5. The Brasenose College Oxford Cain and Abel. Nost II.

 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'.

 “On 9th March 1881, the ‘bump supper’ celebration of a Brasenose success on the river turned ugly. ‘In the flickering light of bonfires,’ recalled L.R. Farnell, the scholar of Greek religion, ‘could be seen the figures of some two hundred young men bounding and leaping high . . . and passing from lurid light into deep shadow alternately; and the leaping was accompanied by terrifying yells and the most fantastic music ever devised by savages standing on the verge of culture.’ Finally, the undergraduates turned their attentions to a statue that had stood in the middle of Old Quad lawn for 150 years, and defaced it with indelible paint. It and its obscene graffiti were quietly despatched to a scrapyard soon after.

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.

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The Brasenose College Servants in 1861.

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The Brasenose College Eight in the Quad in 1875.

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Brasenose Quad.

Basire after WM Turner.

Oxford Almanack

1805.

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/sskwsjt7/images?id=wsxqcrjt

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The Brasenose Quad.

George Pyne (1800 - 84).

https://www.bonhams.com/auction/19782/lot/143/george-pyne-british-1800-1884-the-old-quad-brasenose-college-oxford/

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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)

4. Samson and the Philistine /Cain and Abel by Carpentiere formerly at Stow, Buckinghamshire.

 

Part 4. Samson slaying the Philistine.

AKA Hercules and Cacus.

Colossal Lead Group.

c. Early 1730's

 Andreas Carpentiere aka Andrew Carpenter (c. 1677 - 1737).

Formerly at Stowe, Buckinghamshire now at Trent Park.

The  Lead group by Andrew Carpenter, along with an Hercules and Anteus were introduced to the garden at Stowe in the 1730's, they had formerly stood on the sloping lawn in front of the Temple of Venus, as suggested in Samuel Boyse’s poem The Triumphs of Nature (1742).

In 1765 he groups were moved to the Grecian Valley at Stowe perhaps by Capability Brown..

Recently replaced by replicas.

The original now at Trent Park. Enfield.

Taken to Trent Park along with Hercules and Anteus in the 1923 at the final dispersal of objects from Stowe and re-erected by Sir Philip Sasoon.

The Group of  Samson slaying the Philistine/ Cain and Abel was restored and returned to Trent Park in 2012 along with the lead  also by Carpentiere of Hercules wrestling Anteus.

1) The significance of this lead group by Andrew Carpenter, which formerly stood on the sloping lawn in front of the Temple of Venus, was suggested in Samuel Boyse’s poem The Triumphs of Nature (1742):

"Thy temple, beauteous Venus, we survey’d; Before, fit emblem of the lover’s view, Stand the first foes which nature ever knew; Fit emblem, goddess, of thy cruel pow’r, Which oft has bath’d the warring world in gore; Has smil’d to set the dearest friends at strife, And make the brother snatch the brother’s life: Yet mild at first, thy savage yoke appears, And like this scene a beauteous prospect wears; For scenes like this, thy fatal flame inspire, Unnerve the soul – and kindle soft desire!

 

It was moved to the far end of the Grecian Valley in August 1765 perhaps under the instructions of Capability Brown..

 

(1) Whately’s French translator, M. Latapie, recorded the presence of ‘several statuary groups in whitened lead ... the best of which are Hercules and Anteus [and] Cain & Abel, both pieces full of vigour.’ 

These colossal lead groups were supplied by Andrew Carpenter in the 1730s. The Hercules and Antaeus is first recorded in another part of the garden in 1735; in 1756 Earl Temple decided to remove the Grenville Column to its present position close to the Temple of Ancient Virtue, and the Hercules and Antaeus took its place to the north-west of the Grecian Temple. 

The Cain and Abel (see p. 18) was part of the original iconographical scheme of the Temple of Venus and was moved to the far end of the Grecian Valley in 1765. 

These two groups, and a Hercules and the Boar, which also stood at the north-eastern end, all celebrate the triumph of physical strength, which would have supported the imperial programme of the valley when fully established in the 1760s. 

They were carefully positioned in the way that painters such as Claude used figures to frame a landscape and enhance the effects of perspective. 

Latapie’s description provides useful evidence that such lead statues were frequently painted to resemble stone.

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Carpentiere

Biographical Notes.

from https://gunnis.henry-moore.org/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=461&from_list=true&x=7

Carpenter, ‘a Man in his time esteemd for his Skill’ (Vertue III, 83) was responsible for a number of major statues and monuments in marble and was the most successful designer and modeller of lead garden figures in the generation between John Nost I and John Cheere.

His background is obscure, though the diarist, George Vertue, who knew him well, noted that ‘Charpentiere’ had been born between 1675 and 1677. He may have been a native of the French-speaking Netherlands. 

Carpenter told Vertue that he had been instructed in ‘the rudiments of drawing’ by the French academician, Peter Eude, who later settled in Scotland (Vertue IV, 35). 

No details are known of his early training, but he was John Nost I’s principal assistant, engaged in modelling and carving over several years for Nost before he set up independently (Vertue III, 83).

Carpenter’s name first appears in the rate-books in 1703, when he acquired premises in Portugal Row, (now part of Piccadilly) close to the van Nost workshop. His neighbours were predominantly French and included the sculptor Nadauld, the decorative painter Louis Laguerre and, from 1707 to 1714, the ironsmith Jean Tijou. 

J T Smith (in Nollekens and his Times pub 1828) recorded that the workshop stood on the site in Piccadilly later occupied by Egremont House.

Carpenter’s first major commission and one of his finest works was the statue of Queen Anne for the Moot Hall in Leeds, commissioned by Alderman William Milner and erected in 1713 (8). The Leeds antiquary, Ralph Thoresby, paid numerous visits to the sculptor’s London workshop to check the work’s progress and persuaded Carpenter to make a drawing of the statue to be engraved for Thoresby’s Ducatus Leodiensis (1715). In tones that suggest intense civic pride, Thoresby described the erection of this ‘most noble magnificent statue of her Majesty ... to the full proportion; in the best white marble.’ The statue, in a niche on the principal front of the hall above the town’s coat of arms, ‘was viewed by many of the nobility and gentry who generally esteemed it the best that was ever made, not excepting the most celebrated one [by Francis Bird] in St Paul’s Church-yard’ (Ducatus Leodiensis, 250). The directors of the building scheme at St Paul’s Cathedral were sufficiently impressed with Carpenter’s work to approach him as well as Bird in 1716 when they contemplated commissioning statues for the west end of the cathedral, but they gave the contract to Bird.

On one visit to the workshop in May 1714 Thoresby recorded that as well as works in marble he also saw ‘curious workmanship’ by Carpenter in lead (Diary 2, 209) and leadwork appears to have been Carpenter’s mainstay. In 1716 he supplied garden sculpture to the 1st Earl of Bristol (9) and in 1722, an ‘abundance of works’ to the Duke of Chandos for Canons (10). Drawing on Nost’s work, as well as classical and renaissance prototypes and his own innovations, Carpenter built up a substantial repertoire of lead figures. 

His price list submitted to Lord Carlisle at Castle Howard who made purchases in 1723 gives some indication of the range as well as the dimensions and prices of his garden ornaments:

Height in Feet / Pounds

Cain and Abel l6 20

Do 6 20

Hercules & Wild Boar 6 20

Dianna & Stagg 6 20

Narcifsus 7 1/2 27

Venus de medici 6 15

Antonius 6 18

Saturnus 6 1/2 20

Triton 6 20

Bacchus sitting 6 18

Faunus 6 20

Meleager 6 20

Adonis 6 18

Apollo 6 18

Flora 6 16

A Gladiator 6 12

Duke of Marlborough 6 28

Roman Wrestlers 20

Narcissus 5 1/2 20 ?

Neptune 5 1/2 9

Mercury 5 1/2 10

Antinous 5 8

Venus 5 10

Do 5 7

a Bagpiper 5 10

An Indian 5 8

Apollo 5 9

Flora 5 9

Mercury 5 9

Cleopatra 5 7

Daphne 5 8

A french paisant & paisanne [two figures] 4 10

Jupiter 4 1/2 6

Apollo 4 5

Winter & Autumn [2 :fig] 4 1/2 8:08:0

4 Signs of ye Zodiac 4 16

A faunus & Nimph [two figures] 4 8:08:0

Mercury & fame [two figures] 3 6:06:0

Apollo 3 1/2 3:10:0

Love & disdain [two figures] 3 1/2 8

A large vase 6 20

3 do 5 24

1 do 4 6

Boys and Girls 18:18:0

4 Large Bustos 16

a pr of vase 7

6 vases 22

12 flower potts large & small 24

The list was not comprehensive, for it did not include Carlisle’s chosen figures (12). The sculptor was also prepared to provide bespoke items: : William Aikman visited Carpenter and several other Hyde Park Corner figure makers in November 1725 on behalf of Sir John Clerk of Mavisbank and reported that although he was not impressed by the goods in stock it was possible to ‘get something done a-purpose after a good design’ (Fleming 1962 (1), 38). Packing and freight for leads required as much care as for marbles: Carlisle paid £84 for his statues, packing cases cost £9 7s 9d, and it took a workman nine and a half days, twenty-one pounds of ‘spike’ and a thousand ‘double-tenns’ nails to prepare the works for the journey to Yorkshire.

Carpenter clearly prospered in his middle years, for in 1718 he took a second site in Portugal Row, described in the rate-books as ‘workhouse and land.’ He also invested in property at Edgware, building ‘some houses and an Inn’ on the outskirts of the Canons estate. 

Vertue relates that the sculptor advertised his presence in the area with one of his own works ‘and in the middle of the road way put up a statue for a sign’ (Vertue III, 83). Chandos was incensed at this vulgarity, but the sculptor refused to remove the figure.

There were other influential patrons. In 1719 he provided garden ornaments under the direction of the architect, James Gibbs, for Wimpole Hall (23) and in 1722 he transported marble figures from Chatsworth to Chiswick and bronzed busts for Lord Burlington (25). Gibbs and Carpenter collaborated again on allegorical figures at Ditchley Park in 1722 (11), and on the monument to Montague Garrard Drake, 1725 (2), which cost £180. Carpenter’s monument to the ‘restless malcontent’ Henry Booth, 1st Earl of Warrington (6), erected by his son, George, in 1734, was inspired by Gibbs’s dramatic design for the monument to Katharine Bovey, 1727-8, in Westminster Abbey, illustrated in A Book of Architecture,1728. The focal point of the Bovey monument is a pair of allegorical Virtues representing Learning and Truth, who point towards Mrs Bovey’s portrait, to emphasize her particular qualities. The same attendant figures appear again on the Warrington monument, but as fashionable trappings to an epitaph extolling Warrington’s revolutionary principles and exonerating him from allegations of corruption.

Carpenter’s monuments make use of ornaments familiar from John Nost I’s work, including scrolls, flaming urns, cartouches and putti. He appears to have kept his prices competitive, charging only £389 for the Warrington, a monument comparable in its materials and carving to Nost’s memorial to Viscount Irwin, 1697, at Whitkirk, which cost £600. 

Carpenter’s work did not suffer as a result of his careful budgeting: the reclining figure of Sir John Thornycroft, bewigged, in his nightgown and in mid-speech, is intricately carved, particularly the gesturing fingers and fleshy undersides of the feet (3).

In his later years Carpenter had business anxieties. He was increasingly obliged to give ‘time & study to Cast Leaden figures’ and complained that prices paid for work at this less prestigious end of the market were diminishing and that ‘he had much ado to hold up his head at last’ (Vertue III, 83). 

In January 1736 he announced in the Daily Journal that he intended to ‘leave off entirely the casting of lead figures’ and intended to sell ‘his entire stock of Statues of Figures in Hard Lead, Vases, Pots and Pedestals’. Perhaps encouraged by two recently completed commissions in Cheshire (6, 7), he advertised an intention to ‘apply himself solely to his other business, viz the Statuary and Carving Part in Marble and Stone’ (ibid).

The advertisement had little effect. Carpenter is not known to have won any further major commissions and ‘age and cares brought him to his end’ in July 1737, aged a little over 60. He was buried in his parish church, St George, Hanover Square (Vertue III, 83). 

In his will the sculptor left all his ‘cottages, houses, lands, tenements and estate’ in Edgware to his wife Ann, together with his chattels and shop contents. His son, John Carpenter, who ‘had been an Idle fellow many years’ (Vertue III, 83) received the proverbial shilling. Ann Carpenter continued to pay rates on the Hyde Park property and in May 1744, a sale was held there of her late husband’s ‘Metal Statues or Figures in Hard Lead ... together with his Moulds, Models and casts in Plaister’ (Daily Advertiser).

There is no known portrait of the sculptor, ‘a gross heavy man allwayes’ (Vertue III, 83). He was of particular value to Vertue while gathering information for his intended history of British painting and sculpture, since Carpenter provided accounts of several artists including Arnold Quellin, the elder Nost, John Nost II and Louis Laguerre.

Carpenter’s monuments have been described by Margaret Whinney as transitional works, hovering stylistically between the ornamental baroque of Nost and the new Gibbsian designs, which drew on developments in Continental sculpture. 

His lead garden figures, particularly the ambitious groups supplied for Powis Castle (19,20), are masterpieces of the genre.

MGS

Literary References: Vertue III, 83, IV, 35; Daily Journal, 26 Jan 1736 (Burney 319B); Daily Ad, 4 May 1744 (Burney 381B); Thoresby Diary (1830), vol 2, 98, 190, 209, 215, 221-2; Smith 1846, 15-16; DNB; Bolton 1939, 128, 132; Friedman 1973 (1); Friedman 1984 (1), passim; Fleming 1962 (1), 38-9; O’Connell 1987, 804-5; Whinney 1988, 244-251; Davis 1991 (1), passim

Archival References: WCA, Poor Rates, St Martin-in-the-Fields, 1703, (F1262) , 1718 (F447); St George, Hanover Square 1727, (C97), 1737, (C127); Carpenter-Carlisle, list

Will: PROB 11/684 sig155

Auction Catalogues: Carpenter 1736; Carpenter 1744.