The Ashmolean Museum Marble Bust and The Bust at West Wycombe Park.
The Ashmolean Bust on loan from a Private Collection.
More Missing Rysbrack Busts.
Samuel Butler pre 1732 (Vertue).
https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GGJ_2009_02_WILSON.pdf
Mr and Mrs Booth (Vertue) pre 1732.
Mr Milner.
Mr Morett.
William Cheselden by Jonathan Richardson the Elder.
Drawing with London Dealers Lowell Libson and Jonny Yarker.
Summer Exhibition 2025.
https://www.libson-yarker.com/exhibitions/summer-exhibition/william-chiselden
Graphite on vellum.
5 ¾ × 4 ⅞ inches · 146 × 124 mm
Signed with initials.
Inscribed and dated ‘Wm Chiselden Esqr Feb. 13. 1735-6’,
also inscribed on the verso ‘Wm Chiseldon Esq. Surgn 12. Feb. 1735/6’
Jonathan Richardson snr. collector’s mark: bottom left
[Lugt. 2184]
Jonathan Richardson jnr. collector’s mark bottom right
[Lugt. 2170]
Portrait of William Cheselden.
Jonathan Richardson the Elder
The doctor, at the age of forty-seven; wearing a wig.
Pen and brown ink, over graphite.
British Museum
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1866-0714-17
William Cheselden.
by Jonathan Richardson.
1720's or 1730's.
140 x 118 mm.
This portrait is of the anatomist and eminent surgeon
William Cheselden, who was one of the closest friends of the artist, Jonathan
Richardson. It is one of a series of small chalk and graphite drawings of
friends and acquaintances that Richardson made in his retirement. Some of these
images were drawn from memory and together, they represent a sustained project
in recording friendships across Richardson's whole life. Drawing was the
perfect medium for this project as it allowed Richardson to produce a large
number of images quickly and was closely associated with friendship and
intimacy.
Text and image © National Portrait Gallery, London.
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Cheselden.
by Jonathan Richardson.
British Museum.
Image courtesy Wellcome Collection.
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The Bust of Cheselden in the Royal College of Surgeons paired with the bust of Belchier.
Photograph from a tweet by Eleanor Crook Sculpt
@CrookEleanor
William Cheselden (1688 - 1752).
It has sustained some damage to the drapery.
On 3 June 1871, Dr Leonard W. Sedgwick, wrote to the Governors of St Thomas', offering, on behalf of 'old Students of the Medical School of this Hospital', marble busts of William Cheselden and Sir Richard Mead, both by Henry Weekes RA.
The offer was formally accepted by the Grand
Committee at its meeting of 6 June 1871.
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Of tangential relevance to this post.
A Medallion by William Wyon c. 1827/8
in the BM.
The Profile Adapted from the Roubiliac Bust.
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_M-8617
The lead at Parham Park in Sussex. The figure was
brought to Parham by Robert Curzon from Hagley Hall in Staffordshire in the
second half of the nineteenth century.
A terracotta was sold by Sotheby's late 80's early 90's if memory serves.
Prior to it appearing at Sotheby's, I had seen this statue in a garden in Marlborough.
https://drawingmatter.org/the-temple-of-flora-stourhead-a-paradise-revisited/
This is an extract from Stourhead, Henry Hoares Paradise Revisied by Dudley Dodd pub 2021 Head Zeus.
Maybe not the last word on the architecture and sculpture in the garden at Stourhead but the best work on the subject to date - highly recommended!
The Temple of Flora, Stourhead, Wiltshire, designed by Henry Flitcroft (1697–1769).
1753
Drawing by by C. W. Bampfylde (1720–1791).
Pen and colour wash, 280 × 470 mm.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
Henry Hoare Ledger 1734-49, 28 January 1743/44, ‘Thos Manning for a River God &c’ £15-15s. Anonymous 1764 (Stourton Gardens 1749), p. 102,
‘For
yonder silver god they sigh, they burn, | And pour their tears incessant thro’
his urn; | But cold as lead, and deaf when they complain, | Supine he lies, and
they but weep in vain. | See from beneath him (tinctur’d by the sun | With
colours radiant) sheets of water run’.
WSA, 383/907(1), Henry Flitcroft to Henry Hoare, 25 August 1744, ‘My Next shall bring you… the Temple of Ceres with the Rocky Arch in which I propose to place the River God, & a Sketch how I conceive the head of ye lake’;
Henry Flitcroft to HH, 7 September 1744, ‘I have inclosd to you the Plan & Elevation of ye Temple of Ceres with a Sketch of ye Entablature showing how the Tryglyphs & Metops should be proportioned with the Skuls &c introduced therein… I have also sent a plan & Section for the Manner of Laying the Foundations… a Section of ye inside of this Building shall be soon sent, with particular drawing of ye Doorcase & pedestal Mouldings’.
Payments to William Privett which may relate to the Temple of Flora: HH Ledger
1734-49; 27 September 1745, ‘on accot of ye Temple’ £40; 3 November 1746, ‘in
full of all Demands’ £28-8s-1d; 30 March 1747, ‘on accot of Buildg’ £30. C.
Hoare & Co., HB/5/A/6, Partners’ Ledger 1742-51, HH account, 5 October
1745, ‘His Bill to Willm Privet (Mason)’ £40; 30 December 1745, ‘Willm Privet
of Chillmark’s Bill’ £30.
Henry Flitcroft (1697–1769), elevation, Rocky Arch (the Cascade below the Temple of Flora), Stourhead, c.1744. Pen and colour wash, 178 × 315 mm. DMC 1233.
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A View of the Cascade &c in the Garden of Sr. Francis Dashwood Bart.
& of the Parish Church &c at West Wycomb in the County
of Bucks.
1757.
William Woolett
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1849-0328-56
see also
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1866-1208-93
Thomas Manning (d. 1747).
He was related to the Manning family of masons, but was a notable statuary in lead and artificial stone.
'Thomas Manning' who is described in John Nost I's will of 1710 as 'my manservant,' and was left a suit of apparel (LMA AM/FW 1710/89).
It is likely that he learned his craft with Nost.
His earliest recorded works date from 1720 and were sent, at a cost of £l 17s, by 'Waggon and car' to Gough Park (7).
In 1729 Manning moved into a property in Portugal Row next door to Catherine Nost and, from 1734, to Thomas Carter I. His premises were initially rated at £8, but his business must have expanded by 1737, when he had two properties in the street, rated at £IO and £12.
He appears to have taken over the second premises from Andrew Carpenter, who died that year. By 1744 he had taken over another property, with tenants, in the street, renamed White Horse Street in 1737.
In 1735 Manning supplied a statue of Britannia to an insurance company in Westminster, one of the earliest recorded works in artificial stone produced in this country.
Manning stood as a character witness in the trial of Mary Johnson, otherwise Sudley, otherwise Barker, on 5 December 1746, who was accused of the theft of a gold ring from a William Archer. Manning described himself as a 'Master Statuary of Hide-Park and testified that the defendant had 'lived in two houses of mine for these two years'. The properties were in 'White-horse street, just as you go down the hill' (POB 1674—1834, ref t17461205-24).
Manning died in 1747. An obituary describes him as 'an
ingenious statuary near Hyde Park Corner' (GM 1747, 545).
In his will, proved on 19 November, he left his stock in trade, utensils, chattels, books, plate and his house on the corner of White Horse Street to his wife Mary. Another 'little house' in White Horse Street was left jointly to his wife and his mother, Elizabeth, together with the lease of three houses and a stable in the same road. He mentions two brothers, Edward and Arnold, and his nephews, Thomas and John Manning (PROB 11/758/6).
........................
This statue has been copied by the Bulbeck Foundry.
https://www.bulbeckfoundry.co.uk/page/statues-river-god/
https://www.bulbeckfoundry.co.uk/page/statues-large/
...........................
The Grotto at Stourhead.
Grotto and River God's Cave, Stourhead Gardens, Stourton,
near Mere, Wiltshire
Top: Grotto plan Bottom: Grotto section Both by F M Piper
(1779). [from the 1982 guidebook
Screen Grab Images below from - https://www.flickr.com/photos/alwyn_ladell/22066107722/in/album-72157659387823772/lightbox/
Post in preparation.
The subject of these reclining figures and sculpture at West Wycombe is something that I hope to return to in the future.
There are only two versions of this statue illustrated below that I am so far aware of - the one below in the colour photographs and the one illustrated below in black and white in private garden at West Wycombe Park.
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A Lead Statue of a Reclining Bacchante or Nymph.
In her left hand she has a bunch of grapes.
In a Private Collection along with 11 other lead statues since 1808. Known to have been purchased at the sale of the contents of the workshop of John Cheere after he died.
Another version is in the Dashwood Collection at West Wycombe Park - previously on the cascade was paired with another reclining figure which has been variously described as Cleopatra or Ariadne based on ancient precedents in the Vatican or Uffizi.
At this stage I am unable to state when they went to West Wycombe - the cascade was not rebuilt until the 1770's ? check this! - previously it was adorned with a bearded statue of a reclining river god.
The subject matter of this piece would certainly have appealed to Francis Dashwood.
see - Sculpture and the Garden, Patrick Eyres · 2017.
Photographed by the author July 2025.
Mentioned in a letter from William Hoare to Henry Hoare
II, 5 June 1760. (check this).
Horace Walpole writes in 1762 'Cleopatra, but without the Asp, to
represent a Nymph.
Another perhaps finer version of the sculpture that was traditionally
described as Cleopatra was in the collections at the Villa Medici, Rome. It was
taken to Florence in 1787, Today it is at the Uffizi Gallery.
