Lady Feodara Gleichen

I WONDER if they ever made a biopic of the life of Lady Feodora Gleichen – usual pronunciation – who would play the lead role?

She’d probably retold as mildy tomboyish, impatient young countess; Lily James perhaps, maybe Emma Watson.

The script could be romanticised by having her as the impatient nobility just wanting to do a proper job like everybody else, anxious to give something back to the people.

In reality she was probably as posh as anybody else with a family tree leading to Queen Victoria, and ‘Feo’, as she was known by relatives, came to live in St James’s Palace.

She did study at the Slade School of Art though and there weren’t a whole lot of female sculptors in the Victorian age forging ahead with a different story.

Sculpture in Hyde Park

It would perhaps probably have been easier to tot gin in the palace.

And she is credited with several notable pieces of work including a statue of Florence Nightingale in Derbyshrie and one of Queen Victoria – her father’s aunt – herself.

The latter stands in  Montreal.

She died from appendicitis in the 1920s, just 60, but her work lives on.

And here in Westminster we find her work in a peaceful corner of Hyde Park, where her bronze sculpture of Diana,

The Huntress, has stood among the lily pads there since 1906.

Sadly they had to turn the fountain it sits on off a few years ago, and all sorts of rot is setting in.

Good news, though: The city council’s planners last week approved delicate repair work to what is now a Grade II-listed artwork.

It’s a lovely spot in the park.