casting light on relations between the various elements of the cityscape. With regard to this question, it is helpful to make use of the 3D visualization of the urban setting where the fountain was intended to be erected. It is also important to consider the role of Æthelflæd's fountain along with the built environment surrounding it. To address these questions, it is necessary to understand the historical figure represented by the statuette, as well as the factors that prompted Edith Gittins to make such a bequest. Why did a middle-class woman in the Edwardian age bequeath a substantial share of her estate to a monument commemorating an Anglo-Saxon female ruler? Why did she choose High Street as the site for the monument? Would the monument have played a more effective role in promoting the memory of the Anglo-Saxon past had it been erected in the place for which it was intended? Would the statuette of the Lady of the Mercians have given rise to reflection on the role of women in public life and civic identity had its location been the intended one?
This study is intended to fill this gap and to contextualize the bequest and to address a number of questions. As a result of art's new moral status, reformers began to advocate art as a potentially active and democratic force for making nature, beauty, and the morality of expressive labor available in the industrial city.’ Footnote 10Įdith Gittins’ commitment to the cause of women's suffrage, her activity in both women's and mixed associations, as well as the bequest of a substantial sum for the erection of a public drinking fountain dedicated to Æthelflæd, have attracted considerable interest in recent years, Footnote 11 although the cultural, social and gender implications of the bequest have not hitherto received sufficient attention. As noted by Amy Woodson-Boulton, ‘in the middle of the nineteenth century, through a variety of factors…art became connected to morality and even to Protestant religiosity. Footnote 8 Her bequest to Leicester and the civic engagement that it embodies reflected the cultural and philanthropic climate Footnote 9 that framed her existence, also characterized by her appreciation of the role of art in society. The choice of Edith Gittins, firmly placed in the contemporary cultural tradition that identified the roots of the English people in the Anglo-Saxon period, brought together a number of needs that were increasingly important in the Victorian era with the rise of industrialization Footnote 6 and the demand for recognition of the role of women in the public sphere, Footnote 7 which radical Unitarians, such as Edith, had been advocating for some time.
The statuette Footnote 5 that surmounted it was intended also to celebrate the historic roots of Leicester, and in particular the period of Anglo-Saxon rule. The purpose of the Leicester fountain was not solely to provide an indispensable resource.
FOUNTAIN IN LUMION PRO SERIES
However, connections can be made with other cities in the United Kingdom, not just because numerous instances are to be found of charitable works promoted by women philanthropists in the late Victorian and Edwardian era, Footnote 3 but also because the bequest for a public fountain in Leicester was one of a series of initiatives at national level taken by philanthropic movements spanning half a century for the construction of public drinking fountains, especially for the less privileged members of society. Footnote 2 The urban setting that was intended to be the site of the monument was Leicester, where Edith Gittins, artist and drawing teacher, had been born and spent her entire life. This case of female patronage, providing for the statuette and fountain to be erected in a central space (High Street) has implications both for women's rights Footnote 1 and for the use of the past for the construction of civic identity. This fountain, a bequest from Miss Edith Gittins to Leicester, however, was not erected in High Street where she had originally intended, a location that would have enabled it to perform a more complex and political role than in Victoria Park. On 3 August 1922, the citizens of Leicester crowded into Victoria Park for the unveiling of the ‘Ethelfloeda Fountain’, a drinking fountain surmounted by a statuette dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon Lady of the Mercians who had ruled a thousand years earlier.
0 kommentar(er)
