1890 this was received as a "fresh reading of the subject, and instead of the customary elf-like or voluptuous woman [Bates] has shown a tender, very gentle and happy maiden, whose features are charming". In this work Bates experimented with polychromy and mixed materials, making it self-consciously into a paradigmatic example of his artistic priorities. The box she holds is an actual decorative casket made of ivory and gilt bronze and elaborately carved with scenes from the Pandora legend. It was exhibited in 1890 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and purchased within the following year for the Chantrey Bequest. The gallery label at the Tate said in 2010, "Bates shows the moment of hesitation before Pandora opens the forbidden box. He suggests Pandora's mood of consideration and temptation while also recognising the inevitable fulfilment of the myth. This way he acknowledges the compulsion of character, and frailty of the human spirit." His creation of the marble altar front for the Holy Trinity church in Sloane Street, London was another piece he created in 1890. In the year of his death 1899, Bates finished Mors Janua Vitae (death, gateway of life), now at Walker Art Gallery Liverpool. In 2007 it has been described as "bizarre polychrome symbolist fantasy". One of his final commissions was a large bronze statue of Queen Victoria unveiled in Albert Square in Dundee shortly after his death. Personal life and death Bates died in poverty, having drained his finances "by his insistence on financing the Calcutta statue of Lord Roberts from his own pocket." Hedied on 30 January 1899 at his residence, 10 Hall Road, St. John's Wood, N.W. He was buried at Stevenage on 4 February. Assessment The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica wrote: "The portrait-busts of Harry Bates are good pieces of realism: strong, yet delicate in technique, and excellent in character. His statues have a picturesqueness in which the refinement of the sculptor is always felt. Among the chief of these are the fanciful Maharaja of Mysore, somewhat overladen with ornament, and the colossal equestrian statue of Lord Roberts (1896) upon its important pedestal, girdled with a frieze of figures, now set up in Calcutta, and a statue of Queen Victoria for Dundee. But perhaps his masterpiece—in which his interest in polychromy and mixed materials in a format that fused decorative art and sculpture achieved its fullest realization—was an allegorical presentment of Love and Life,