Monday, 21 July 2025

The Statue of George II formerly in a Niche on the Front of Weavers Hall, Dublin by John van Nost III.

 

Statue of George II and Weavers Hall, Dublin.

The Statue of George II and Weavers Hall, Dublin.

George II.

In Garter Robes

1750.

Attributed to John van Nost III.

but possibly by Benjamin Rackstrow (doubtful).

 Formerly on Weavers Hall, The Coombe, Dublin.

 Architect Joseph Jarret of Dublin, 1747.

Weavers' Hall was a guildhall at 14 The Coombe, Dublin, Ireland, which housed the Guild of Weavers (sometimes called the Guild of St Philip and St James or the Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary), one of the 25 Guilds of the City of Dublin. The building was constructed in 1745 to a design by architect Joseph Jarratt to replace an earlier nearby weavers' guildhall in the Lower Coombe which was built in 1681–2 and was located in what was originally the Earl of Meath's Liberty.The building was demolished in 1965.

Jarrett designed the La Touche Bank in Cork Hill, Dublin.


The principal room on the first floor is 50' x 21'






The figure of George, holding shuttles and other implements relating to the weaving trade, was removed and destroyed in November 1937 - it was feared by the owners of the building that the IRA might attempt to blow it up.

The Irish Times (17 November 1937) covered the story as follows:

 

STATUE OF KING HACKED TO PIECES

“BETTER TO HAVE IT BLOWN UP”

 

What is described as “the last British King in the City of Dublin” was beheaded in Dublin yesterday morning. Immediately afterwards men set about the task of hacking off his legs and arms. This was the fate which met the bronze statue of King George II, which has stood over the entrance of the Weavers’ Hall, in the Coombe, since 1750, and the reason is that the present owners of the premises, Messrs S. Fine and Co., Ltd., thought it better to have the statue peacefully removed than to have it blown up.

An Irish Times reporter was told that it had been necessary to dismember the statue in order to take it down without damaging the face of the building. It was fitted into the front of the house with iron stays, and to have removed it en bloc would have defaced the masonry. Some idea of the weight of the statue may be gathered from the fact that the head alone weighs almost 50lb.

Although described as bronze I suspect it was actually made of lead and originally gilded

This is probably rather disingenuous - it was probably much easier to hack it apart and then sell it for scrap rather than to hire a crane and remove it carefully - a great loss..

Fine and Company were house furnishers but a watercolour by Flora Mitchell painted in the 1950's shows a very down at heel building. There are photographs of it in its final stages of disintegration before it was demolished in the Irish Architectural Archive on Merrion Square, Dublin which I publish below.

Weavers Hall itself was finally demolished in 1965.

 

During the seventeenth century a number of French Huguenot weavers arrived in Dublin. They settled manly in the Liberties area of Dublin, west of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where they became part of the existing weaving fraternity. Many of them were experienced silk weavers and their expertise contributed to the establishment of a thriving silk and poplin industry.

A weavers’ hall had been built by the Guild in the Lower Coombe in 1682 and by 1745, when the building of a new hall was required, it was a Huguenot, David Digges La Touche, who advanced the £200 needed. The main room of the new hall is described as being fifty-six feet long by twenty-one feet wide, wainscoted, and hung with portraits of kings and notabilities, and included a tapestry portrait of King George II, woven by John van Beaver (see below).





























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Image below courtesy  South Dublin Libraries.















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Gone!
































































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Design for the chimneypiece illustrated above from the Joseph Jarratt scrapbook.

 Courtesy Irish Architectural Archive.





Another more austere Chimneypiece design from the Joseph Jarratt scrapbook.

Inscribed Joseph Jarrett.

 

 Courtesy Irish Architectural Archive.


Possibly representing a chimneypiece from the ground floor of the Weavers Hall.



 

 All the photographs of the interior of the Weavers Hall are from the Irish Architectural Archive.

 

Photographed by the author 6 October 2016.

 I am extremely grateful to Colum O'Riordan and all at the Irish Architectural Archive for making me welcome and in particular for allowing me access to the Jarratt scrapbooks.


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It is possible that the interior fittings of the Weavers Hall were saved.

 

The Irish Archive files suggest that some of them were moved and were in The Cottage, Kanturk in 1987. A Google search could find no mention of it.








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This image from The Dublin Penny Journal, vol. 4 - 12 December, 1835.







The Marble  bust of David Digges (Digues) La Touche.

Sizes 66 x 52.1 x 27.9 cm.


now at the Huntington Library.

John van Nost III.

Nost was working in Ireland from 1749 - 87.

Patrick Cunningham was taken on as an apprentice by John van Nost in May 1750.

 

John van Nost III is first mentioned in the Royal Dublin Society's papers in 1749 when he is described as living in Jervis Street where he exhibited models in plaster.


Van Nost made a number of  return visits to London: these included one in 1753 or 1754 to hold sittings with King George II for the equestrian statue in St Stephen's Green, another in 1763, when he had a London address 'At Mr Clarke's, St Martin's-lane, opposite May's-buildings',

 

In 1763 he was listed in Mortimer’s Universal Director ‘at Mr Clarke’s, St Martin’s-lane, opposite May’s-buildings’ (p 28; Rate-Books 1763, Cleansing Street Rates, F6007).

 

 J T Smith later recollected that Nost had lived at 104, St Martin’s Lane, in a large house, once inhabited and decorated by King George I’s sergeant painter, Sir James Thornhill.

 for Anthony Malone see - https://www.dib.ie/biography/malone-anthony-a5418

 

In 1779 the sculptor was residing at No. 21 Mecklenburgh Street, Dublin and in that year, on 19th October, his statue of "Hugh Lawton," Mayor of Cork, 1776, was erected in Cork. 

In the following year he returned to London, where he stayed four years on account of ill-health.

 Returning to Dublin he there passed the remainder of his life, dying in Mecklenburgh Street in 1787.




I have written fairly extensively on the sculpture of John van Nost III but I need to return to the subject and attempt to put a proper biography together. Here are links to some of my scribblings.







https://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2016/08/equestrian-statue-of-george-ii-john-van.html

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2016/10/bust-of-lord-chesterfield-by.html

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2016/10/marble-bust-of-samuel-madden-by-john.html

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2017/09/busts-david-garrick-at-garrick-club.html

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-monument-to-sir-arthur-acheson-in.html


Images below courtesy Huntington Library website - I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies.

but why do museums such as this post such low resolution poor quality images?




for more on the La Touche family see -




etc etc.
































David Digges la Touche.

John van Nost III.

Huntington Library Art Collection.

There are several other 18th Century busts in in the Huntington Collection.

 Oliver Cromwell - Michael Rysbrack.

John Hamden - Michael Rysbrack.

Sir Peter Warren - L.F. Roubiliac.

Handel Plaster - Roubiliac.

Philip Stanhope 4th Earl Chesterfield - Scheemakers.



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The tapestry of George II woven by John van Beaver, which hung in the Weavers’ Hall.


It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York.












Monument to Theophilus Salway, St Lawrence Parish Church, Ludlow.

 


Theophilus Salway.

The Monument by Sir Robert Taylor. 

1760.





















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A Related drawing is in the Taylorian Institute, Oxford.





Friday, 18 July 2025

The Monument to Samuel Peploe by Henry Cheere in Chester Cathedral.



Samuel Peploe (1667 - 1752).

Peploe was Bishop of Chester from 1725.

This exceptional mural monument has for some reason fallen below the radar.

It is not inscribed but has all the hallmarks of a work of Henry Cheere (1703 - 81).

The shaped apron is seen frequently in Cheere's monuments as is the use of expensive coloured marble veneers.

It is not mentioned in the Biographical Dictionary....... Pub Yale 2009.

Another monument that would be dramatically improved with a gentle wash.

The Coalfired Gurney Stoves probably substantially contributed to the surface dirt on this and other monuments in the Cathedral.


https://www.dawleyheritage.co.uk/unpublished-articles/262/Biography















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Samuel Peploe.

Anonymous.



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Samuel Peploe.

1733.
J. Faber.

Mezzotint 

after Hamlet Winstanley.






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The Gurney Patent Stove.

'Gurney's Patent, The London Warming & Ventilating Company'.

Patented 1856.

Goldsworthy Gurney (1793 - 1875).

A number of these stoves are still in use to this day, in the cathedrals of Worcester, Ely, Durham, Peterborough and Hereford.

Gurney sold the rights to the London Warming & Ventilating Company, who continued to produce the heater well into the twentieth century. One of its key features was that the ribs on its exterior stood in a shallow trough of water, thus humidifying the air as well as warming it.

The stove burned anthracite, although some were later converted to other fuels (Hereford Cathedral's heaters became gas-firing in 1989).












https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK0SwS-lGQk

Perhaps (but probably not) bust of Sappho and a Bust of Homer at The Castle Museum, Durham University.

 

As much as anything my discovery of these busts on the art uk website has prompted me to look at the 17th Century use of  the type and variations of the socle seen on this pair of busts.


I have recently been looking at the socles used by John Cheere, Lous Francois Roubiliac, Joseph Wilton and Nollekens who all used distinct types of socles for their busts.


A series of notes and images!

A Female Plaster Bust Described as A Bust of Sappho.

Described on the website as 19th century.

H 74 x W 50 x D 22.5 cm.

I don't think this is either Sappho or 19th Century!

A possible clue here to its age is the form of the socle - which is related to several 17th century busts illustrated here particularly the bronze  busts by le Sueur in the Royal Collection

The bust was stolen from Durham Castle in 1994, and only recently returned in 2017, after significant conservation and reconstruction work.

Images courtesy Art uk website.

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/sappho-277056




































Bust described as Homer but perhaps Zeno or Plato.

The pair to the bust illustrated above






































Bust of Zeno of Elea, print by Jan de Bisschop, based on a bust by an unknown artist, 1666 - 1671.

 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.





The bust of Plato in the Library of Trinity College Dublin has distinct similarities

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2016/12/bust-of-plato-in-long-room-trinity.html


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Two Seventeenth Century Bronze Busts of Venetia Lady Digby.

c. 1633.

This bust is inscribed by Larson.

By G (Guillaume or Willem) Larson (d.1660).

 The socle is related to the pair of busts at Durham and the Le Sueur bronze busts in the Royal Collection (see below).

The top part of the socle although squatter also relates to those used on the busts by Francois Dieussart (1600 - 61) who was working in London from 1636.


The most up to date study of the Larson family of Sculptors can be found in -

  'The Larson Family of Statuary Founders: Seventeenth Century Reproductive Sculpture for Gardens and Painters' Studios',  F. Scholten, in Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 31, no. 1/2, 2004-2005, p. 56).

 

This can be found at the Jstor website - http://www.jstor.org/stable/4150578

 This is a pay per view website but it is possible to obtain three articles per month for free if you register with them.


https://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2017/10/bust-of-lady-venetia-digby-gothurst.html


























James Basire (1730 - 1802).

 Engraving.

 228 x 153 mm.

 Illustration from Pennant's Tour from Chester to London. 1786.

 British Museum.

The sculptured bust at Gothurst; set on a decorative pedestal with garlands of fruit and a plaque; illustration to Pennant's 'Tour from Chester to London'. 1786.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_G-7-175


For a later pen and ink copy by Moses Griffiths of this engraving see -

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1948-0315-6-133


Gothurst Gayhurst was the family home of Sir Kenhulm Digby - it was sold by the Digbys in 1704 and bought by George Wright (d. 1724/5).  

The only daughter of the 3rd George Wrighte, Anne Barbara, born in 1784, died in 1830, unmarried. Gayhurst had been in the Wrighte family for 126 years. Anne left the property to a distant cousin, George Thomas Wyndham, whose young son died, leaving the property to his two aunts in 1837 - Maria Anne Wyndham, who married Lord Macdonald of Slate, and Cecilia, who married Lord Alfred Paget.

Owned by the Wyndhams from 1830 - occuped by Lord Carrington from 1842 - 1877.

The house was altered by William Burges for Lord Carrington


 For Pennant and Gothurst see - https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Pennant_C2L/16


For a very useful history of Gothurst / Gayhurst see https://www.mkheritage.org.uk/sga/Gayhurst/gayhurst-owners.html


see (Rev. William) Coles' notes on Gothurst sent to Horace Walpole, c. 25 Sept 1762 referring to the portraits at Gothurst (Gayhurst).

 

 

"......Mr Wright supposed it might be Lady Venetia Digby, but I could not discover the features of her in it, as represented in that by Van Dyke, no more than in two very fine busts of copper gilt, or brass, standing in Mr Wright's study, on two elegant pedestals of black and white marble. It is by no means improbable but the bust put up for this lady by her husband Sir Kenelm in Christ Church without Newgate in London was cast in the same mould with one of these: that bust and monument were destroyed in the Fire of London. One of these busts' is dressed in a loose and light habit, but in a fine taste, and with her hair rather more flowing than the other, which is frizzled out and curled, and ribbons behind; the figure is larger and fatter, and is habited after the Van Dyke manner with a large laced handkerchief"

 

Horace Walpole in Anecdotes of Paintings in England: with Some Account......

 

"Sir Kenelm erected for her a monument in black marble with her bust in copper gilt, and a lofty epitaph, in Christ Church without Newdate; but it was destroyed in the fire of London. Lodges Peerages of Ireland vol IV p.89. There are two busts of Lady Venetia extant at Mr Wrights at Gothurst in Buckinghamshire with several portraits of the family of Digby. The house belonged to Sir Kenelm and was purchased  by Sir Nathan Wright ( the bust which was placed upon the sarcophagus is said to have been extant, and seen by Mr Pennant( Journey to London)".

 

There is a passage in Athenae Oxoniensis by Anthony Wood (1632 - 95)

 

"about 1676 or 5 as I was walking through Newgate Street I sawe Dame Venetia's bust standing at a stall at the Golden Cross, a braziers shop. I presently remembered it but a fire had got off the gilding: but taking notice of it to one who was with me, I ncould never see it afterwards exposed to the street. They melted it downe. How these curiosities would be quite forgot, did not such idle fellows as I am put them downe".

 

This account is very close to that of John Aubrey (1626 - 97) in Brief Lives. Aubrey certainly aided Wood in the compilation of his work.




Extract above from John Aubrey - My own Life by Ruth Scurr. pub. 2016. Lifted from Google Books.

 The vignette of the Digby monument from Aubrey's manuscripts at the Bodleian Library???

 This might suggest that the bust survived the great fire of 1666, was recovered and sold.

 

John Aubrey, in Brief Lives in 1680 says -

 

"much against his mother's, etc., consent, he maried that celebrated beautie and courtezane, Mrs. Venetia Stanley, whom Richard earle of Dorset kept as his concubine, had children by her, and setled on her an annuity of £500 per annum; which after Sir K. D. maried was unpayd by the earle; and for which annuity Sir Kenelme sued the earle, after mariage, and recovered it. He would say that a handsome lusty man that was discreet might make a vertuose wife out of a brothell-house. This lady carried herselfe blamelessly, yet (they say) he was jealous of her. She dyed suddenly, and hard-hearted woemen would censure him severely.

 

After her death, to avoyd envy and scandall, he retired in to Gresham Colledge at London, where he diverted himselfe with his chymistry, and the professors' good conversation. He wore there a long mourning cloake, a high crowned hatt, his beard unshorne, look't like a hermite, as signes of sorrowe for his beloved wife, to whose memory he erected a sumptuouse monument, now quite destroyed by the great conflagration. He stayed at the colledge two or 3 yeares".

 

For Brief Lives, pub 1898 - vol I see - https://archive.org/details/briefliveschiefl01aubruoft

 

Vol II - https://archive.org/details/briefliveschiefl02aubruoft


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Venetia Lady Digby.

The second bronze bust

Both busts in the sae private collection.


I am most grateful to the owners for allowing me access to the busts and for permission to use the photographs


https://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-bronze-busts-of-venetia-lady-digby.html







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Catherine Bruce, Mrs William Murray (d. 1649).

 Later Countess of Dysart.

 Gilt Bronze Bust.

 785 mm.

 1637 - 39?

 At Ham House, Surrey.

 National Trust.

https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/1139887

 This bust has been attributed to both Besnier and Le Seuer but I would like to suggest that our friend Georg Larson might again be responsible.





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A Pair of Plaster (not stone) Busts of Charles I and Charles II.

Collection of the Duke of Grafton. Euston Hall.

Images below from the Paul Mellon Photographic Archive.




The photograph above shows the bronzed plaster busts of Charles I and Charles II in 1965 at Hungershall Lodge, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the home of the indefatigable researcher and English sculpture enthusiast Rupert Gunnis.

 I hope to obtain better photographs of these busts in the near future.

 These busts are very obviously a pair - the socles are very similar to the plaster busts of the Fermors formerly at Easton Neston sold Sotheby's (see below) and attributed to Peter Besnier.









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  A Pair of Plaster Busts of Sir William Fermor (1621 - 1661) and his wife Mary (d. 1670).

of Easton Neston Northamptonshire,

 72cm., 28½in.; she 65.5cm., 25¾in.

Attributed to Peter Besnier (d. 1693).

  Sold at Sotheby's Easton Neston sale. Lot 12 - 17th May 2005.

 Bought with the aid of an Art Fund grant by Northampton Museum and Art Gallery.


The Sotheby's Catalogue entry for these busts follows below -

"He wearing quirass with lions pauldrons and a sash tied on his right shoulder, his hair falling in locks over the breastplate, an old illegible paper label to the reverse; she facing slightly to dexter, her hair styled in deep curls about her bare upper chest and shoulders; each set on integral plaster socles bearing the date 1658.

 These plaster busts are notable survivals of 17th century English portrait sculpture and represent important additions to the small corpus of known works executed by the French-born artist Peter Besnier, Sculptor-in-Ordinary to Charles I and later Charles II. They have never been previously published.

 

The attribution rests on physiognomic and stylistic comparisons as well as contextual evidence. The expressive modelling of the heads with their animated features are more advanced than the work of Besnier’s predecessor as Court Sculptor, Hubert Le Sueur, whose portraiture has been rightly criticised for having a ‘curiously inflated appearance’. The angle of the heads are more accentuated than the iconic frontality found in Le Sueur’s busts. In their sense of movement they are much less mannered and the richly modelled sash, drapery and hair - notably to the bust of Mary - imbue them with a liveliness derived from the Italian Baroque.

 

In this connection one might at first think of two other sculptors active in Caroline England, namely the Italian, Francesco Fanelli (1577-after 1641) and the Fleming, Francois Dieussart (c.1600-1661). 

Whinney, who was the first to raise the possibility that Besnier may have been the sculptor responsible for the Easton Neston busts, observed that they were ‘closer to the style of Dieussart’ (op.cit. p.440, note 2). There is no specific comparison to be made in support this hypothesis, unless Whinney was alluding to their advanced baroque naturalism: Dieussart was perhaps the most talented of the foreign sculptors lured to London having spent the years 1622-1630 in Rome assimilating the latest developments in Baroque sculpture.

 

However Dieussart had departed for The Hague in 1641, well before the Easton Neston busts could have been modelled, and the same year also marks the last recorded reference to Fanelli in England.

 

It is Peter Besnier’s elder brother Isaac (active 1631-c.1642) who therefore provides the point of departure for a meaningful stylistic comparison, and one that can be seen to reinforce Whinney’s initial, if instinctive, placement of the busts in the Besnier orbit.

 

Isaac Besnier was first employed to look after the ‘Moulds, Statues and Modells’ in the royal collection but his major sculptural contribution is to be found in the realm of monumental tomb sculpture of the 1630’s. He collaborated with Le Sueur on the tombs of three of the greatest personalities of the Caroline Court: that of the Earl of Portland in Winchester Cathedral; and those of the Duke of Buckingham and the Duke of Richmond and Lennox in Westiminster Abbey. While Le Sueur cast the figures and effigies in bronze, Isaac carved the architectural marble components, including the statuary and tablets. Indeed Lightbown credits him for a significant part of their overall design.  It is interesting to hypothesise how the commission for the busts came about. Each portrait bears the date 1658, an inauspicious time for sculptor and patron alike.

Sir William Fermor was the elder son of Sir Hatton Fermor and his wife Anne Cockayne.  At the outbreak of the Civil War he and his younger brother Hatton joined the King.  William was created a baronet by King Charles 1641: his younger brother was less fortunate dying for the Royalist cause at Culham Bridge in 1645.  Sir Williams's marriage was very much a reflection of his loyalties.  His wife Mary Perry was the widow of the Hon. Henry Noel who had died a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. His brother Baptist Viscourt Campden was a colonel in the Royal Horse Regiment.

During the years of the Interregnum Sir William had had to compound for his estate and was under constant suspicion of agitation. In 1653 he was summoned before the council and in 1655 he was accused of killing the Protector’s deer. In 1658, the year of his portrayal, he was publicly listed as a Northamptonshire royalist without military rank. Besnier too suffered hardship, having been deprived of his office of court sculptor, which he had held since 1643, by the Parliamentarians. In his petition for reinstatement at the Restoration, he claimed that he had fallen into ‘very great poverty and want’ (see White op.cit.). However the evidence suggests the opposite was true. In 1655 he was carving statues and shields for John Webb’s revisions to Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire (not far from Easton Neston) and in the following year, 1656, he was working on his only signed and securely attributed work, the monument to Sir Richard Shuckburgh, just across the border in Warwickshire. These commissions, together with the present plaster busts, perhaps intended as presentation models for finished bronzes, show that Besnier was not as close to the ‘great poverty’ he claimed to be. If it was not his work at Lamport that brought him to the attention of Sir William, it must have been owing to the Shuckburgh monument that artist and patron became acquainted. Sir William’s sister Katharine was married to Sir John Shuckburgh, Sir Richard’s son and heir (see White op.cit., p.12), which provides a convenient avenue for their introduction.

 

Whinney, followed by White, attributes the posthumous monument to Sir Hatton and Lady Fermor in St. Mary’s Church, Easton Neston, to Peter Besnier. The memorial also commemorates Sir William, whose marble bust appears between the two figures of his parents. This bust bears no relation to the present plaster and is of a much inferior standard of execution. The general design of the monument, with its three effigies of Sir Hatton’s daughters arranged at the very top, recall his brother Isaac’s work of the 1630’s for the Earl of Portland. The tablet inscription nonetheless dates it to 1662, a year after Sir William’s death and at a time when Peter Besnier is documented in London working in his court capacity at Old Somerset House.

 

 Whinney notes that the only signed monument by Peter Besnier - the monument to Sir Richard Shuckburgh d. 1656 at Shuckburgh, Warwickshire is similar in style to the Fermor monument at St Mary's Church Easton Neston, Northamptonshire (see below) - the two families were related by marriage.

 

I have not yet been able to locate a good photographs of either of these monuments.

 

The paragraph below from British History online from - A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 6, Knightlow Hundred. Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1951.

 

The south chapel (12 ft. 6 in. by 9 ft. 2 in.) is similar to the one on the north. Against the east wall is a large marble memorial to Richard Shuckburgh, died 1656. It has a classic pediment with the Shuckburgh coat in the tympanum, surmounted by three urns, and below a portrait bust flanked by angels with trumpets holding back curtains. Underneath there is a carved panel with inscription, under a pediment of scrolls with a skull on either side. It rests on a carved splay and a moulded base, with a block in the centre of the moulding on which is placed a skull, below it the name Pet. Bennier.

 

Entry below from The Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors available online at -

 

http://liberty.henry-moore.org/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=190&from_list=true&x=13

 

Peter Besnier (Bennier) - A French sculptor and the brother of Isaac Besnier, who had collaborated with Hubert le Sueur on the monument to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, erected in Westminster Abbey in 1634. Peter Bennier may have been trained in France but was living in England before October 1643, when he was appointed sculptor to King Charles I. He was required to look after the ‘Moulds, Statues and Modells’ in the Royal collection, a duty previously performed by his brother, in return for the use of a house and £50 pa from the privy purse.

 

The Civil War prevented him from taking up his duties and he was deprived of his office during the Commonwealth. At the Restoration he petitioned to be reinstated on the grounds that the late King had granted him the ‘place of sculptor to His Majesty and the custody of his statues, etc, but by reason of the most unhappy distraction befallen since, hee injoyed not the same place, but was reduced into very great poverty and want through his faithfulness and constancy’ (TNA SP 29/2, no 66-1, quoted by Faber 1926, 14). His request was granted on 15 March 1661 (TNA, LC3/25, 113, cited by Gibson 1997 (1), 163) and he held the post until his death, when he was succeeded by Caius Gabriel Cibber.

 

 

Bennier (Besnier) is listed as a ratepayer of Covent Garden, 1649-51, and among the Ashburnham Papers is a reference to a tenement occupied by Bennier near Common Street in 1664 (LMA, ACC/0524/045,046,047, 048, cited by Gibson 1997 (1), 163).

 It has been tentatively suggested that he worked for Hubert le Sueur. He signed the monument with a ‘noble’ portrait-bust to Sir Richard Shuckburgh  (Gunnis 1968, 50).

The monument to Sir Hatton Fermor at Easton Neston, Northants, has been attributed to him because the bust is similar to the Shuckburgh one and the two families had intermarried.

 

In 1655 Bennier was employed at Lamport Hall, Northants, carving shields and ‘pictures’, which were probably statues (Northants RO, IL 3956, cited by White 1999, 11, 12 n 10-11) (2). He also did unspecified work for the crown at Somerset House in 1661-2.

 

Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 50; Colvin V, 1973-6, 255; Whinney 1988, 90, 93, 439 n 16, n 21, 440 n 2-3; McEvansoneya 1993, 532-5; Grove 3, 1996, 875 (Physick); White 1999, 11-12



 







































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The Nose has been damaged and replaced.






































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Anonymous Bronze Bust of a Lady.

 Attributed to George Larson.

 Height with socle 49.8cms.





 Provenance -

Christie's, London, Ist July 1997 - lot 35.

 Christie's, Paris Lot 71, 13 June 2017.

 The Catalogue entry -

 Previously associated with the work of Hubert Le Sueur, a Frenchman who became Court Sculptor to Charles I of England, the freely handled hair of the present bust is closer to the only documented work of his contemporary George Larson (private collection, England, F. Scholten, 'The Larson Family of Statuary Founders: Seventeenth Century Reproductive Sculpture for Gardens and Painters' Studios', Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, vol. 31, no. 1/2, 2004-2005, p. 56).

 

The latter bust of Lady Digby is signed by Larson, who was clearly an astounding metal caster, and displays an affinity to the work of Le Sueur, but with less rigidity in the forms of the hair. This type of head can also be paralleled among Van Dyck's English sitters.

 

see - http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/buste-en-bronze-representant-une-jeune-femme-6083823-details.aspx


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Hubert Le Sueur - the Bronze Busts in the Royal Collection.

see -

https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/page/2#who


Bronze Bust of Solon.

66.0 cm (including socle).

The text below lifted directly from the Royal Collection website.


Acquired by Charles I, c.1636–7.  Invoice for £30 each reduced by Charles I to £24 per bust.

 

St James’s Palace; ? sold in the Commonwealth sales of 1651; ? Whitehall Palace; Kensington Palace, King’s Library; twelve busts sent to Buckingham Palace, 1821; St James’s Palace; ten busts sent to Windsor Castle in 1834; Buckingham Palace, Lower Corridor (all twelve busts); Kensington Palace, Cupola Room; Hampton Court Palace, 

One of a series of fifteen busts (twelve of which survive) supplied to Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur. They can be characterised as generalised or ‘improved’ copies of ancient busts rather than direct casts of their various prototypes. The ancient prototypes were all in the Farnese collection in Rome at the time the moulds were obtained in around 1635, and  today are in the Museo Archaeologico, Naples.


In many cases the proportions of the busts and the arrangement of drapery have been modified by the use of plaster, presumably in the interest of creating a uniform series from a disparate set of originals.The variations between Le Sueur’s busts and their ancient prototypes were necessary because his task was to make a set from a group of heads that were not themselves made by the same sculptor or strictly in the same style. In addition, the ancient marble busts were not the only source available to him. Engravings of at least six of the busts were published in Ioannes Faber’s compendium Illustrium Imagines exantiquis marmoribus of 1606 based on the Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditor (1570) by Fulvio Orsini, librarian to the Farnese, a pioneering and influential study of ancient iconography.

 

Nine of the twelve busts are wrongly identified by the labels on their socles. In some cases this may result from the detachment and re-attachment of the socles during one of their many movements, but it is equally likely that neither Le Sueur nor the writer of the inscriptions knew who the busts represented.

 

Le Sueur’s busts are probably the earliest surviving example in Britain of a set of heads of ancient ‘philosophers’, a term that embraced also historians, poets and orators. Such sets can be found in a number of continental palaces from the early seventeenth century. For example, seven bronze heads (called Seneca, Solon, Marcellus, Diogenes, Plato, Socrates and Demosthenes), described a ‘cast after the antique,’ were listed in 1643 in the petite Galerie of Cardinal Richelieu’s palace in in Paris, and a series of bronze philosophers was also included in the posthumous inventory of the collection of his successor Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–61). A group of four bronze busts derived from the same Farnese prototypes (and more faithful to them), which are thought to date from the early seventeenth century, were in the ducal collections at Braunschweig. Perhaps of most relevance here is the set of nine bronze heads of ‘philosophers’ listed in the posthumous inventory of the Paris hôtel of Louis Phélypeaux de la Vrillière (1598–1681). Although we do not know their identities, it is perhaps significant that de la Vrillière became an important patron of Hubert Le Sueur following his return to France in 1641. The fashion for series of busts of this kind, some of which mixed ancient and modern celebrities, hit Britain more generally in the early eighteenth century.



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Charles I.

Hubert Le Sueur.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

Probably made for Charles I; other bronze versions are known. Carved in London by Hubert Le Sueur (born in Paris, about 1590, died there after 1658). Stated at the time of purchase to have come from The Hague, and stated to have been formerly in the royal palace Huis ten Bosch. Purchased from Durlacher Bros., 42 New Bond Street in 1910.

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O77800/charles-i-bust-le-sueur-hubert/

Here the bust has the typical Le Sueur Socle as used on the bronzes in the Royal Collection

But the back of the socle with the date 1631 is very similar to the socles on the busts of Lord and Lady Pomfret 






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Bust of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. Marble, circa 1641 CE. 

By Francois Dieussart. From the Dutch Republic, Now the Netherlands. 

The Victoria and Albert Museum