Nicholas Hawksmoor and Giles Bennett - busts at the Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford.

Updated 8 Feb. 2021.

The Portrait Sculpture in The Codrington Library. 

at All Souls College, Oxford University.

Part 28.

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661 - 1736).

Bronzed Plaster Bust.

Here attributed to Louis Francois Roubiliac.

(Currently with no documentary evidence).


With grateful thanks to Gaye Morgan, Chief Librarian and Conservator at the Codrington, All Souls Oxford for making this entry possible.

It appears that there is another bust - perhaps by the same hand and inscribed Giles Bennett, / Manciple  1736 that was in The Buttery at All Souls in 1925, but I have not yet had the opportunity to closely inspect it on my visits (see below).

Mrs Webb suggests that they were both made by Henry Cheere in about 1736.

see Poole vol II, 1925.

https://archive.org/stream/b22652061_0002#page/190/mode/2up

I say Roubiliac at least for the Hawksmoor bust.

For refs to manciple Giles Bennett see -

 https://archive.org/stream/catalogueofarchi00mart#page/n7/mode/2up

Both of these busts are noted as at All Souls (Bennett in the Buttery) in A History of the University of Oxford Including the Lives of the Founders ...  By Alexander Chalmers pub.1810. 

The Bust of Giles Bennett in the Buttery at All Souls, Oxford.

________________________________

The Plaster bust of  Nicholas Hawksmoor.

All Souls College, Oxford.

Photographs taken by the Author.

_______________

The Roubiliac  Hawksmoor and Wither Busts Compared.

......................

The William Wither Monument.

Monument to William Wither. d.1732.

Wootton St Lawrence Church, Hampshire.

Bust with very similar drapery to that on the bust of Hawksmoor .

The church was rebuilt in 1863.

see Roubiliac and Cheere .... Malcolm Baker in the Journal of the Church Monuments Society Vol X 1995.

_______________________________









Nicholas Hawksmoor.

Bronze .

1962

546 mm wide.

A modern cast taken from the original plaster at All Souls, Oxford.

Cast by the Morris Singer Foundry.

Given to the NPG by the Warden and Fellows of All Souls in 1962.

Image Courtesy National Portrait Gallery.

If it were up to me I would replace the socle with a smaller and less clumsy and insensitive version as in the black and white photograph above.

__________________

Shown here for comparison.

Two busts which have been attributed to Henry Cheere but are probably by Roubiliac.

Here again the two busts use the same drapery.

The reuse of the drapery in further busts using some sort of pointing machine seems to be a practised that was only used by Roubiliac.

..................

 Thomas Missing.

Marble Bust on the Monument.

Probably Louis Francois Roubiliac.

Holy Rood Church,  Crofton and Stubbington, Hampshire.

Formerly Crofton.

1738.

Thomas Missing built the south transept in 1725 to accommodate his family pews and mausoleum. He was MP for Southampton and the merchant responsible for victualling Gibraltar. He was presumably responsible for the shaped gable and segmental windows to the south transept shown in a mid C19 illustration in the National Monuments Record.

Noted in the London Magazine of November, 1738.

Thomas Missing, a Portsmouth merchant whose parentage has not been ascertained, was made a freeman and alderman there in January 1711. 

In March 1715 he obtained a lucrative contract for victualling the garrison at Gibraltar, which he held till his death. Five years later he was given similar contracts for troops in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Returned, presumably as a Whig, for Southampton in 1722, he was defeated in 1727. 

In September 1728 he proposed to the board of Trade that ‘as he hath a correspondence that way and hath with reputation carried over a great many to America’, he should be engaged to transport yearly a number of Protestant Palatines to Carolina ‘and victual them till they can support themselves’.3 

He died 6 July 1733.

Whilst the link is tenuous, the son of Thomas Missing another Thomas, was married to Anne Streatfield daughter of Henry Streatfield whose bust by Roubiliac is in the Mausoleum at Chiddingstone in Kent.

see - http://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/07/jonathan-tyers-and-his-bust-by-roubiliac.html

____________

The Gounter Nicoll Monument, Racton, Sussex.

The 18c memorial inscription reads

Here be the Remains  /  Of the Honourable Sr. CHARLES GOUNTER NICOLL  /  Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Bath;  /  Descended from a long Train of Ancestors  / Fam’d for their Religion, Loyalty and Virtue,  /   He had all the Qualifications  /  Of a compleat and accomplishe’d Gentleman, /  Amiable in his Person,  /  Gracefull in his Address. /  In Private,  /  He was easy, affable, condescending’  /  In Publick,  /  He was steady, uniform consistent;  /  Favour’d by this Prince,  /  And a Friend to his Country.  /  In this distinguish’d Situation, /  Esteem’d, belov’d and honour’d, /  He died the 24th Day of November 1733  /  In the 30th Year of his Age.

 

ELIZABETH, his belov’d Wife  /  Daughter and Heiress of WILIAM BLUNDEN Esqr.  /  (By whom He left two Daughters  /  ELIZABETH and FRANCES-CATHERINE)  /  Erected this to his Memory.

These images and words from

https://westbournedeanery.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/racton-st-peter/

I will return to this subject once things become clearer and I can obtain better images.

______________________