CHARLES SARGEANT JAGGER, A.R.A. (1885-1934)

Scandal was conceived in 1930 for Henry and Gwen Mond, the son and daughter-in-law of Lord Melchett. As well as being close friends to Jagger and his family, the Monds were his most significant patrons and supporters. Henry was an aspiring poet who would work for his father at the Imperial Chemical Industries, and Gwen was an artist who had come to London to study at the Slade School of Art with Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer.

Around 1930, the Monds refurbished their London home, Mulberry House, which was considered to have one of the most important Art Deco interiors in London. In the drawing room they created a humorous decorative scheme which alluded to the couple’s brief, scandalous ménage à trois with the author Gilbert Cannan. Alongside murals by Glyn Philpot, the bronze relief, Scandal, was displayed over the mantelpiece, and above the Melchett fire basket, also by Jagger. Scandal shows the embracing couple standing naked before gossiping old ladies, some of whom were modelled by members of their circle of friends. Although light-hearted and playful, the shallow modelling of the relief and the composition of the figures is bold and skilful, demonstrating an understanding and influence of Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs.

The relief remained in Gwen Mond’s ownership until 1980, and in 2003 was sold at Christie’s, New York, where it was bought for the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The present lot is the only known additional cast of this relief: it was made under the instructions of Evelyn Clarke, Jagger’s widow, in 1939, for her home in the United States where she moved in 1937. She passed it to her daughter Gillian Jagger, with whom it remained until it was sold at auction in 2007.