James Havard Thomas, “Thysis”, 1912, Tate Britain Museum, London
James Havard Thomas trained in Paris and then in 1889 moved to Italy, where he lived for seventeen years. In 1905 he sent a male nude ‘Lycidas’ to the Royal Academy, where its rejection caused a scandal. In 1912 Havard Thomas returned to the theme with ‘Thyrsis’. The title comes from the poem of 1866 by Matthew Arnold of that name, and Arnold’s poem had itself been based on Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ written in 1637.
Thyrsis was an ancient Greek shepherd. Arnold chose to commemorate in his poem a friend from Oxford as this pastoral character. The shepherd’s pipe was for Arnold a symbol of his own youth, and Havard Thomas’s figure itself commemorates Italy and classical art. This bronze was cast in 1948, from the original in wax.