A new bronze sculpture of the English Romantic poet John Keats will be unveiled next week, close to his birthplace in Moorgate in the City of London.
The sculpture by British artist Martin Jennings will be revealed at midday on 31 October, on what would have been Keats’s 229th birthday. Keats was the son of an ostler at a City inn and livery stable called The Swan and Hoop, which stood just south of the modern-day Moorgate station.
Jennings’ sculpture is a bronze cast of an enlarged life mask of Keats, mounted on a plinth above a slate base inscribed with words from Keats’ Ode on Indolence. A plaster cast of the life mask – which was taken when Keats was 21, and is owned by Keats House in Hampstead – was digitally scanned for an enlarged 3D print, which provided the form for the sculpture.
“There couldn’t be a closer portrait of Keats than the mask of him that was taken during his lifetime, which I have enlarged and cast in bronze,” said Jennings. “This apparently dreaming head seems apt for his birthplace, while also illustrating the state of mind he sought for the writing of poetry.”
Jennings’ previous sculptures include those of John Betjeman at St Pancras station, George Orwell outside the BBC Broadcasting House and Philip Larkin at Hull Paragon railway station. “I hope that, in a busy thoroughfare, this quiet sculpture will give people a moment’s pause, while also drawing them back to the works of one of our greatest writers,” added the artist.
Despite the fact that Keats died of tuberculosis aged just 25, he is considered one of the most influential English poets.
The sculpture was funded by former City of London Corporation alderman, Bob Hall, who was previously patron of Nigel Boonham’s sculpture of John Donne, installed outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Keats and Donne “were born in and worked in the City of London and it is important to commemorate each of these outstanding poets by sculptures in the public realm in the city of their birth, for all to see”, said Hall. The artworks “also acknowledge their groundbreaking poetry, which demonstrates the extraordinary breadth and richness of the English language.”
The arrival of the Elizabeth line tube has meant increased footfall to the area. “I hope that workers, visitors and residents travelling through Moorgate will enjoy engaging with this beautiful sculpture of Keats,” said Munsur Ali, chairman of the Culture, heritage and libraries committee at the City of London Corporation, the governing body of the Square Mile.
The sculpture’s inscription comes from the fifth stanza of Ode on Indolence:
My sleep had been embroider’d with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o’er
With flowers