Part 5. The Colossal Lead Group of Samson slaying the Philistine aka Cain and Abel.
Formerly at Brasenose College (disappeared),
John van Nost II.
Supplied by van Nost II as Kain and Abel
Dr Clarke was Billed for Kain and Abel 23 August 1728.
£30 0s 0d
Previously known as Cain and Abel.
See - https://www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/downloads/Brazen_Nose_2021-2022_Vol.56_Web_Version_Scanned_Cover_Added.pdf
by David
Bradbury (Ancient & Modern History, 1981). Page 88.
Cain and Abel - a Misnamed Statue Archetypes journey from Spain top the Old Quad.
The
College's version was purchased in London and brought to Oxford by barge. It
was finally removed in 1881. It had proved a great temptation to the students
and had been painted or otherwise adorned on many occasions.
David
Loggan's engraving of 1674 shows hedges and trees in the style of a knot
garden, surrounded by a low ornamental wall. In October
1727 all this was removed, and Thomas Hearne (1678-1735) recorded the
fact with great indignation. He said that the garden was 'the only one of that
kind then remaining in Oxford' and that it 'was a delightful & pleasant
Shade in Summer Time. This is done purely to turn it into a Grass Plot, &
to erect some silly Statue there'.
Lex Talionis.
Samson, who slew his Philistines by
scores,
No longer guards the Brazen House’s
doors:
Blind and disarmed, his office he
resigns,
And meekly falls among the
Philistines.
.....................
The Brasenose College Servants in
1861.
The Brasenose College
Eight in the Quad in 1875.
.......................
Brasenose Quad.
Basire after WM Turner.
Oxford Almanack
1805.
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sskwsjt7/images?id=wsxqcrjt
%20-%20(MeisterDrucke-205590).jpg)
....................
The Brasenose Quad.
George Pyne (1800 - 84).
Biog of John van Nost II (d. 1729) Lifted and adapted from
http://217.204.55.158/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=1977
John Nost II was the cousin of John Nost I, (d.1710) and ran the
family workshop until 1729. His business was chiefly in lead garden figures,
but also included a number of large-scale equestrian statues of George I.
John Nost I left his cousin £50 in his will and an extra £10
‘towards discharging’ his debts, which suggests that the young man began his
adult life inauspiciously. Nost II continued to pay rates for the property
previously occupied by Nost I in Stone Bridge, near Hyde Park, from September
1710, and he managed to retain some of Nost I’s patrons, including Sir Nicholas
Shireburn of Stonyhurst, who bought several garden figures in 1714 and 1716 (3,
4). Among his new clients was Edward Dryden of Canons Ashby (2), who owed the
sculptor £65 5s for a gilt gladiator in 1713 (Nost II/Dryden).
Little is known of his family background, except that he had
a sister called Mary Butler (or Buller), who was mentioned in Nost I’s will. He
married Catherine Cheesborough at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1708 and they
already had two children in 1710, both of whom received £5 in his will. One of
these, another Catherine, was baptised at St Martin’s on 27 March 1710.
Frances Nost, the widow of Nost I, died in 1716, leaving Nost
II ‘all the marble goods and figures at his house which belongs to me’. She
also released him from ‘all debts and moneys from him to me due and owing at
the time of my decease’, which suggests that his fortunes had not improved.
By 1717 the business was evidently prospering, for Nost
received a commission for a bronze statue of King George I from the corporation
of Dublin (12). They agreed in that year to pay the sculptor £1,500, and a
part-payment of £500 to ‘Mr John Noast of London, statuary’ was made in August
1721. Nost cast the figure of the horse from moulds made from Le Sueur’s statue
of King Charles I at Charing Cross, and went on to use the cast to produce
several more lead versions for other patrons, including the extravagant Duke of
Chandos, whose gilded statue with a handsome pedestal carved with trophies of
war, was erected at Canons (Canons Grand Inventory). The statue, which
terminated a vista in the gardens, was singled out for appreciative comment by
an anonymous Frenchman visiting in 1728.
Nost may have provided several other figures for Canons: the
1725 inventory includes, for instance, such parapet figures as Courage
represented by Hercules with his club, History with a table & pen in her
hand, and Fame sounding a trumpet, all subjects associated with the Nost
workshop. Several Whig patrons followed the Duke’s example and Nost’s workshop
became associated with equestrian figures of George I, presented as a
conquering hero in plate armour and crowned with laurels. A very similar image
in lead appeared outside the market hall in Gosport (8), there was a gilt
version in Grosvenor Square that cost £260.19s (17), and two leading figures in
the Whig ministry, Lord Cobham and the Duke of Bolton, advertised their
political allegiance with versions of the statue sited in pivotal positions at
Hackwood and Stowe (11, 16).
In 1716 Nost took over another property from the sculptor
Edward Hurst, next to his premises in Stone Bridge. The two buildings were
rated at £12 and £18 respectively. By 1720 one of them was vacant and in 1722,
Nost’s name disappeared from the Stone Bridge rate books. He paid annual rates
of £20 from 1720 until his death in 1729 on another property, a yard in
neighbouring Portugal Row.
In April 1718 Nost made an agreement with Sir John Germaine
to supply to Drayton House, Northants ‘two leading Statues Six footh hey from
the plint, one a [...] for a [...] and the Other figur a backus according to
the patrons showed to the Sd. Sr. John, and also to make three Leadin Vasis
upwards of four footh high of two Severall Sorts’ (24). He also agreed that
‘the Sayd figurs and Vasis Shal be painted twice over with a White Stone
colour’. The price set for this commission was £40 and Nost’s signed receipt,
dated 27 May 1718, records the supply (Drayton Archive MM/A/723). Another paper
in the same archive headed ‘quitance de Mr. Nost Statuaire’ records the above
payment and date as well as other charges for porterage, with an intriguing
payment of one guinea ‘a la femme francaise’. An earlier receipt in the Drayton
Archive labelled ‘Quitance des vases’ headed London and dated 6 October 1710
but with an indecipherable signature is for twelve vases costing £60 (ibid,
MM/A/675). This almost certainly refers to lead vases above colonnades in the
courtyard at Drayton, for which there are bills, also dated 1710, which the
mason John Woodall, who had earlier worked there for the architect William
Talman, was building. Today there are only eight vases. The London heading for
the receipt suggests that this also refers to the Nost yard.
Further evidence of John Nost’s ability to retain Nost I’s
patrons comes from two contracts drawn up eight years after his elder cousin’s
death. These were for lead statues for the 1st Earl of Hopetoun’s gardens at
Hopetoun House, near Edinburgh. The first contract, dated 24 May 1718, was for
four metal statues, Cain and Abel, Diana, a Gladiator and Hercules with a club,
at a cost of £86. The second, dated 20 June 1718, was for Adonis with a
greyhound, Venus with Cupid, Venus coming out of the bath, and Phaon playing on
a pipe (7). These were to cost £56 (Nost/Hopetoun MS). The contract says Nost
was to deliver the first statues to Scotland ‘by the latter end of July next’
and the second batch was to arrive by 1 October. Surprisingly, the goods did
not arrive until 16 September 1719 and this is confirmed by a shipping order,
dated 28 February 1719, for ‘fave larg’ casses of Leaden status’ with a freight
charge of one guinea to cover the journey from London to Leith (Nost/Hopetoun
MS) and a receipt accepted by ‘Mr. John Nost’ for the total of the two
contracts, £142, dated 14 September 1719 (Nost/Hopetoun MS). The only statues
from the large number named in the 1709 estimate sent by John Nost I were the
Bacchus and Ceres. None of these works remain at Hopetoun.
The Duke of Chandos called him back to Canons in 1723 to
inspect some vases which appeared to be in danger of falling from the parapet.
Chandos paid him £480 10s between 1722 and 1725, probably for vases and lead
figures in the extensive pleasure-grounds. He also provided a statue of George
II, ordered at the time of the King’s accession in 1727. This was sold at the
Canons auction in 1747 and erected in Golden Square in 1753 (18).
One of Nost’s last works, his only known monument, celebrates
Joseph Banks and was erected at Revesby, Lincs, shortly before the sculptor’s
death (1). A letter from Nost to Banks’s son refers to an order for
chimneypieces and concludes ‘I desire to know whether I can have the picture of
your father, for I am going on with the monument, and the head will take more
time in finishing, for the more time I take in doing itt the better it will be
completed’ (Hill 1952, 93).
He died in April 1729, and two obituaries survive. The
Political State of Great Britain recorded ‘Sunday the 27th, died Mr Nost, a
famous Statuary, at his House near Hyde-Park Corner’ and The Historical
Register announced ‘Dyd Mr Nost, a noted Statuary’. The administration of his
will was granted to his widow Catherine Nost on 23 May 1729. His son, John Nost
III (often known as ‘the younger’) was at that time apprenticed to Henry
Scheemakers.
Nost II appears to have been the man referred to by Vertue as a
nephew of Nost I, ‘who drove on the business but never studied – nor did
himself anything tolerable’ (Vertue IV, 35). If so, this is a harsh judgement
to pass on a sculptor who successfully ran the family workshop for 19 years and
provided memorable iconic portraits of the first Hanoverian king. Nost was
confused with his cousin John Nost until the recent discovery of his will and
posthumous sale catalogue. To add to the confusion Musgrave’s Obituary
mistakenly indexed him with the forename Gerard.
BB/MGS
Literary References: Northampton Mercury, 13 Dec 1725; PSGB,
v38 (1729), 425; Voyage d’Angleterre, 1728; Hist Reg, v14, (1729), 28; Vertue
IV, 35; Musgrave 1899-1901, IV, 309; Hill 1952, 93; Webb 1957 (3), 119;
Stonyhurst 1964, 479; O’Connell 1987, 802-6; Davis 1991 (1), passim; Grove 23,
1996, 253-4 (Murdoch); Spencer-Longhurst 1998, 31-40; Jenkins 2005, 64;
Sullivan 2005, 8
Archival References: WCA, Highways Rate, 1710 (F5311-2); Poor
Rate 1712, (F3574); Poor Rate 1716, (F3597), Highways, 1722 (F5550); Nost
II/Dryden; Nost II casting warrant; Voyage d’Angleterre, 1728; Canons, Accounts
with Tradesmen; Nost/Hopetoun MS; Canons Grand Inventory; Chandos catalogue,
June 19, lot 57, June 26, lots 54-61; IGI
Wills: John Nost I (proved 12 August 1710 LMA, Archdeaconry
of Middlesex, AM/PW 1710/89); Frances Nost (proved December 1716, FRC PROB
11/555/fols 195v-196v); John Nost’s Admin, 23 May 1729 (FRC PROB 6/105 fol 95)
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