Thomas Woolner considered this plaster relief of England’s poet laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson to be the best portrait roundel he’d made, though Tennyson’s wife requested he shorten the poet’s nose. Thomas Woolner was the only sculptor in the idealistic boy band called the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. A posse of young poets and painters, The Brotherhood was obsessed with Lord Alfred Tennyson’s classical verses. Woolner was 24 when he first met his hero, and while the poet was 16 years his senior, Woolner and Tennyson became good friends.
