Full-Scale Gesso Model for 'Physical Energy'

Sculpture Height (Total): 442 cm
Sculpture height: 391 cm
Sculpture width: 410 cm
Sculpture depth: 176 cm

Full-Scale Gesso Model for 'Physical Energy' from which the bronze casts were taken: showing a male nude rider on horseback (inspired by the Parthenon)

G.F.Watts

Physical Energy, 1994-1904

Full-scale gesso grosso model

Watts said that Physical Energy represented 'the restless physical impulse to seek the still unachieved'. He intended it to suggest 'man as he ought to be - part of creation, of cosmos in fact, hist great limbs.. akin to the rocks and the roots, and this head.. as the sun'.

Watts worked on this model in section and used gesso gross, a mixture of plater, flue and chopped hemp or tow. This allowed it to be modelled when it was soft and carved when it was dry. From the model three casts were made in bronze. One of these in location in Kensington Gardens in London, one is in the National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare, and the other is at the Rhodes Memorial, overlooking Cape Town in South Africa.