Explore the Description of this artwork, Arthur Sullivan Memorial.
The bust of Sullivan is in bronze and stands on a pedestal of granite. A bronze figure of a woman weeping, her upper body nude and her lower body covered in drapery, leans, as if pressing her body in her grief, against the plinth. Pevsner describes the Art Deco style of the memorial as "in the Père Lachaise manner”. The plinth also carries lines from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1888 opera The Yeomen of the Guard: "Is life a boon? / If so, it must befall / That Death, whene'er he call, / Must call too soon." The lines are repeated in the bronze sculpture at the base, which depicts an open book of music, one of the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, and a mandolin. The pedestal is fronted by a semi-circular stone bearing Sullivan's name and dates of birth and death. The memorial is a Grade II listed structure.
mandolin Grade II listed structure Père Lachaise bronze Death granite drapery Comedy and Tragedy Pevsner Art Deco The Yeomen of the Guard bust