Shock Dog by Anne Seymour Damer Redux.

 

This post prompted by an article in the Antiques Trades Gazette.

https://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2026/export-block-on-18th-century-shock-dog-by-female-sculptor

              £635,000 is needed to keep the sculpture in England. No hint of the buyer or underbidder.

It seems amazing to me that whilst it is a perfectly adequate - even charming piece of sculpture I fail to comprehend why two bidders deem it to be worth so much.

This sculpture by Anne Damer nee Conway (1748-1828) was auctioned at Sotheby’s Lot 352  on July 2, 2025 and an export licence subsequently was applied for.

I have written at some length on Mrs Damer her sculptures and portraits of her, see -

https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2024/12/anne-seymour-damer-and-her-sculptures.html

It has to be said that there has always been some scepticism regarding the actual authorship of her work. Her early work was made under the tutelidge of Cerrachi.

Here is the link to Sotheby's website -

 https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2025/master-sculpture-from-four-millenia-l25264/shock-dog

Prior to the Sotheby’s sale the sculpture had remained in the artist's family following it having been bequeathed by the sculptor to her cousin and heir, Louisa Johnston (née Campbell 1776-1852).

A marble is in the Metropolitan Museum New York (see below).

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/642422

 

The UK government, on the advice of The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA), temporarily blocked the sculpture from export from the country in the hope a UK institution can raise the £635,000 needed.

The images below are from Sotheby's website. It would have been useful to see the inscription.

Inscribed  ANNA. / ΣEIMOPIΣ. / ΔAMEP. EΠOIEI,  1795.

30 x 38 x 31cm.

........................................

Mrs Damer and her Dogs.

 Horace Walpole said of  "She has a singular talent for catching the characters of animals. I have two dogs sleeping, by her (which she has since executed in marble for her brother, the Duke of Richmond) that are perfection".

Walpole wrote in his Anecdotes of Painting, published in 1781: ‘Her shock-dog, large as life, and only not alive, has a looseness and softness in the curls that seemed impossible in terra-cotta: it rivals the marble of Bernini in the Royal collection.’

I think he might have been slightly biased given his connections with her - he was her guardian and her fathers cousin.

 At Strawberry Hill Walpole housed what was probably the largest collection of Anne Seymour Damer’s works ever formed. It comprised  twelve sculptures, of which four were wax medallions – in the style of the feted wax modeller, Isaac Gosset – along with four heads and four sculpted animals.

 Her sculptures were mainly located in the Strawberry Hill private rooms, in which Walpole lived.

Anne Conway married John Damer, the eldest son of Lord Milton in 1767, but their unhappy marriage ended with her debt-ridden husband’s suicide in 1776. Following his death, Damer embarked on the highly unusual path of becoming a sculptor, then unheard of as a profession for women, even less those of aristocratic standing. 

With strong support from Walpole, Damer received lessons in modelling from Giuseppe Ceracchi (whose statue of Anne Seymour Damer as the Muse of Sculpture is in the British Museum) and from John Bacon, as well as embarking on various study visits to Italy.

Italian sculptor, trained Rome settled in London 1773, where taught Mrs Damer. In 1779 left for Vienna, Amsterdam and Rome. To America in 1790-2 and again 1794-5, making busts of Republican leaders. Then in 1799 settled in France, where guillotined after joining a plot against Napoleon (plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise).

Although Percy Noble in Anne Seymour Damer, Woman of Art and Fashion, London, pub 1908 pieced together a relatively complete inventory of Damer's works in 1908, her dying wish to destroy all her personal documents has resulted in an academic void regarding the artist's life.

 Of the six sculptures of dogs that Damer exhibited at the Royal Academy, three are known to have been terracottas, one the Goodwood group and another, a lost portrait of her whippet, Fidele.

 This leaves one tantalisingly ambiguous entry from the Royal Academy catalogue of 1800 of  "A Lap-dog".

 A second possibility lies in a reference Noble makes to another unaccounted for marble. He relates that Damer had presented Queen Charlotte with a marble dog, which, on her death passed into the collection of her eldest daughter Elizabeth. 

 After Elizabeth's death in 1840, her possessions were bequeathed to her siblings and friends in England.

 The whereabouts of that marble dog also remain unknown - Given the circumstantial evidence this is most likely the sculpture now in the Metropolitan Museum.

....................

The Metropolitan Museum Marble Shock Dog.

Sizes 33.3 × 38 × 32.1 cm.

 It is Incised on oval at rear, in Greek: ΑΝΝΑ.ΣΕΙΜΟΡΙΣ.ΔΑΜΕΡ.ΕΠΟΙΕΙ. [made by Anne Seymour Damer].

Private Collection, London , Italy (until 2013; sold at 28th Biennale Dell-Antiquariato, Florence, October 5–13, 2013, to Zietz); [ Rainer Zietz Limited , London, 2013–14; sold to MMA ].