Sigismund Goetze

Sigismund Christian Hubert Goetze (24 October 1866 – 24 October 1939) was an English painter and philanthropist, born in London.

Early life Goetze was the son of Rosina Hariet (née Bentley; d. 1877) and James D. Goetze (d. 1911). His sister Violet married the politician Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1885 and from 1888 was exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy and at the Paris Salon.

In 1907 he and his wife bought Grove House, a villa in Regent's Park built by Decimus Burton, at auction. He decorated the music room with scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and held philanthropic activities in the garden. He is said to have had a particular fondness for Regent's Park and set aside a sum of money, the Constance Fund, to enable gifts of sculpture to parks in London as a memorial to his wife in the event of her death.

In 1898 he painted a mural for the Royal Exchange, London The Crown offered to Richard III at Baynard’s Castle.

Empire murals Britannia pacificatrix, one of a series of murals that hang on the first floor at the top the grand staircase in the Foreign Office. The series of murals depict the "origin, education, development, expansion and triumph of the British Empire, leading up to the Covenant of the League of Nations". It took Goetze seven years to complete the murals and he painted them at his own expense throughout the First World War. They were presented to the Foreign Office in 1921.

Between 1912 and 1921, Goetze painted a mural scheme for the Foreign Office depicting the Origin, education, development, expansion and triumph of the British Empire. Goetze had offered to create the works free of charge. They were executed in the spirit fresco technique on canvas and then attached to the walls. Goetze undertook a European tour to study frescoes in France and elsewhere in preparation. He was especially influenced by the work of Puvis de Chavannes and Frederic Leighton.

Philanthropy

In 1932 Goetze and Constance donated the eastern gates for the gardens of the Inner Circle of Regent's Park, in 1938 they donated the southern or jubilee gates to be installed for the re-opening of the gardens as Queen Mary's Gardens in 1939.

Following the death of his friend, sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert, in 1934 Goetze assisted the National Art Collections Fund in acquiring Gilbert's collection and dispersing it to various public collections. and A Mighty Hunter (1913), which were probably commissioned for Grove House.

Following his death in 1939, Constance made a number of donations to various museums including: a 15th-century manuscript of Pseudo-Augustine, now in the Henry Davis Collection at the British Library and a series of religious sculptures to the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1950 the Triton and Dryads fountain, designed by William McMillan in 1936, was at last installed in Queen Mary's Gardens with an inscription commemorating Goetze as a "Painter[,] Lover of the Arts and Benefactor of this Park". In 1951 the Constance Fund commissioned the Diana in the Trees Fountain in Green Park and its final commission, in 1963, was the Joy of Life fountain in Hyde Park.