John Gulliver: Hampstead ‘dragonfly' statue's new home in Kew
Friday, 28th April 2023 — By John Gulliver
The Dragonfly statue [Tom Merrifield Gallery]
I MUST have walked past it a thousand times but had often thought to myself, “Who is she?”
The life-size bronze sculpture of a ballet dancer on the corner wall of Nutley Terrace and Fitzjohn’s Avenue was a niche landmark of Hampstead.
I became more determined to find out now that it has gone, as the house it stood outside for decades is being redeveloped after a £4.3million sale.
There was nothing to be found online.
The base of the statue can still be seen on the corner of Nutley Terrace
But happily I can report that the “Dragonfly” statue is now resting on the banks of the river Thames – fulfilling a dying wish of its maker, one of the finest figurative sculptors of his generation.
Tom Merrifield – who sounds like he was very merry indeed – ran a studio and permanent gallery at the property for more than 25 years.
I never met him, but to do so was “to encounter an explosion with life, overspilling with enthusiasm and joy”, according to actor Helena Bonham-Carter.
He had enjoyed a distinguished career on the stage – a 1960s star of West Side Story at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the West End, and also danced in Cinderella at the Coliseum, as well as many other major roles on TV and in film.
His dancing style had been described as “electrically and sexually 200 per cent alive”.
After a leg injury, he became a full-time artist who specialised in capturing the line and movement of world-famous dancers.
The curator of an archive of his studio’s artworks told me there were actually two sculptures that sat outside the house – the first was called Juliet and the second, that stood there for the past decade, was Dragonfly.
Brett Steventon, a director of the Tom Merrifield Gallery, which can be found online, told me that Dragonfly had been promised in Tom’s will to an old friend.
After his death aged 88 in November 2021, it now sits, very fittingly, in a garden overlooking the Thames, near Kew.
Mr Merrifield with his commissioned sculpture of Diana [Tom Merrifield Gallery]
Mr Steventon said: “Tom was a ballet and contemporary dancer before he became a self- taught artist and as such a lot of sculptures were of ballet dancers.
“A lot of people have used Tom’s sculpture in Fitzjohn’s Avenue as a landmark
“The life-size Juliet was from the ballet Romeo and Juliet by [Sergei] Prokofiev.
“I don’t believe there was a specific dancer in mind when he created it. He just wanted to capture the grace and balance of a dancer in that role.
“Dragonfly was from a short ballet piece called Dragonfly made famous by Anna Pavlova, and Tom’s sculpture was an homage to Anna – who he thought was the finest of ballet dancers.
“His bedroom was covered in photos and drawings of her.”
Juliet [Tom Merrifield Gallery]
Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova lived in Ivy House, North End Road.
The Juliet sculpture was installed in the gardens there after Tom donated it to the London Jewish Cultural Centre (LJCC), which was based at Ivy House.
It stood there in the LJCC’s gardens for many years until they moved into their prestigious new JW3 building in Finchley Road.
