3, The Lead statue of Samson Slaying the Philistine / Cain and Abel at St Paul's Walden.

 

Part 3.

Samson Slaying the Philistine.

Probably John van Nost II.

c.1730's.

St. Paul's Walden, near Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

Currently the Seat / Home of: Sir Simon and Lady Bowes-Lyon.

The house was built in the 1730's.

The manor house of St Paul's Walden and associated ground was sold by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral during the C17, being bought after 1700 by Edward Gilbert (d 1762) who built a house c 1730, constructing ornamented formal pleasure grounds in adjacent woodland. Following Gilbert's death his daughter, Mrs Mary Bowes, the wife of George Bowes who laid out Gibside (qv), County Durham, inherited the estate, and following her husband's death, she employed James Paine (1717-89) to extend the house.

The garden has a fine collection of statuary, including a pair known as "The Wrestlers," on the the right is a copy of Michelangelo's "Sampson and Two Philistines," while the left is a copy of Giambologna's "Hercules and Antaeus perhaps sculpted by John Nost II, circa 1730.

Currently no high res photographs are available.

 

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In1718 John Nost II sold four statues, “Cain and Abel, Diana, a Gladiator and Hercules with a club”, at a cost of £86 to the Earl of Hopetoun for his gardens at Hopetoun House, near Edinburgh.  (all disappeared) - Nost II-Hopetoun contract; account for shipping, NRA (S) 888

This was quickly followed by another order worth £56 for four more: “an Adonis with a greyhound, Venus with Cupid, Venus coming out of the bath, and Phaon playing on a pipe”. again disappeared.

https://thegardengateisopen.blog/2022/04/10/st-pauls-walden-bury-an-18th-century-landscape-of-allees-statuary-and-temples/

Brief Biography of John Nost II d.1729.

 

Lifted entirely from -

http://217.204.55.158/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=1977

This entry needs to be edited in the light of recent researches.

John Nost II was the cousin of John Nost I, 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.

 

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 van 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.

On the other hand to me this might suggest that he had been invested in by his aunt Frances Nost

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 later set up in Grosvenor Square).

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 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)

2. Samson slaying the Philistine aka Cain and Abel - the John van Nost I - Harrowden Hall and Wimpole Hall

Part 2.

  The Lead Statues of  Samson and the Philistine.at Harrowden Hall and Wimpole Hall.

Frequently referred to as Cain and Abel in the 17th/18th Centuries

Both are attributed to John van Nost I (the Elder) d. 1710. but lack of documentation means that the attribution cannot be confirmed with certainty.

The Harrowden Hall, Northamptonshire, Samson and the Philistine.

John Nost the Elder (d.1710) of Hyde Park Corner, supplied leadwork to Chatsworth and must have known the original marble sculpture of Samson because of his commissions for Buckingham House (c. 1703).

Originally from Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium he had arrived in England before 1686.

An early 18th century cast of the Samson group attributed to John Nost I is at Harrowden Hall (reproduced Country Life 1908, Jackson Stops, 1974 (see image below) and a ‘Cain and Abel, of John de Bellone, lead’ was one of the sculptures sold at Nost’s end-of-life sale in 1712 (O'Connell 1987).

Van Nost’s moulds were evidently reused by John Nost II (d. 1729) (and also by the firm’s apprentice, possible collaborator and later competitor, Andrew Carpenter (c. 1677-1737), as a Cain and Abel was sent by van Nost II to Hopetoun House in 1718, and the Stowe cast (installed by 1738; sold in 1922, now at Trent Park) are attributed to Carpenter (Bevington 1994, p. 114).

We can also be certain that Carpenter his former assistant  also produced copies of Giambologna’s group because a Cain and Abel group is recorded on the price list sent to Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle (1669-1738), in 1723.

His price list submitted to Lord Carlisle at Castle Howard in 1723 gives some indication of the range he was able to provide.  It was £20 for a six foot Cain and Abel or Diana and Stag. A six foot Venus de Medici was £15.

Henry Cheere (1703 – 81) with his younger brother John Cheere (1709 – 87) took over the yard of Anthony ‘Noast’ Nost at Hyde Park Corner in 1737 in what became Portugal Row, Piccadilly, but Henry Cheere’s workshops specialising in marble monuments and Chimneypieces were in Westminster and quite separate from the Hyde Park Corner site.

For the John van Nost II version see - https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/03/3-lead-statue-of-samson-slaying.html

After the death of John Nost II his widow Catherine nee Cheesborough) took over the administration of the Yard in Portugal Row, Hyde Park Corner at £20 /year rising to £40 in 1734. when the Equestrian statue of William III was supplied to Glasgow

Anthony van Nost was paying the rates at Hyde Park Corner from December 1735 until the yard was taken over by the Cheere brothers in 1737.

The Harrowden Hall, Northamptonshire Samson Slaying the Philistine / Cain and Abel.

Image below from the Conway Library.

The group attributed to John Cheere.

Unfortunately there are no good quality  photographs available at present.

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Illustration from English Leadwork by Laurence Weaver pub 1909.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7fr05c48&seq=10

Image below from the Conway Library.

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The Wimpole Hall Samson Slaying the Philistine.

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/samson-slaying-the-philistine-254844

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For a lead bust of John Locke see 

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2018/

For a  lead "Blackamore" Sundial of 1708 by van Nost I see -

https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/2538

Here is not the place for a detailed biog, of John van Nost I (the elder) 

but a briefish biog from The Henry Moore Centre Leeds see -

https://gunnis.henry-moore.org/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=1976&from_list=true&x=3

John Nost carved several magnificent baroque monuments but his principal activity was the design, manufacture and supply of lead garden statues. He was a native of Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium, but nothing is known of his training or family, except that he had a sister, Mary, mentioned in his will. He arrived in England some time before 1686, and was ‘foreman’ to Arnold Quellin before the latter’s death in London that year (Vertue IV, 35). Nost subsequently married his master’s widow and sole heiress, Frances, née Siberechts, a daughter of the landscape painter, Jan Siberechts.

He seems to have established himself quickly with influential patrons. In the 1690s he supplied marble tables to the Duke of Devonshire (71), wooden equestrian figures of monarchs for the ‘line of Kings’ at the Tower of London (7) and in 1695, statues of King William and Queen Mary for the Royal Exchange, for which he received £120 (9, 11). In 1697 the agent for one patron, Lady Noel (Lord Irwin’s widow: 2), described Nost as ‘one of the best hands in England’ (Gilbert 1962-3, 5).

He acquired a property in the Haymarket in 1692, rated at £60, which remained in the family until the death of his widow in 1716. His affluent neighbours included the Dutch ambassador and Lord Orrery. 

In 1698 Nost took another property in Portugal Row. Here, and in neighbouring Stone Bridge, both on Hyde Park Corner, the Nost family owned premises until 1737, when John Cheere took them over. Richard Osgood, Edward Hurst and Josias Iback were all neighbours. 

Nost’s visitors included the architect William Wynde, who in 1703 wrote to Lady Mary Bridgeman that he was searching for ‘a statue fitt for yr Ladys garden’ and ‘in order thereunto I was at Mr Nostes ... and Mr Ansgood’ (presumably Osgood). 

The architect appears to have recommended Osgood’s work (Wynde/Bridgeman). Nost’s apprentices and assistants included William Colebourne, William Palmer and Andrew Carpenter, who according to Vertue was ‘for some years principal assistant (to Mr. Nost Senr, Carver) in Modelling. & Carving…’ (Vertue III, 83).

By 1700 Nost was occupied with an extensive contract at Hampton Court. This included several marble chimney-pieces, two of which were costed at £235 and £275 (55, 57). Both are intricately carved and count among his finest works, the first with a relief of a reclining Venus in her chariot and the second with a relief of two intertwined doves. 

In 1701 he provided ‘several drawings of the King’s statue for the marble fountain’, charged at £2 and clay models for a fountain (64). One had four mermaids seated on dolphins and four shells between them, whilst the alternative had four figures of young men on dolphins and four swans between them (TNA WORK 5/52 fol 32). A third model had shells, dolphins, a sea-horse and 11 other figures (TNA WORK 5/51 fol 506). He was also responsible for the statue of a blackamoor and submitted accounts ‘for modelling a figure of a Blackamore kneeling being 5 ft high holding up a sundial’ and then for ‘casting the said Balackamore in hard metal and repainting’ (14). Pedestals of Portland stone were provided by Nost for statues of the Gladiator, Diana, Hercules and Apollo (68) (TNA WORK 5/51 fol 506; 5/52 fol 340).

His sculpture was evidently noticed by members of the Court, for one of Nost’s most discerning and extensive patrons was Thomas Coke of Melbourne Hall, vice-chamberlain to Queen Anne. Among Coke’s many purchases were the stupendous Four Seasons vase (67), dramatic figures of Perseus and Andromeda (29) and copies of the Blackamoor and Indian which Nost had originally supplied to Hampton Court (24). A letter to Coke in the Melbourne archives suggests that there were problems with the casting process and that the sculptor was under pressure: ‘Hon.red Sir, I hope you will pardon my not answering your desires sooner. I had set up 2 moulds of boys but thay weare not to my minde and having had some Exterordinary brake which Call’d me out of towne which hath beene a great hindrance to me in my Buisines. But I wish now with all speed Dispatch y.or Boys’ (Nost I/Coke). Enclosed with the letter were his prices for lead figures: ‘The Sabine Rape, £90’, ‘Hercules and Centoure, £70,’ and ‘Hercules and Anteus, £80’. Nost claimed that he ‘made as nice a calculation as can be and find it cannot be done under the prises that is rated above’, but Coke, who was a demanding client, found them too expensive (Melbourne Hall archives, quoted in Gunnis 1968, 280). 

In the library at Melbourne Hal is Nost’s copy of Serlio’s Five Books of Architecture,‘Englished by Robert Peake’, 1611, bought by the sculptor in 1696, and later purchased by Coke for 15s at the sale of Nost’s effects.

In 1706 Lord Ashburnham asked Brian Fairfax to ascertain Nost’s charges for the ‘statues for the attic of the Duke of Buckingham’s London house’ (66). They had cost £27 each. In a later letter Lord Ashburnham complained that Nost had raised his prices, which were now so excessive that he would have to find another sculptor for his house at Ampthill (Letter-book of the 1st Lord Ashburnham in Gunnis 1968, 280). His complaint sounds unjustified: with the exception of the Melbourne commission, Nost’s charges appear to have remained stable, and comparable to those later proposed by Carpentiere: his ‘Prices of Statues and Flowerpotes proposed for the Earl of Hoptone’ submitted in 1709 included a six foot high Hercules and his Mistress, a Venus and Adonis and a Bacchus and Ceres, all at £30, as well as two figures of Hope, a Flying Horse & Fame, Four statues about the fountain, and four six foot high urns at £25 each (Nost/Hopetoun MS).

 What, if anything, was purchased from this list, prepared for Charles, 1st Earl of Hopetoun, is unknown. Eight years later, in 1718, his cousin, John Nost II, who had taken over his business, signed two contracts to supply the earl with a total of eight ‘Mettle statues’.

Nost provided several important monuments, though many attributed to him have not been fully established as his work. The identified memorials range from a relatively modest wall-tablet, costing £50 (5) to the monument to Viscount Irwin, at £600, which has a tabernacle frame enclosing a full sized effigy and grieving widow (2). The monument to the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch at Durisdeer, his most elaborate work, has an inner segmental frame surrounded by a rectangular frame with Corinthian capitals and urns at its corners and above that a richly swagged baldacchino. Putti carrying a scroll hover above the two effigies. The design, model and monument survive and indicate that the patron expected few changes to the proposed composition (4).

Nost died, apparently childless, in August 1710, and ‘left behind him a good fortune’ (Vertue IV, 35). In his will, signed on 2 August, he bequeathed half of all ‘moneys, stocks, rights, credits, effects and estate whatsoever’ to his wife, Frances, and one third of the other half to his sister, Mary. He also left £60 to his cousin, John Nost II, £10 of which was to go ‘towards discharging his debts’. The rates for Stone Bridge continued to be paid after 1710 by a John Nost, which suggests that his cousin took over the running of the yard.

In 1712 a sale of Nost’s effects was held ‘at his late Dwelling House in Hyde-Park-Road (near the Queen’s Mead-house)’. The catalogue’s title-page described the collection as ‘the most Valuable that ever was Exposed to Sale in this Kingdom’. A year later an advertisement in The Guardian (no 60, 20 May 1713) informed the public that there remained ‘several extraordinary fine things belonging to the late famous sculptor Mr John Nost … fine inlaid tables, marble chimneypieces, figures etc’ and that Mrs Nost ‘designing to go beyond seas, will dispose of them at reasonable prices at her house near Hyde Park Corner where attendance will daily be given’. When she died in 1716 she left over £1,460 and various chattels, including a bequest to ‘my cousin John Nost [of] all the marble goods and figures which belongs to me’. She also left her share in an unidentified business to her partner and cousin, Mary Macadam. This may have been the yard, or perhaps a separate business run from the Haymarket property, where ‘Widow Mackadam’ continued to pay the rates.

Nost was an influential figure in the history of garden sculpture. Versions of his Blackamoor, for instance, were being produced until the late-18th century. Many of his garden ornaments must have perished, including the leadwork at Stonyhurst, which was apparently melted down by a Jesuit father to mend the roofs. 

The few known facts of his life offer little insight into Nost’s character. Until recently he and his cousin, John Nost II, were thought to be one person, and this, coupled with countless attributions, has prevented any conclusive evaluation of his oeuvre.

MGS

Literary References: Vertue IV, 35; Webb/Gunnis 1954, 25; Blakiston 1957, 54-58; Croft-Murray and Hulton 1960, 476-7; Gilbert 1962-3, 4-5; Stonyhurst 1964, 478-481; Gunnis 1968, 279-82; O’Connell 1987, 802-6; Whinney 1988, passim; Davis 1991 (1), passim; Schellekens 1995, 80-94; Grove 23, 1996, 253-4 (Murdoch); Spencer-Longhurst 1998, 33, n 26-29; ODNB (Sullivan); Sullivan 2005, 8

Archival References: WCA, Poor Rates 1692 (F1176), 1694 (F422), 1696 (F1222), 1698 (F1241), 1699 (F1245), 1706 (F1281), 1711 (F440-1), 1717 (F3602), 1737 (C126); Wynde/Bridgeman; Nost I/Coke; Nost/Hopetoun MS

Wills: Arnold Quellin (proved 3 September 1686, PROB 11/384/fol 332); John Nost (proved 12 August 1710 LMA, Archdeaconry of Middlesex, AM/PW 1710/89); Frances Nost (proved December 1716, PROB 11/555/fols 195v-196v)

Drawings: attributed design for the monument to William Douglas, Earl of Selkirk and 3rd Duke of Hamilton (†1694), HMI, Leeds; four attributed drawings of putti (VAM Box H10); ‘Design of the Two Pedestalls for the two Statues [Bacchus and Ceres] in the Inner Court at Hopetoun-house 1709/10, Linlithgow NRA (S) 888 Bundle 630

Auction Catalogues: Nost I ,1712 (1); Nost I, 1712 (2); Nost I, 1713

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/02/samson-slaying-philistine-aka-cain-and.html