Lead Bust of Matthew Prior

     

A Lead Bust of Matthew Prior by John Cheere (1709 - 87).

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) was a poet, diplomat and politician, who became a fellow of St John's College Cambridge in 1688. He published translations from Horace and Ovid, and throughout his life wrote poems and essays. Prior was a collector of paintings and prints.

This three quarter life size, lead bust on a turned wooden socle was sold by the Paris auction rooms Fraysse, Lot 193, on 6 June 2012 for 97,000 Euros - a somewhat surprising result - it was estimated at 4 - 8000 euros. It was catalogued as a bust of the painter Hyacinth Rigaud (1659 - 1743) and described as early 18th century, Height: 53 cm Width: 33 cm and probably derived from the famous painting in the Museum of Perpignan, "Self-portrait with a turban" produced in 1698.

This bust is in fact a lead version of a bust of Matthew Prior which was also produced in plaster.

A Three quarter life size plaster bust of Matthew Prior described as probably from the workshop of John Cheere sold at Sotheby's, Bond Street, London 14 July 2010 - 44.5cm., 17½in tall. 

There is another version of this bust at the York Museums Trust - currently in deep store and unavailable for inspection or photography until late summer of 2015. The photograph on their website is a very poor, low resolution example (see below), but is still easily recognisable as the Cheere bust of Prior.

This bust was originally supplied in 1749 to Chomley Turner d. 1757 for Kirkleatham Hall in Yorkshire along with busts of John Dryden (after Peter Scheemakers), William Congreve, Joseph Addison,Sir Francis Bacon (after Roubiliac), Dr Samuel Clark, Dean Swift, Cicero and Horace, along with Statuettes of Rubens and van Dyck (after Rysbrack), Shakespeare (after Scheemakers), Homer, Spencer, Alexander Pope, Milton, Inigo Jones, Isaac Newton and John Locke.

Image courtesy of York Museums Trust :: http://yorkmuseumstrust.org.uk :: CC BY-SA 4.0

This bust appears to be very loosely based on the bust of Prior on his monument at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, The tomb, designed by James Gibbs, incorporates Antoine Coysevox's bust of Prior presented by King Louis XIV. (below).

 Matthew Prior by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659 - 1743) at St John College, University of Cambridge.

Matthew Prior by Thomas Hudson after Jonathan Richardson

National Portrait Gallery.

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Portrait of Matthew Prior - Charles Viennot after Hyacinthe Rigaud. 1700.

Copyright Tajan, Paris.

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Wedgwood & Bentley Basalt Bust of Matthew Prior c. 1775.

British Museum

15.2 inches tall.

The original plaster supplied to Wedgwood & Bentley in 1775 by Hoskins and Grant is in the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston (4592).

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For the first in depth work on the plaster statuary of John Cheere see the exhibition catalogue of 1974, Leeds, Temple Newsam and Marble Hill House Twickenham. 

The Man at Hyde Park Corner -

organised and compiled by Dr Terry Friedman Timothy Clifford.

Mezzotint after Jonathan Richardson Snr.

C.1775.

British Museum.

Agnes Strickland Brief Biography.

                           

Agnes Strickland - Some further Images and a Brief Biography.

 

 

Frontispiece from The Life of Agnes Strickland

By Jane Margaret Strickland. 1887.

 

 

 

 

 



Agnes Strickland (1796 -1874) was second of Eight children, five of whom achieved some sort of literary fame. Her father Thomas Strickland d.1818. He was described as an Importer and Manager of the Greenland Docks in Rotherhithe. Noted as Wharfinger in The Gazette of  6 March 1792.  His father was clerk at Wells and Hallets Dockyard, which later became the Greenland Docks.

After 1803 he retired from the dock and bought a house in Norwich and rented Stowe House, near Bungay, Suffolk. He kept the house in Norwich where he had invested in his new business Thomas Strickland and Company, Coach Manufactory of St Giles Gate. In 1808 he purchased Reydon Hall, nr Southwold, Suffolk, a large manor house with tenant farms expecting to live the life of a gentleman.

The failure of the coach building business and his death in 1818 (Agnes was 22) severely reduced the family fortunes, and although they still received rents from the land at Reydon Hall, parts of the house had to be closed up. The house in Norwich had to be sold. This resulted in the need to earn some sort of living.

Their financial circumstances, forced the Strickland girls to supplement the family income by writing for the literary markets available to young ladies during the pre-Victorian period. There was a demand for children’s books and the sisters wrote for many such works. They also contributed stories and poems to the flourishing gift-book and annual trade of the 1820's but their most significant outlet was the magazines for women. It was in such periodicals as the Lady’s Magazine and Museum (1831–37) and the Court Magazine and Monthly Critic (1838–47) that Agnes and Elizabeth first published biographical sketches of royal ladies, and in La Belle Assemblée (1827–28).

 

 

Agnes Strickland aged 50

Signed and dated E Hodges Bailey RA. 1846

 

 

 

Cropped image from the portrait of Agnes Strickland by John Hayes, 1846. NPG.

 

 

The Strickland Children.

 

Agnes Strickland was the second of eight children - the first six were girls, followed by two boys. Five of the children had some sort of literary career.

 

Elizabeth Strickland (1794 - 85) was co author with Agnes in many of her work but preferred to remain in the background. She never married.

 

Jane Margaret Strickland - (1800 - 88),  was born 18 April 1800. She died at Park Lane Cottage, Southwold, Suffolk,14 June 1888, and was buried in the churchyard there beside her sister Agnes. Her chief work was ‘Rome, Republican and Regal: a Family History of Rome.’ It was edited by Agnes, and published in two volumes in 1854. She wrote some insignificant books for children, and a biography of her sister The Life of Agnes Strickland, published in 1887.She never married.

 

Catherine Parr Strickland, b. Rotherhithe, Kent (9 June 1802 - 1899). m. Thomas Traill ( d. 1859) an Orcadian, retired Army Officer They emigrated to Newcastle Canada in 1832.

 

 

Catherine Parr Strickland - National Archives of Canada.

 

A small selection of her writings -

The Tell Tale: an original collection of moral and amusing stories including The Blind Highland piper and other stories(1818).

The Young Emigrants (about settlement in Canada) 1826, after favourable reports sent from her brother Samuel Strickland

The Backwoods of Canada: being letters from the wife of an emigrant officer, illustrative of the domestic economy of British America (London, 1836)

 

Canadian Crusoes:  a tale of the Rice Lake plains (1852)

Pearls and Pebbles (1894)

 

Susanna Strickland, (1803 - 85)  b. 6 Dec 1803 at Bungay, Suffolk, married Lt John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie, retired from the 21st Foot on half pay 4 April 1831, at St Pancras Church London met at Thomas Pringles house in Hampstead, wrote two anti-slavery tracts, The history of Mary Prince, a West Indian slave . . . (1831) and Negro slavery described by a negro: being the narrative of Ashton Warner (1831). They emigrated to Canada in the summer of 1832. She wrote -

Roughing it in the Bush. 1852. pub. Richard Bentley. The edition published in 1988 has a very useful introduction written by Carl Ballstadt. This very popular work probably saved the family fortunes and is now acknowledged as a Canadian classic.

Life in the Clearings. 1853

Canadian Setters Guide. 1855

 

 

Susanna (Strickland) Moodie.

National Library of Canada.

 

See - Work of Words: The Writing of Susanna Strickland Moodie, By John Thurston. 1996

See - http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/strickland_susanna_11E.html

See http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/susanna-moodie

 

Sarah Strickland - 1798 - 1890. She appears to have been delegated to looking after their mother

 

Samuel Strickland. b.6 Nov 1804, He emigrated to Canada in 1825. In 1852 Mary Strickland died giving birth to her 13th child, and Samuel, with one of his daughters, visited his sisters in England. There Agnes, now famous as a writer of historical novels and biographies, persuaded her brother to write down the story of his life and times in Canada. Twenty-seven years in Canada West(1853). He died at Lakefield, Canada in3 Jan 1867

 

Thomas Strickland. 1807 - 74. Became a sailor.

There appeared to be something of a schism between Agnes, Elizabeth and Sarah and the other three sisters in the 1820's Agnes and Elizabeth being drawn to the High Church whilst the others were drawn in the opposite direction towards the Dissenters or low Church, which might have contributed to Catherine and Susanna's emigration to Canada, although any rift was mended in later years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the death, on 3 Sept. 1864 of her mother, Reydon Hall, which had always been the family home, was sold, and Agnes removed to Park Lane Cottage, Southwold. She had just finished revising the proofs of a new edition of the ‘Queens,’ which appeared in six volumes in 1864–5. In the latter year she published a novel in three volumes, ‘How will it end?’ for which Richard Bentley paid her £250. There was a second edition in the same year. In 1869 she visited Holland in order to collect materials for her ‘Lives of the last Four Princesses of the Royal House of Stuart’ (published 1872), her last work. At The Hague she had an interview with the queen of the Netherlands.

On 3 Aug. 1870 she was granted a pension of 100l. from the civil list (cf. Colles, Literature and the Pension List, p. 54). In 1872 her health gave way; she broke an ankle through a fall, partial paralysis supervened, and she died at Southwold on 13 July 1874. She was buried in the churchyard of Southwold.

 

Reydon Hall, Southwold, Suffolk.

 

 

 

                 Selected Works of Agnes Strickland. 

 

 

Lives of the Queens of England. 12 vols., 1840–1848

The Letters of Mary Queen of Scots. 1842-1843

Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses Connected with the Regal Succession of Great Britain. 8 Vols., 1851–1859

Lives of the Bachelor Kings of England. 1861

The Lives of the Seven Bishops Committed to the Tower in 1688. Enriched and Illustrated with Personal Letters, Now First Published, from the Bodleian Library. 1866

Lives of the Tudor Princesses, Including Lady Jane Gray and Her Sisters. 1868

Lives of the Last Four Princesses of the Royal House of Stuart. 1872

Children's Books

 

• The Moss-House: In Which Many of the Works of Nature Are Rendered a Source of Amusement to Children. 1822
• The Tell-Tell. 1823
• The Aviary; Or, An Agreeable Visit. Intended for Children. 1824
• The Use of Sight: Or, I Wish I Were Julia : Intended for the Amusement and Instruction of Children. 1824
• The Little Tradesman, or, A Peep into English Industry. 1824
• The Young Emigrant. 1826
• The Rival Crusoes, or, The Shipwreck: Also A Voyage to Norway; and The Fisherman's Cottage : Founded on Facts. 1826
• The Juvenile Forget Me Not; Or, Cabinet of Entertainment and Instruction. 1827
• Historic Tales of Illustrious British Children. 1833
• Tales of the School Room. 1835
• Tales and Stories From History. 1836
• Alda, the British Captive. 1841 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agnes Strickland (1796 -1874) by Edward Hodges Bailey (1788 - 1867)

A Life Size Marble Bust of Agnes Strickland (1806 - 1874)

     by Edward Hodges Bailey, 

   signed and dated 1846.

Formerly in the Collection of Dr Terry Friedman, died 2013.

Friedman was originally from Detroit, between 1969 and 1993, he was keeper of Decorative Art Studies at Temple Newsam, Leeds, and, later, principal keeper at Leeds City Art Gallery (where he was largely responsible for setting up the Henry Moore Centre for the Study of Sculpture).

 

Max. 28" Tall x 21" Wide.

 

Currently in a private collection.

 

 

 

 

For the biography of Edward Hodges Bailey see - A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain Ingrid Roscoe et al, Yale, 2009, which lists some 346 works where the bust is listed no 346 as Agnes Strickland, undated.

 

Edward Hodges Bailey R.A. (1796 - 1874) is probably most famous as the the sculptor of Admiral Lord Nelson atop the column in Trafalgar Square. Born in Bristol, his father was a ships carver, a pupil of John Flaxman, he studied at the Royal Academy Schools. He designed for the silversmiths Rundell and Bridge. He had a large studio in Newman Street, London - among his pupils were William Theed and Joseph Durham.

He was responsible for a large number, perhaps 112 funerary monuments, many portrait busts and ideal and other sculptures.


see - http://217.204.55.158/henrymoore/sculptor/browserecord.php?-action=browse&-recid=100



For a PhD Thesis by Caroline Patricia Jordan, University of Leeds, 2007, entitled Edward Hodges Bailey (1788 - 1867) and the Notion of Poetic Sculpture see - http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/4404/1/uk_bl_ethos_496537.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agnes Strickland by John Hayes, 1846.

Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 in. x 28 1/4 in.

Bequeathed by Agnes Strickland, 1875. to the National Portrait Gallery.

                      Currently on display in the Ladies Drawing Room at Bodelwyddan Castle

see - http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw06106/Agnes-Strickland

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Agnes Strickland c.1844 by Charles Gow, fl 1844 - 72.

 from the Morgan Library, New York

Given by John Pope Hennessey.

Black chalk, stumped, heightened with red and white chalk, on dark gray paper.

13 1/8 x 9 5/16 inches.

see - http://www.themorgan.org/drawings/item/123061

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Agnes Strickland by Charles Gow, 1844. 10 in. x 8 in.

National Portrait Gallery.

Black chalk, stumped, heightened with red and white chalk, on dark gray paper.

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      Extracts from the Life of Agnes Strickland by her sister Jane Margaret Strickland published William Blackwood and Sons, 1887. With references to Agnes sitting for her bust by Edward Hodges Bailey.

 Above three photographs of Agnes Strickland in later life looking serious and rather grim from NPG.

For further reading and information on the Strickland family see

http://canlit.ca/pdfs/articles/canlit121-Search(Peterman).pdf

Agnes Strickland by Una Pope Hennessy. 1940.

Life of Agnes Strickland by Jane Margaret Strickland. 1887.

Literary History of the Stricklands by Carl Ballstadt. 1965

For Susanna (Strickland) Moodie see Patrick Hamilton Ewing Collection Nat. Archives of Canada

 

Anne-Marie Fiquet du Boccage, and a Bust of Alexander Pope

                               Anne-Marie Fiquet du Boccage.

  née Le Page at Rouen, Normandy, France born on 22 October 1710 and died in Paris  8 August 1802.

                            Her name can be spelt with either a single or double C.

Images from the British Museum website -

Her bust in the British Museum and depicted here is described as a terracotta portrait bust of Anne-Marie Le Page, Madame Fiquet du Boccage (1710-1802) by Jean-Baptiste Defernex (1728-83), her head turned slightly to right wearing a classical-style gown with a brooch at the shoulder and a laurel wreath in her elaborately dressed hair. It was reported that Voltaire had crowned her with laurels at an entertainment at Ferney - although his motives were questioned. Traces of surface paint, it is probably hollow, on a turned and waisted tapering socle, dated 1766. H. 60.2cms width 37cms. She would have been 56 years old, She was described by admirers as Forma Venus, Arte Minerva, Voltaire called her the Sappho of Normandy.

At the age of 17 she married Pierre - Joseph Fiquet du Boccage (died August 1767), something of a poet and translator with a special interest in English literature. After 1734 they spent 8 months of the year in Paris holding a literary salon once a week at Rue de La Sourdiere attracting international intellectuals. A proto feminist she wrote the play Les Amazones performed in 1749. Her poetry included a version of Earthly Paradise imitating Milton of 1748, she translated Alexander Pope's Temple of Fame in 1749. In 1756 she published Le Columbiadne which could also be seen as early feminist literature. Her letters to her sister were published as Letters concerning England Holland and Italy in England in 1776.

For the works of Madame Boccage, including her translation of Milton and Pope see - Recueil des Oeuvres de Madame du Bocage, des Academies de Padoue, de Bologne, de Rome, et de Lyon, published at Lyon, chez Les Freres Perisse - 1762. Vol 1, with engraved portrait frontispiece -

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jAA-W_B5spgC&pg=PA199&lpg=PA199&dq=Bocage+Temple+de+Renomme&source=bl&ots=Z7v-tf3wRv&sig=iTTSCi8N1_RVcP-JLqpJ8JuST8Y&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xcpMVODmCIit7AaY8oCwCg&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Bocage%20Temple%20de%20Renomme&f=false

For her letters to her sister see - Recueil des Oeuvres de Madame du Bocage, des Academies de Padoue, de Bologne, de Rome, et de Lyon, published at Lyon, chez Les Freres Perisse - 1762. Vol III, Lettres sur L'Angleterre, La Hollande et L'Italie. 14th Letter at Dieppe 30 July 1750.

In Memoires Secrets de Bechaumont first published in London fro 1783 - 89, it is suggested that Dr Matthew Maty (1718 -76) was responsible for adding this bust to the British Museum Collection.

Matthew Matey was also responsible for presenting to the British Museum the 17 busts by Roubiliac, bought at the posthumous sale by Langfords of the contents of the Roubiliac studio in St Martin's Lane.
He later became chief librarian - Matthew Maty was of Huguenot extraction, his family having moved from France to the Netherlands. He had trained as a doctor at Leiden University and moved to London in 1740. He practised as a physician but also moved in literary circles, he founded the Journal Britannique in 1747 and falling out with Dr Samuel Johnson, who in 1756 described him as “that little black dog!”

He wrote Authentic Memoirs of the Life of Richard Meade published in 1755


Madame Boccage corresponded with Lord Chesterfield in 1750-52 and twelve of his letters to her were published by Dr Matthew Maty in Miscellaneous Works of the late Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield: consisting of letters to his friends, never before printed, and various other articles. To which are prefixed, memoirs of his life, tending to illustrate the civil, literary and political history of his time, 2 vols, London, 1777, vol. II, pp.242-81, letters LXXXV-XCVI.

In the Chesterfield letters to Madame Boccage there are several references to him giving her the busts of Pope, Milton, Dryden and Shakespeare.

14 June 1750 - replying to her asking for a bust of himself he tells her that he will be sending her busts of Pope and Milton.

20 May 1751 - He is sending four ambassadors, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden and Pope.

7 November 1751 - the bust of himself should arrive at Dieppe on the first good wind.

Chesterfield had asserted that "Roubiliac only was a statuary, and all the rest were stone cutters" from The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol 53 Jan. 1783


 Jean-Baptiste Defernex(6) was born in the parish of Saint-Nizier, Lyon, on 26 January 1728. He worked for his father, a master card-maker, who used carved wooden moulds. His earliest known dated work is a signed bronze bust of the duc de Valentinois dated 1750 in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris.(7) A terracotta bust of Mademoiselle Marie Anne Botot d'Angeville is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.(8) It too is signed and bears the date 1752. In 1754 and 1755 Defernex was working for the Vincennes/Sèvres factory on models for small-scale sculpture in biscuit and glazed porcelain.(9) On 17 October 1760 he was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc and exhibited in the Salons of 1762 and 1774. In the 1777 Almanack des artistes he was described as 'sculpteur statuaire de Mgr le duc d'Orléans'. He had been linked to this powerful family since at least 1763 when he supplied decorative elements for the staircase for the Palais Royal through the architect Contant d'Ivry. Defernex is best known for his portrait busts in bronze, marble and terracotta, and for his petite sculpture in biscuit porcelain for Sèvres.

see - http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=31594&partId=1

She wrote to her sister

"Avant que de quitter le rivage que je vous décris,je viens de répondre au beau présent que Mylord Chesterfield m’a envoyé : ce sont les bustes des quatre plus grands Poëtes d’Angleterre, Mylton, Dryden, Pope, & Shakespear ; lisez mon remerciement, trop peu digne, par malheur de son attention flatteuse : […] Je reprochais vivement à ces bustes célèbres, d’avoir passé la mer sans le vôtre ; je préférois, leur dis-je, à la représentation de vous autres morts fameux, l’image de l’illustre vivant qui vous envoie […] Je crus […] que de demander votre portrait, étoit trop oser. Je me borne donc à vous faire mes très-humbles remerciements […] je les destine à l’ornement de ma petite bibliothèque de Paris."

Horace Walpole wrote - There is come from France a Madame Bocage, who has translated Milton: my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.

Footnote - Madame du Boccage published a poem in imitation of Milton, and another founded on Gesner's "Death of Abel." She also translated Pope's "Temple of Fame;" but her principal work was "La Columbiade." It was at the house of this lady, at Paris, in 1775, that Johnson was annoyed at her footman's taking the sugar in his fingers and throwing it
into his coffee. "I was going," says the Doctor, "to put it aside, but hearing it was made on purpose for me, I e'en tasted Tom's fingers."

Mrs Thrale Letter in the Rylands Library - Mrs. Thrale is  occasionally  very  severe on the French! 

This appears in  her account of a visit to dine with Madame de Bocage on October 5th 1775 :

" The Morning was spent in adjusting our Ornaments in order to dine with Madame de Bocage at 2 o'clock.  There was a showy Dinner with a Frame in the middle, and she gave us an English Pudding made after the  Receipt of  the Dutchess of  Queensbury.  We saw nothing particularly pleasing at this Visit but the beauty of Madame de Bocages niece, the Countess of Blanchetre, whose husband was so handsome too that being a Frenchman - I  wonder'd.  In the course of  conversation, however, he turned out an Italian, and  there was another Italian Noble - man who hailed Baretti and made himself agreable to us  all.  Nothing would serve him but attend us at night to the Colissee which, after leaving our Names with the Sardinian Ambassadress, we were willing  enough to permit.  In Madame de Bocage's Drawing room stood the Busts of Shakespear, Milton, Pope and Dryden, the lady sat on a Sopha with a fine Red Velvet Cushion fringed with gold under her Feet and just over her Head a  Cobweb of  uncommon  size & I am  sure  great Antiquity.  A Pot to spit in, either of  Pewter or Silver quite  as black & ill-coloured, was on her Table, & when  the  Servant carried Coffee about he put in Sugar with  his Fingers.  The House these people live in is a fine one but so contrived that we were to pass through  a sort of Hall where the Footmen were playing at Cards before we arrived at Madame's Chamber."

Painted by Marieanne Loir, engraved by Tardieu c. 1745. There are several other later engraved portraits of Madame Boccage, but they are all inferior versions of this engraving.

Pastel of Madame Boccage

sold by Olivier Baron, Montargis - Encheres, France, 20 June 2010.

Lord Chesterfield after William Hoare of Bath

 National Portrait Gallery - mezzotint, mid 18th century by John Brooks

                      19 1/2 in. x 13 3/4 in. (496 mm x 348 mm) paper size Purchased, 1966.

Intriguing representation of a bust behind him is this Alexander Pope or the bust of Chesterfield by Hoare  ?