Friday 8 March 2019

Marble Bust of Lord Chief Justice Raymond



Sir Robert Raymond (1672 - 1732).

Made Lord Chief Justice of the Kings Bench in 1725.

Marble Bust.

This bust has in the past been attributed to both Roubiliac and Henry Cheere.

c. 1732.



Victoria and Albert Museum.

This was knocked from its pedestal in 1975, resulting in a large chip under the right shoulder, which has been repaired.



Inscribed 'ROBERTUS D.nus RAYMOND.Capital./Justic. Anglice, obiit XVIIIo. Martii/MDCCXXXII/Aetat. LX.'

Height: 60 cm

Purchased by H.M. Calmann from the Filmer family of East Sutton, Kent at an unrecorded date.

For the Filmer family see :

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol5/pp375-385

Purchased by Dr. W.L. Hildburgh F.S.A. from H.M. Calmann for £25. Given by Hildburgh in 1947 as a New Year gift.


Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Bilbey, Diane and Trusted Marjorie. British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. A Concise Catalogue of the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 2002. pp. 112-113. cat. no. 153
Baker, M. Figured in marble. The making and viewing of eighteenth-century sculpture. London, 2000. p. 82.
Whinney, M. Sculpture in Britain 1530 to 1830. 2nd ed. London, 1988. p. 453. note. 8 (1).
Whinny, M. English sculpture 1720-1830. London, 1971. p. 64.
[Entry] In: Colvin, H. M. A biographical dictionary of British architects.
Craske, M. The silent rhetoric of the body. New Haven, 2008. pp. 405-409.

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Educated Eton College and Christ's College, Cambridge
called to the Bar in 1697.

Married Anne Northey  (1677 - 17 daughter of Sir Edward Northey


In 1710 Robert Raymond was appointed solicitor-general and in that same year became Member of Parliament for Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. Soon afterwards he was knighted. On the accession of George I in 1714 he was replaced as solicitor-general. He then became, successively, MP for Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, Ludlow and Helston, whilst continuing his legal career. 

He became a judge in 1724 and flourished when Sir Robert Walpole became Britain's first Prime Minister, being appointed Lord Chief Justice in 1725, a position he held for eight years - . Anne died in 1720 and Robert was elevated to the peerage in 1731. 

He died at his home in Red Lion Square, London on 18 March 1733, leaving his estate of Langleybury, Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire to his and Anne's only surviving son, also Robert. Three other boys died within a few weeks of birth and were buried with their paternal grandmother.

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Langleybury House, Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire.


The estate was purchased in 1711 by Robert Raymond, then Solicitor General and later Attorney General. 

In 1720 he demolished the original house, of which little is known, and built the mansion which still stands on the site today. A park was laid out around the house in the later eighteenth century. His cipher, a griffin in a crown, can still be seen on the building.

Beversham Filmer 1756–1838.

On the death of his son, Robert Raymond, 2nd Baron Raymond, without issue in 1756, the manor was left to Sir Beversham Filmer, 5th Baronet, of East Sutton in Kent. He, dying without children in 1805, bequeathed it to his nephew, Sir John Filmer, 7th Baronet. It then descended in the family till 1838. The Filmers were absentee landlords.


This explains the connection between Raymond and the Filmer family and it is likely that the bust remained with the Filmer family until sold in the 20th century.






























All photographs above taken by the author.


For a reasonably good biog of Robert Raymond see:

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/member/raymond-sir-robert-1673-1733



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Monument to Robert Raymond in Abbots Langley Church of St Lawrence
The monument Inscribed Henry Cheere.
Designed by Westby Gill.




Abbots Langley Church
Platinum Print
George Scamell
1902

Victoria an Albert Museum.



Abbots Langley Monument
Platinum Print 
George Scamell 
1902
Victoria and Albert Museum.

































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Robert Raymond.
c. 1725
John van der Vaart (1653 - 1727).

Oil on canvas
127 x 102.2 cms.

Sold Lot 13, May 2010 by Doyles, New York.

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Robert Raymond
John Simon after James Maubert
Mezzotint c. 1730's
350 x 247 mm

British Museum

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Robert Raymond
George Vertue
National Galleries of Scotland.





Robert Raymond
Mezzotint
368 x 260 paper size.

John Simon after Jonathan Richardson 1727

National Portrait Gallery
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Robert Raymond.
Attributed to John Vanderbank (1694 - 1739).

Oil on Canvas.
238.8 x 137.3 cms.


Examination Schools, University of Oxford.
Gift of Uriah Shudall, 1735.

Image courtesy Art UK

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Monument to 2nd Lord Raymond (1717 - 1756).
Erected 1756?

Abbots Langley Church
by Peter Scheemakers.
















Photographs above from the website of Bob Speel.

http://www.speel.me.uk/chlondon/abbotslangley.htm




Charity or Abundance
Peter Scheemaker (1691 - 1781).
Model for the monument of the second Lord Raymond.
Terracotta
41.9 cms.

At Christie's, London, 11 December 1984, lot no. 20, sold to Cyril Humphris for £432. Purchased for £1000 from Cyril Humphris, London, 1985.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781) was born in Antwerp and trained under his father, the sculptor Peter Scheemaekers the Elder (1652-1714). Scheemakers was in London by 1721, where he first collaborated with Pieter-Denis Plumier (1688-1721) and Laurent Delvaux (1696-1778) on the monument to John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham, for Westminster Abbey. Scheemakers continued in partnership with Delvaux, carving funerary monuments as well as garden statuary. They went together to Rome in 1728, where Scheemakers remained for two years before returning to England in 1730 and setting up an independent workshop. He spent the rest of his working life in England, concentrating on monuments and portrait busts