Focus on this artwork and discuss the Design and history.
The memorial stands inside St Andrew's Church in Mells. The Horner family had a long association with the church, which shares a wall with the manor house. The family has its own chapel (formerly the Lady Chapel) in the church which contains the tombs of several family members. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Horners funded extensive restoration work to the building. The memorial is a bronze equestrian statue, sculpted by Munnings, featuring Edward Horner as a young cavalry officer, bare-headed and seated on horseback with his sword and helmet attached to the saddle. The statue originally faced a stained-glass window featuring a Madonna and Child, creating the image of Horner riding towards the light. It stands on a Portland stone plinth designed by Lutyens, reminiscent of his Cenotaph and described by Lutyens' biographer Jane Ridley as "deceptively simple". The temporary memorial cross, which originally marked Horner's grave in France, inscribed SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF LIEUT. E. W. HORNER 18TH Q.M.O. HUSSARS / DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION NOV 21ST 1917", is set into the rear of the plinth while the Horner family's coat of arms is moulded into the front. The south (left) side bears the inscription EDWARD / DEAR SON OF JOHN HORNER AND FRANCES HIS WIFE WHO FELL IN ACTION AT NOYELLES NOV 21 1917 AGED TWENTY EIGHT, while the north (right) side reads HE HATH OUTSOARED THE SHADOW OF OUR NIGHT, from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonaïs (1821), an elegy for John Keats.According to Colin Amery, who chaired an exhibition of Lutyens' work in the 1980s, "some of [Lutyens'] finest memorials and tombs" are to be found in Mells, and Edward Horner's memorial is one of "Lutyens' best and most moving tributes to the waste of life in the Great War". In his public war memorials (particularly the Cenotaph and the various memorials based on it), Lutyens often used abstract and ecumenical designs, feeling that a different form of architecture was needed to convey the sense of sorrow at the enormous loss of life. Where he was commissioned to commemorate an individual, however, Lutyens was more open to conventional imagery, such as a statue of an officer. According to Tim Skelton, author of Lutyens and the Great War (2008), the Horner statue is "widely considered to be one of the most moving of personal memorials to the [First World War]". Lutyens' original design for Horner's memorial included pillars rising from the plinth to enclose the statue in a mausoleum, but this part of the proposal was not implemented. Munnings' mould for the statue is on display at the Munnings Art Museum, in his former home and studio in Dedham in Essex.The statue was installed in 1920. It cost over £1,000 and was by far the largest and most elaborate of the several war-related monuments in Mells. Frances Horner initially hoped for it to stand underneath the church's bell tower, but the suggestion prompted objections from villagers and the churchwardens, who were hesitant about having it in the church at all. Thus it was placed in the Horner chapel, on the north side of the chancel. In 2007 it was moved to the west end of the north aisle, as the church trustees wished to create space to allow more flexible use of the church.
Adonaïs Percy Bysshe Shelley John Keats churchwarden Frances Horner right coat of arms Dedham equestrian statue Munnings Art Museum First World War Madonna and Child Jane Ridley Mells mausoleum Frances Portland stone St Andrew's Church