Jeckyll & Co has dated this piece to the Victorian era.
This has been in my personal collection for about twenty years. Internet surfing a few months after acquiring it came across 'Nottinghamshire History' nottshistory.org.uk.
The house referred to is Wallingwells, home of Sir Thomas White at the time, High Sherriff of Nottingham whose a forebears were in turn well-connected in political and legal circles.
The complete entry is available online, here is the extract pertaning to the heron bronze:
"I may mention one which appears amongst a collection of stuffed birds which occupies a portion of one of the corridors. It is a heron round whose neck an eel is coiled. The bird with the eel still alive was picked up from the shores of the lake near the house, and his death was readily accounted for. The heron had pierced the head of the eel with his long bill, and the snake-fish round his enemy’s neck, Locked in stiff rings of adamantine coil, strangled the bird who perished with his prey. The incident is a remarkable one, and Lady Maitland, one of Sir Thomas White’s daughters, has reproduced it in bronze. This admirable model stands on the dining room mantelpiece. Lady Maitland, besides being a clever and artistic worker in bronze, as several objects in different parts of the house testify, is an equally clever worker in marble, and perhaps the best specimen of her art is a small sculptured bust of her father."
Mounted on a rouge marble and slate base, height overall 28cm
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Condition: Some minor surface tarnishing, rouge marble with cracked edge, some nibbles to the edges of the slate base.
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Jeckyll & Co has dated this piece to the Victorian era.
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Lady Fanny Maitland (English Fl. 1870s): A Unique English Bronze of an Eel and Heron in Mortal Combat
