Tuesday, 20 February 2024

Hewetson - (Part 23) The bust of Richard Rigby.

 


Christopher Hewetson - 

The Marble Bust of Richard Rigby (1722 - 88).


Location - Provosts House, Trinity College, Dublin.


https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/rigby-richard-1722-88

I have contacted Trinity but so far have not received any reply.


The image below from Christopher Hewetson, by Brian de Breffny, Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp.





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For an excellent article on Richard Rigby, Provost Andrews, the Duke of Bedford and Dublin society in the mid 18th Century see





Thursday, 15 February 2024

Hewetson in Rome (part 22). Angelica Kauffman



Post under construction

An Irish Sculptor in Rome in the late 18th Century (Part 22).


 Maria Anna Angelica Kaufmann (1741 - 1807).

Marble Herm Bust.

by Christopher Hewetson (- 1798)

Angelica Kauffman, an Austrian by birth made her fortune in London and resided in Rome from 1782 until her death in 1807.

These two images are the best photographs of this bust currently available to me.

The Monument to Angelica Kauffman in the Parish Church of the Holy Trinity, Schwarzenberg, Vorarlberg, Austria.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schwarzenberg_Pfarrkirche_Gedenkstein_Angelica_Kauffmann_B%C3%BCste.jpg


A bust of Angelica Kauffman was set up in the Pantheon in Rome. It was moved with other busts to the Primoteca Capitolina in 1820. This was the posthumous bust carved by Peter Kauffman (1764 - 1829) see the image below. Kauffmans bust was based on the Hewetson Bust.







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Plaster cast of the bust of Angelica Kauffman.






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Angelica Kauffman.

by Peter Kauffman (1764 - 1829) (Johann Peter Kaufman). Although described as her cousin it appears that he was a more distant relation

Marble bust.

sculpted posthumously 1808.


This bust appears to be a very loose copy of the Hewetson bust.

After a few years working in Paris, he obtained financial support from the Elector of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, that enabled him to study in Rome, where he worked with Bertel Thorvaldsen and Antonio Canova. He also became acquainted with the painter, Angelica Kaufmann, a distant cousin. 

They supported each other, and she left him a consideration in her will. He would stay in Rome for over twenty years and, at an unknown date, married Barbara Garzes, of Spanish origin. They had two sons: the elder, Ludwig (1800-1855), also became a sculptor.

Info Wikipaedia (needs to be checked).


A bust of Angelica Kauffman was set up in the Pantheon in Rome. It was moved with other busts to the Primoteca Capitolina in 1820.




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Angelica Kauffman.

Peter Kauffman.

Herm type marble bust.

This bust is in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

It was acquired in 1808 from the sculptor by Crown Prince Ludwig













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Angelica Kauffman.

A modern plaster copy.

after the bust in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

http://www.koerperabformung-hermes.de/kunstabformungen.html




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Angelica Kauffman - Self Portraits








Hewetson in Rome (Part 21). The Kniphausen Busts.

 

Herr and Frau von Kniphausen (sometimes Knyphausen).

A Pair of Marble Busts.

by Chistopher Hewetson.

The bust of Herr von Kniphausen is inscribed Christoforus Hewetson Hibernus Fecit 1783.

The bust of Frau von Kniphausen unsigned.

Provenance - in the sitters family at Schloss Tamsel Custrin, Brandenberg.

These busts have not been seen since before 1945.

In 1945 the castle was briefly the headquarters of the Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov. The castle largely escaped destruction during the war.


They were recorded at the Schloss Tamsel, Brandenburg in 1937, in Den Kunstdenkmaler der Provinz Brandenberg Stadt: und Landskreiss Landsberg Warthe. Vol VII/3 1937 page 218.

Currently these are the best images available.

Information and the images here taken from Christopher Hewetson, by Brian de Breffny, Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp.




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A Plaster version of this bust of Frau Knyphausen was recorded in a private collection in Berlin in Thieme Becker's Allgemeines Lexicon der Bildenden Kunstler, Leipzig 1907 1950 under the entry for Hewetson. It states that the bust was signed and dated 1784.

Its whereabouts today remain unknown.
 

Saturday, 10 February 2024

Hewtson in Rome (Part 20). Franciszek Salezy Potocki.



Count Franciszek Salezy Potocki ( 1700 - 1772)

Posthumous Marble Bust.

Derived from an engraving by Domenico Cunego

from a portrait by Marceli Bacciarelli


Height 64 cms.

c 1782

Christopher Hewetson.

Łańcut Castle

Franciszek Salezy Potocki (1700-1772) was the son of Józef, Grand Warden of the Crown, and Teofila, née Cetnar, founder of the Tulczyn branch of the Potocki family in the Hetman line.


 He was Voivode of Kiyv, one of the richest magnates in Poland. 

The marble bust of Franciszek Salezy Potocki was made around 1782 in Rome by sculptor Christopher Hewetson (ca. 1736 - 1798), who belonged to the artistic circle of Antonio Canova, the most famous Italian sculptor of the Neoclassical period. 

The bust was probably commissioned from Hewetson by Potocki's son, Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, who in 1781-1782 stayed with his wife Józefa Amalia, née Mniszech, in Italy, including Rome.


Potocki is portrayed in armour, with the Orders of White Eagle and Saint Andrew. The bust was probably commissioned from Hewetson by Potocki's son, Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki, who in 1781-1782 stayed with his wife Józefa Amalia, née Mniszech, in Italy, including Rome. 


Hewetson based the sculpture on a copper engraving made in 1782 by Domenic Cunego, based on a portrait of Franciszek Salezy Potocki painted by Marceli Bacciarelli around 1766. 

The sculpture arrived at the Castle in Łańcut in 1923 and was bequeathed to Alfred Potocki by his distant relative, Mikołaj Potocki, who died in Paris in 1921, Franciszek Salezy Potocki’s great-grandson.



















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Engraved Domenicus Cunego (1727 - 1803) in Rome 1782.

from the portrait by Marceli Bacciarelli.

Dated 1782.


Superb Hi Res scan from -

University of Warsaw Library



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Portrait of Franciszek Salezy Potocki

Marceli Bacciarelli (1731 - 1818).

Born Rome, Died Warsaw

Was working Dresden (1753-1764), Warsaw (1756), Vienna (1764-1766), Warsaw (1766-1818)






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Capriccio with portraits of Count Franciszek Salezy Potocki and his son Stanisław Szczęsny.

Bernardo Bellotto.

Height: 153.5 cm width: 113.5 cm

c. 1763 - 64.

El Paso Museum.


Notes from the Kress Foundation

https://www.kressconservation.org/conserved-artwork/artwork/12afb1e4d2be6c490c3a4ae018736d0050030edbf7cd4a9753d57ef0d12f58d1

Bernardo Bellotto, sometimes called Canaletto, his uncle's nickname. Venetian School. 


Born 1720; died 1780. He was pupil of his uncle Antonio Canal (Canaletto), with whom he seems to have been closely associated in Venice, also probably for a short period in Rome (c. 1742), and then until his (Bellotto's) final departure from Venice, in 1744. 

After brief periods of work in other Italian cities, he went, in 1747, to Dresden, where he became court painter. For brief periods of activity he was in Vienna and Munich, and finally he was very active in Warsaw, where he remained from 1767 until his death. 

From the beginning, the great influence in his development was that of his uncle, from whom he is distinguishable by a more objective, realistic presentation of his subjects. His contrasts of light and shadow are sharper than Canaletto’s, his fusion of colors less subtle, and the general effect of his views more panoramic and less atmospheric. Yet the quality of his paintings reaches such a high plane that some of them – especially from his early, Italian period – have until almost the present been catalogued among Canaletto’s characteristic oeuvres.


Both the signature and composition class K1691 with an architectural caprice now in the National museum, Warsaw, in which a splendid figure in the costume of a Venetian nobleman has been identified as a portrait of Bellotto himself.2 

The Warsaw picture, along with several other fanciful architectural paintings, is believed to date from Bellotto's late Dresden period. K1691 may be later, after the artist's establishment in Warsaw, in 1767. 


The figures here are in Polish costume, and the large man with arm akimbo has been identified from an engraving as Count Franciscus Salesius Potocki, while the young man in front may be his son, Stanislaus Felix, fifteen years of age in 1767, who was to become more famous than his father, but as traitor to Poland.

3 A pertinent stylistic parallel to the portraits in K1691 is offered by those in the Election of Stanislaus Augustus, a large canvas in the Nationalmuseum, Warsaw, painted by Bellotto in 1776/78.4 

Aside from K1691 and the painting with the self-portrait referred to above, Bellotto painted a considerable number of architectural caprices, often with compositions very similar to K1691, views through an archway to a monumental stairway and a columned hemicycle beyond, features that would seem to be based on the artist's memories of architecture by such Roman artists as Bernini.5 

In K1691 Bellotto has frankly copied his fountain sculpture from Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. 

However fanciful his caprices may be, Bellotto usually studied his architecture so carefully from actual buildings that his paintings were followed in the restoration and rebuilding of Warsaw after the Second World War.6


(1) Catalogue by F. R. Shapley, 1961, no. 42, as Bellotto.

(2) The Warsaw painting is reproduced by T. Borenius, in Dedalo, vol. III, 1922, p. 103. See the recent discussion by W. Schumann, in the catalogue of the Bellotto exhibition in Vienna, 1965, no. 43. The identification of the portrait is noted by S. Lorentz in a letter of Nov. 16, 1955, to W. E. Suida.

(3) These identifications were suggested by Lorentz (in the letter cited in note 2, above), who kindly sent to the Kress Foundation a copy of Cunego's engraving of a portrait of Potocki after a painting by Bacciarelli, an Italian painter in Warsaw who encouraged Bellotto to take up residence there. Dr. Lorentz comments that Potocki could have been easily included in a painting by Bellotto, even before the artist came to Poland, since Potocki, with his immense land holdings, had associations with the minister Brühl and was often in Dresden. Cunego's engraving is dated 1781 (or 1782) but Bacciarelli's portrait, Dr. Lorentz comments, was probably painted more than a decade earlier.

(4) Details of some of the portraits in the Election ... are reproduced by Lorentz, in catalogue of the exhibition of Bellotto and Gieryrnski, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1955, figs. 25a, b, c, d.

(5) Several of these are reproduced by H. A. Fritzsche, Bernardo Bellotto, 1936, figs. 73 ff.

(6) See Lorentz, p. 9 of op. cit. in note 4, above.

(7) Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection, 1951, p. 166 (catalogue by Suida), as Bellotto.












Images above from the excellent Kress Foundation website



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Franciszek Salezy Potocki 

Miniature Portrait.




Franciszek Salezy Potocki (1700–1772) was a Polish nobleman, diplomat, politician and knight of the Order of the White Eagle, awarded on August 3, 1750, in Warsaw. 

Potocki was the wealthiest magnate of his time and the owner of large properties in Dnieper Ukraine, then part of the Polish Crown. Nicknamed "Little King of Ruthenia" ("królik Rusi").

 

Franciszek became Krajczy of the Crown in 1736, Field Clerk of the Crown and Voivode of Volhynian Voivodship in 1755, Voivode of Kijów, Voivodship in 1755–1771 and Starost of Belz, Hrubieszów, Ropczyce, Sokal, Jabłonów and Opalin.



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Marcello Bacciarelli.

Self Portrait.

1793.

National Museum of Warsaw transferred from the Krosnowski Collection






Hewetson in Rome (Part 19 )

 

The Marble Bust of Giovanni Pichler (1734 - 1791).

Gem Engraver.

Christopher Hewetson.

Marble bust.

1791?

Musei Capitolini, Rome.

Giovanni Pichler was buried at the Roman church of S. Teodoro; his marble bust, was placed in the Pantheon on 13 April 1797 and today is in the Protomoteca of the Capitoline Museums.

Image from Bridgman Library.












Image above from de Breffny.


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Portrait of Teresa Pichler (1769 - 1834).

by Carlo Labruzzi.

with the bust of her Father by Hewetson.

Pitti Palace, Florence.

Teresa Pichler married Vincenzo Monti in 1791.







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of tangential interest a sketchbook of Labruzzi.


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Giovanni Pichler.

Trade Card of 1787.

88 x 114 mm.

British Museum.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1983-U-2015



Literature.

G. G. de Rossi, 'Vita del Cavaliere Giovanni Pichler', Rome 1792, reprinted and translated into German with commentary by Christa and Gert Wilhelm Trube (eds), 'Der römische Edelsteinschneider Giovani Pichler (17634-1791). Eine Biographie', Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2005.

H. Rollett, 'Die Drei Meister der Gemmoglyptik: Antonio, Giovanni und Luigi Pichler', Vienna 1874.


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.Hewetson in Rome (Part 18 ) Bust of Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna,


Christopher Hewetson a Sculptor in Rome (Part 18).


Sophie Marie Dorothea Auguste Louise of Württemberg.

Christopher Hewetson.

It is inscribed

Christophorus  Hewetson  Hibcrnus  fecit Romae  mdcclx.\xiiii (Info Ref Burlington Mag. January 1917.

Currently Gatchina Estate. St Petersburg, Russia.

https://gatchinapalace.ru/en/museum/Collections/Sculpture%20and%20Stonework.php


The royal couple were on their grand tour of Europe in 1781-1782. 

The marble was in the palace in the reign of Paul I. It was on the list of valuable objects that Maria Feodorovna compiled during the 1812 war. 

The bust was in the Bedchamber of the Empress Maria Feodorvna in the middle of the 19th century.

Currently the best photographs available.









 Sophie Marie Dorothea Auguste Louise of Württemberg.was born on 25 October 1759 in Stettin, Kingdom of Prussia.

Friday, 9 February 2024

Hewetson in Rome (Part 17). Thomas Westfaling.

 

(Post under construction)

Hewetson in Rome (Part 17).

Thomas Brereton Westfaling 1740 - 1814.

Two carved marble busts by Christopher Hewetson.

The Louvre Bust of Thomas Brereton Westfaling.

Heigh 55.6 cms.


Westfaling was in Rome in 1789. (Ingamells).

https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010095262

They say -

"Presumably executed in Italy in Rome in the years 1780-1785. From the library at Kentchurch Court Castle, Herefordshire, England, owned by the Scudamore family. 

A copy of the bust was discovered by Philip Ward-Jackson on a funerary monument in Ross-on-Wye and allowed the identification in 1992 to Thomas Brereton-Westfaling (1740-1814), only son of the Reverend Richard Brereton of County Gloucester. 

In 1781 he married Mary Westfaling, whose name he later took. 

Art trade, London, 1986. Acquired in 1987 (committee of March 12, council of March 18, order of March 19, 1987)".

This appears to have been Colnaghis in partnership with Cyril Humphris

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Ingamells says 1789.



























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Thomas Westfaling.

Marble bust.

On the Monument executed by William Theed the Elder (1764 -1817)).

in St Marys Church, Ross on Wye, Hereford.

Prebendary Beattie appears not to have liked it, as he simply said “this white marble bust of Thomas Brereton (sic) was placed among the Rudhall monuments in 1817.”

The monument is inscribed - 

SACRED TO THE MEMORY

OF THOMAS WESTFALING ESQUIRE

THE ONLY SON OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BRERETON

OF THE COUNTY OF GLOCESTER.

HE MARRIED IN THE YEAR MDCCXCI,

MARY, SOLE HEIRESS OF THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF WESTFALING

OF WHICH HE ASSUMED THE NAME.

HE WAS BORN MAY XII.MDCCLX

DIED JUNE XVIII.MDCCCXIV

 ____________________

A MAN OF UNCORRUPTED AND UNBLEMISHED INTEGRITY; OF A MIND ARDENT IN SUPPORTING THE MEASURES HE APPROVED, YET SO TEMPERED BY THE BENIGNITY OF HIS MANNERS, AS TO CONCILIATE THE GOOD WILL OF HIS WARMEST OPPONENTS.

HOW KINDLY HE PROVIDED FOR THE WANTS OF THE POOR, HOW STUDIOUSLY HE PROCURED INSTRUCTION FOR THEIR CHILDREN, THE TEARS OF THE POOR BEAR WITNESS.

HOW WARM AND STEADY IN FRIENDSHIP,

HOW DEAR AND USEFUL TO SOCIETY,

HOW MUCH HE WAS THE DELIGHT AND ORNAMENT OF THIS NEIGHBOURHOOD,

THE MONUMENT YOU BEHOLD MAY TESTIFY.

IT WAS ERECTED BY THOSE

WHO BEST KNEW AND BEST FELT HIS WORTH:

HIS FRIENDS COMPANIONS AND NEIGHBOURS

 


















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Engraving from

Some Account of the Monument and Character of T. W. Esq. [By J. Webb.]

By Thomas Westfaling.

pub.1818.

Available from Google Books.

(somewhat biased and not terribly enlightening)





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de Breffny was unaware of the identity of this bust


The description below from Christopher Hewetson, by Brian de Breffny, Irish Arts Review (1984-1987), Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), 

No 34. White marble bust. 

Height 66 cm.

Inscribed "Christophorus Hewetson Fecit”.

Provenance.

This bust was among the contents of Holme Lacy, Herefordshire when that estate was auctioned in 1910. In the latter half the eighteenth century Holme Lacy was owned by Frances Fittroy - Scudamore who a widow from 1750, until her death at Holme Lacy in 1782.

She was succeeded by her only child, Frances heiress of Holme Lacy.  Born 1750, married 1771 as his second wife Charles Howard (1746-1815) who from 1777, when his father succeeded to the Duchy of Norfolk was styled Earl,of Surrey and succeeded on his fathers death in 1786. as the 11th Duke of Norfolk. He resided at Norfolk House, London. and at Arundel. 

He spent vast sums on books and works of Art. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries 1779, and President of Society Of Arts. 1793.

He seems to have been the only male connected with Holme Lacy Holme at the time when Hewetson was active.

However. he died childless, his Wife having become a lunatic soon after their marriage.

On her death in 1820. Holme Lacy passed to her distant kinsman. Sir Edwin Francis Stanhope Bt

It is therefore possible that the Hewetson bust was bought to Holme Lacy by the Stanhopes. Sir Edwyn’s son succeeded to the title of a distant kinsman as 9th Earl of Chesterfield.

And his son, the  10th Earl Chesterfield sold Holme Lacy with all of its content, including the bust in 1910, and sold again at Sotheby’s London 22 April 1986, Lot 73 to Richard Herner Esq.

For Holme Lacy see - https://archive.org/details/in-english-homes-vol-1-31295001575223_202005/page/381/mode/2up?q=Holme&view=theater


Images below from de Breffny