Bath, Art and Architecture

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Bust of Handel by Roubiliac "By Heaven Inspired".

A Marble Bust of Handel "by Heaven Inspired".

By Louis Francois Roubiliac.

Lot 179, Sotheby's London, 9 July 2015.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2015/old-master-sculpture-works-art-l15231/lot.179.html

I have written at length on the subject of the Handel Busts and intend to publish more images on this blog in the near future. For immediate access to my previous blog entry see -

http://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/asummary-of-researches-into-bust-of.html

I have also referred to these busts in several other posts.

Possibly the ‘remarkable fine bust of [Handel], exquisitely modell’d by Roubiliac’ in a sale of 1766.

Possibly lot 35 on the second day (21 February) of the John Blackwood sale at Christie’s in 1778, ‘Roubiliac, marble busto of Handel, on a pedestal’.

In the Collection of Alfred Morrison (1821-97), at Fonthill House, Wiltshire, and 16 Carlton House Terrace, London, from c. 1860- 1897.

By descent to his widow, 16 Carlton House Terrace, London.

Above images from Sotheby's London.

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In 1741 George Vertue, the 18th-century chronicler of the arts, recorded that 'Mr. Rubbilac Sculptor ... had Modelld from the Life several Busts of portraits extreamly like ... Mr. Isaac Ware Architect Mr Handel - &c. and several others' -

Walpole Society, XXII (1933-4), Vertue Notebooks, 2, p105, also quoted in Katharine A.Esdaile, The Life and Works of Louis Francois Roubiliac, Oxford, 1928, p47.

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Literature.

David Wilson, ''By Heaven Inspired': A marble bust of Handel by Roubiliac rediscovered', The British Art Journal, vol. X, no. 1, 2009, pp. 14-29;

An excellent piece of research which covers most of the ground, marred only by David Wilsons suggesting that this and other busts are based on a life mask taken of Handel by Roubiliac prior to the Vauxhall Gardens statue of 1738, and the contemporary busts sculpted in terracotta and marble and manufactured in plaster by Roubiliac. I have written about these so called life masks in a previous post on this blog and have come to the conclusion that these masks were taken from a plaster by Roubiliac. The first published reference to these masks was on the 19th July 1834 in the Mirror.

The link below is for the full article but without photographs.-

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%27By+Heaven+Inspired%27%3a+a+marble+bust+of+Handel+by+Roubiliac...-a0220059058

In M. Baker, The Marble Index. Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-century Britain, New Haven and London, 2014, p. 259 and note. 63.

Malcolm Baker dismisses this bust as "a puzzling newly discovered marble bust" and refers to David Wilsons article in the British Art Journal. I find it really very puzzling that Mr Baker was unable to make any further comments about this bust or to enlarge on the points made in David Wilson's article.

He had certainly not seen either the Grimsthorp Castle or Gloucester Cathedral Busts.

Given that he was supposed to be publishing at length on the portrait sculpture of Handel this appears to be an important omission.

I intend to delve further into the history and manufacture of these busts in some depth in the near future and to provide photographic comparisons of the various versions.

David Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, future publication, references to this bust are to be included.

The Vauxhall Handel by Roubiliac

The Vauxhall Gardens Statue of George Frederick Handel of 1738.

by Louis Francois Roubiliac.

Newspaper clipping from the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 18 April 1738.

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News[paper clipping from London Daily Post and General Advertiser 27 April 1738.

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The Roubiliac Statue of Handel photographed by the Author at the Victoria and Albert Museum 23 June 2014.

Signed - LF Roubiliac IN "ET SCUL" 1738.

Classified ad from London Evening Post 8 July 1738.

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The following was lifted from the V&A collections website see -

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O34256/georg-frederick-handel-statue-roubiliac-louis-francois/

The Statue was commissioned by Jonathan Tyers (also sculpted by Roubiliac) and placed in the pleasure Gardens at Vauxhall in 1738 in a Grand Niche, in the Grove, where it remained for nearly 80 years.

Undated drawing of the statue of Handel at Vauxhall Gardens attributed to Edward Francis Burney (1760 - 1848). It appears to show the statue underneath a domed rotunda.

Yale Center for British Art, Gift of William Drummond.

see - http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3644883

The figure is last recorded in the Grove behind the Orchestra in 1813.

Following the death of Tyers in 1767, management of the Gardens fell to his two sons, Thomas and Jonathan. In 1809 the gardens came into the possession of George Rogers Barrett and the Revd. Jonathan Tyers Barrett, D.D., and in 1818 on the death of George Barrett, the responsibility of the gardens passed to Dr Jonathan Tyers Barrett, whose attempt to sell the gardens in 1818 was unsuccessful.

Before the attempted sale of Vauxhall Gardens, the 'Handel' was removed to the Stockwell home of George Rogers Barrett, shortly before his death. Around 1818 the figure passed to Jonathan Tyers Barrett, and was placed in the front hall of his house in Duke Street, Westminster.

The death of Tyers Barrett in 1830 resulted in the sale of the figure by Mr Christie, King Street, London on 28 April 1830, lot 80. The 'Handel' was again sold in 1833 by Mr Squibb of Savile Row to 'the sculptor and marble contractor', Joseph Brown of University Street, London, for £215 5s.

Purchased by the Sacred Harmonic Society from Joseph Brown in 1854 for 100 guineas; a pamphlet published by them in 1854 recorded its recent purchase. The marble plinth on which this figure is now displayed was almost certainly made at this time. The statue was displayed in the Society's offices in Exeter Hall, Strand, London until 1880 when it moved premises.

The figure was moved to the offices of Novello and Company at 1 Berners Street, London, as was later purchased by Henry Littleton, chairman of the company. It remained in his possession at his Sydenham home for about twenty years; it was then given by his son to Novello and Company, where it remained at 160 Wardour Street from about 1906 to 1964, until its purchase by the Museum in 1965. Purchased from Novello and Company Ltd in 1965 for £10,000 with assistance from the National Collections Fund.

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The Model of the Vauxhall statue of Handel by Roubiliac in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Terracotta, hand-modelled and fired, height 47.2cm, width 26.9cm, diameter 36.2cm, before 1738.

There are two mentions in the mid Eighteenth Century London newspapers of plaster sculptures of Handel.

Evening Post, 15th March 1751. "To be published by subscription, a figure in plaister of Paris of the celebrated Mr Handel, taken from the statue at Vauxhall. Conditions - the price to the subscriber is one guinea and a half; half a guinea to be paid at the time of subscribing, and the remainder on the delivery, which will be in May next. Subscriptions are taken at Mr Fosters on Ludgate Hill, where the model may be seen.

As far as I know no plaster casts of the Vauxhall statue have have come to light and perhaps this refers to another bust.

Perhaps it is a coincidence but the fact that Fenwick bull was advertising a plaster bust of Handel in1758.

Vertue described this terracotta maquette in 1751, as “the model in clay baked of Mr Handel done by Mr Roubiliac - the same from which the Foxhall statue in Foxhall Gardens was done….. this model near 2 foot high is in the possesion of Mr Hudson painter”.

The Public Advertiser, 19^th April 1758. An edition of thirty casts of a bust of Handel was advertised for sale by subscription by F. Bull.

To the lovers of music particularly those who admire the compositions of Geo Frederick Handel esq. F.Bull at the White Horse Ludgate Hill, London having at Great expense procured a fine model of a busto of Mr Handel proposes to sell by subscription thirty casts in plaister of Paris. The subscription money which is to be paid at the time of subscribing, and for which a receipt will be given, is one guinea and the cast in the order in which they are finished and will be delivered in the order in which the subscriptions are made. The busto which will make a rich and elegant piece of furniture... to be twenty three and a half high and eighteen inches broad. The model may be viewed until Monday next at the place above mentioned.

Fenwick Bull was a map and print seller at The White Horse, Ludgate Hill who married Elizabeth Foster of St Martin’s Ludgate Hill at St Georges Chapel, Mayfair – 25 March 1753.

George Foster (the father of Elizabeth Foster, wife of Fenwick Bull) - Publisher, printer, map-seller, bookseller, in London. was at the White Horse, St Paul's Churchyard (1737-9); and afterwards at the White Horse, Ludgate Hill (1741-7). information from Royal Academy.

This advertisement above from Evening Post, 12 July 1753.

For Vauxhall Gardens see - http://www.vauxhallgardens.com/index.html

Vauxhall Gardens, A History David Coke and Alan Borg, 2011. pub. Yale University Press. £55

ISBN 978 0 300 17382 6

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Sculpture in the Portrait of Jonathan Richardson Junior by Jonathan Richardson Senior

Jonathan Richardson Junior by Jonathan Richardson Senior.

Portrait of the Artist's Son, Jonathan Richardson the Younger, in his Study c. 1734.

Oil on canvas. 90.4 x 71.5 cm.

Tate Gallery, Millbank, London.

Hogarth - Sculpture in the Paintings

William Hogarth, 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764.

Busts in the paintings of Hogarth

Anonymous family. Circa 1735.

Oil on canvas. 53.3 x 74.9 cms.

Yale, Paul Mellon Centre for British Art.

Wollaston Family. 1730.

Oil on canvas, 102.5 x 126.4 cm.

Leicester Arts and Museums

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Cholmondely Family.

Private Coll. 1732.

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Dr Benjamin Hoadly (1676 - 1761) with bust of Isaac Newton. Late 1730's.

Oil on canvas. 60.7 x 47.9 cms.

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. England

Smart sale, London, Foster & Son, 16 January 1850 (32), bt. White; William Benoni White sale, Christie's, 24 May 1879 (200), bt. Cox; coll. Joseph Prior, Cambridge (1834-1918); with Charles Fairfax Murray by 1902. Given in 1908 by Fairfax Murray

Notes -

educated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge and ordained a priest in 1700.He was rector of St Peter-le-Poor, London, from 1704 to 1724, and of St Leonard's, Streatham, from 1710 to 1723. His participation in controversy began at the beginning of his career, when he advocated conformity of the religious rites from the Scottish and English churches for the sake of union. He became a leader of the low church and found favour with the Whig party.
He battled with Francis Atterbury, who was the spokesman for the high church group and Tory leader on the subject of passive obedience and non-resistance (i.e. obedience of divines that would not involve swearing allegiance or changing their eucharistic rites but would also not involve denunciation of the Established Church practices). The House of Commons, dominated by Whigs, recommended him to Queen Anne, and he became rector of Streatham in 1710. When George I succeeded to the throne, he became chaplain to the King and made bishop of Bangor in 1716.
In 1717, his sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" provoked the Bangorian controversy. He was then translated three more times, taking up different bishoprics. He maintained that the eucharist was purely a commemorative act without any divine intervention. During his time as bishop, he rarely visited his dioceses and lived, instead, in London, where he was very active in politics.

From later summer 1722 to January 1725 Hoadly published letters on contemporary topics, articulating his Whig principles and defending the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Revolution had created "that Limited Form of Government which is our only Security" and such a government secured freedom of expression, without which Britons would suffer "all the Mischiefs, of Darkness in the Intellectual World, of Baseness in the Moral World, and of Slavery in the Political World".Hoadly also criticised the Pretender, who issued a declaration that he would extinguish opposition. Hoadly wrote that he would impose uniformity on all if he ruled: "Not only that he must destroy your Civil and Religious Rights, but that he plainly before-hand has here told You, to your Face, He will do so".

Hogarth (1697–1764) painted his portrait several times including as Bishop of Winchester and "Prelate of the Most Noble Order of the Garter" about 1743, etched by Bernard Baron (1696–1762). Hoadly's son Benjamin aided Hogarth with his The Analysis of Beauty

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The Indian Emperor or The Conquest of Mexico. c 1732/3.

Engraving 406×540 (16×21 1/4) on paper, 466×603 (18 3/8×23 3/4); cut to plate-mark

Writing-engraving (with some losses through damage to the paper) ‘Painted by W^m Hogarth|Engrav'd by Rob! Dodd|THE INDIAN EMPEROR,|Or the Conquest of Mexico; Act 4. Scene 4.|As perfor [...]r 1731, at M^r. Conduit's, Master of the Mint, before the Duke of Cumberland & c|[...] the original Picture in the Collection of Lord Holland.|Publish'd Jan.^y 1 1792, by J. & J. Boydell, Cheapside, & at the Shakespeare Gallery Pall Mall.’
Transferred from the reference collection 1973.

The scene, the original painting for which is still in the collection of Lord Holland's descendants, shows a private children's performance of Dryden's The Indian Emperor or The Conquest of Mexico, produced by John Conduitt, Master of the Mint, at his town house in Hanover Square, and repeated at the Duke of Cumberland's request at St James's Palace before the Royal Family on 27 April 1732. Conduitt commissioned Hogarth to commemorate the occasion with a conversation piece ‘of the young People of Quality that acted at his house’. Hence Boydell's much later key to the sitters, which identifies some of the grown-ups whose heads are averted, is unlikely to be accurate (see below). In Boydell's Catalogue of Plates, 1803, Dodd's print is described as a companion to Blake's engraving of ‘The Beggar's Opera’

This key to the print above is not to be trusted!

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Assembly at Wanstead House.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, The John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928.

The Assembly at Wanstead House by William Hogarth painted between 1728 & 1731. The Child family has gathered for tea drinking and card playing in the ballroom of Wanstead House. The painting probably records the celebration of the 1728 25th wedding anniversary of Richard Child and Dorothy Glynne Child, Lord and Lady Castlemaine. Dressed in rich red velvet, Lord Castlemaine is seated on the far right at an ornate silver tea-table with his twin daughters whilst his wife, playing cards in the centre, turns towards her husband and shows him her winning card, the ace of spades, alluding to their winning partnership. The couple's other children stand at the far left.

For a very full and thorough explanation of this painting see -

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/103800.html

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Miss Mary Edwards, 1742.

Oil on canvas, 126.4 x 101.3cms.

Frick Collection, New York.

Mary Edwards (1705 – 43), one of the richest women of her time, inheriting at more than £50,000 a year and extensive properties from her father Francis Edwards of Welham, Rutland. She repudiated her hasty Fleet wedding in 1731 to an extravagant, spendthrift husband Lord Anne Hamilton a son of the 4th Duke of Hamilton, although this was tantamount to declaring her son, Gerard Anne born 4 March 1733 illegitimate. She was Hogarth’s friend and arguably his most significant patron during the decade 1733–43.

She holds a copy of Queen Elizabeth I speech to her troops as they set sail from Tilbury to fight the Spanish.

Detail with the busts of Elizabeth I and King Alfred after Rysbrack, in the Hogarth portrait of Miss Mary Edwards.

Marble Bust of King Alfred by Rysbrack, dated 1764.

signed Michl Rysbrack Sculp 1764

Given to the National Trust along with the house, its grounds, and the rest of contents by Sir Henry Hugh Arthur Hoare, 6th Bt (1865 – 1947) in 1946.

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/732917

Another version in Portland stone in the Temple of British worthies at Stowe House. Buckinghamshire.

The following engravings are based on a portrait of Alfred the Great (above) commissioned by Thomas Walker Master of University College Oxford in 1661 - 2.

Now in the Masters Lodge.