It appears that at least four of these statues were made by Messrs Coade.
One is at Ham House, another is at Terrace Garden Richmond and a third at Moor Park, Herts.
Another was at Llewenny Hall, Denbighs, before 1789.
John Bacon exhibited a ‘Figure of Thames, Colossal’ at the Royal Society of Arts in 1777, for which he received a prize. This presumably referes to a model / macquette.
This was most likely an early version of the River God.
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The River God - The Engravings.
Image below used with permission courtesy London Picture Archive. Why provide a cropped image?
Paul Wray - 1788.
This is a rare engraving - I can only find mention of another in a private collection in California.
None in the BM or V and A.
Given the dedication to Prince George, Marquis of Buckingham it was perhaps used to entice him to use a version at Stowe.
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The Coade Catalogue engravings.
Low resolution image from the British Museum/ British Library Copy.
This is an early copy of the Catalogue - it has not been amended in pen and ink.
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The River God from the 1784 Catalogue at the Royal Academy.
A much higher resolution image from the same plate as the British Museum / British Library Copy.
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The Yale Coade Catalogue of 1784.
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River God Engraving from the Catalogue in a private collection - ex Bonhams.
This copy of the Catalogue is probably later and has been amended in Pen and Ink.
The engraving here of the River God has lost its title and engraved description.
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The Engraving from the 1784 Catalogue in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
This copy of the Catalogue is probably later and has been amended in Pen and Ink.
The engraving of the River God has lost its title and engraved description.
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The Ham House River God / Father Thames.
The version of the River God at Ham House was installed at
the front of the house by Wilbrahim Tollemache, 6th Earl of Dysart, between
1799-1803, when the north front of the house was opened up to the river. A
watercolour by Thomas Rowlandson dated 1803 shows the River God in situ before
the house (see below).
"The model at Ham House can be dated more precisely, to 1779, thanks to the coat-of-arms on the front, in which the badge of the City of London is accompanied by the Cap of Liberty and the City Chamberlain’s purse, both on sticks" (Jeremy Warren - Nat Trust website).
These motifs refer to the radical politician John Wilkes (1725-97) who became City Chamberlain in 1779, and who is depicted in the celebrated engraving by William Hogarth published in 1763 holding a stick with the Cap of Liberty.
Evolving from the ancient headgear
known as Phrygian caps, the Cap of Liberty came to signify freedom and the
pursuit of liberty, firstly in the American Revolution and then subsequently in
the French Revolution.In the same year 1779, as part of a competition set by
the City of London, John Bacon the Elder made six designs for a splendid
Freedom Box presented by the City to Admiral Keppel (designs in Victoria &
Albert Museum, box in the Museum of London).
Something of a political statement if one reads between the lines!
A less finished version of this drawing is reproduced on
Pl.36 of Adrian Bury's Rowlandson Drawings, London, 1949.
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The Richmond River God / Father Thames.
Coade's Artificial Stone.
Article December 1993 from Context -
After years of neglect, the River God by John Bacon has been completely restoredand resited in a prominent position in Terrace Gardens, Richmond. The restoration of this important Coade stonefigure was carried out by conservators Taylor Pearce, the £15,000 project being funded by an appeal initiated by the Richmond Society.
The one ton statue, which took pride of place in Mrs Coade's 1784 catalogue, was originally purchased for 100 guineas by the Duke of Montague for the pleasure gardens he was then laying out. The subject of an etching by Blake, only three other versions of Bacons River God survive according to Peter Locke, architect and advisor to the Richmond Society. "Its one of thefinest pieces made by the Coade manufactoryand its importance is increased by its rarity." It is also the largest Coade work every cast in a single piece. Of the three figures, one, in Coade, stands in the forecourt of Ham House; another, a bronze, is in the courtyard of Somerset House; and the last, in natural stone, is located at Powerscourt in Ireland.
The Somerset House bronze was used by Taylor Pearce as the pattern from which to reproduce a missing left leg, rightfoot and hand.
One interesting discovery was that the leg circumference of the bronzefigure was 2 mm larger than the Coade one, due to shrinkage of the clay in the Coade preparation of Bacons casting process. To account for this a delicate adjustment of the master casts had to be made from the bronze and, to give the cast items an authentic Coade appearance in keeping with the rest of the piece, a cement-based mixture of various sands was used.
The figure was first steam cleaned to remove over 200 years of disfiguring carbon deposits but not the pleasing patina of age.
Restoration work involved the removal of rusting iron cramps and their replacement with stainless steel, as well as the removal of some earlier and unsympathetic in-situ restoration work. The original plinth of the statue was restored and a new foundation for it was prepared at its relocated site in Terrace Gardens.
Instead of being tucked away just off a pathway in the gardens - a position it had occupied since 1902 - the statue now commands a central position on a hillock in from of an imposing hedgerow in the park.
Relocating it presented a considerable logistical problem far Taylor Pearce and fine art handling specialist Momart, who was responsiblefar transporting the statue in specially designed air suspension trucks. The problem of getting a one ton statue onto a base at the top of a hillock which is surrounded by, and consistsof soft soil is considerable. The problem was resolved by taking the statue off the truck outside the park and transporting it on a trolley over scaffold boards laid like tram lines to the one spot of level ground around the area - which was behind the hedge at the top of the hillock. From there it was winched over the hedge onto its plinth. A time capsule was enclosed in the base incorporating an account of the project and the names of the donors.
In view of its importance the statue has also been ringed by a security system
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Terrace Gardens, Richmond is now a public park created through the merger of the grounds of three houses, Buccleuch House (demolished 1936/38), Landsdowne House (demolished 1869) and Cardigan House (demolished 1970).
The grounds of Buccleuch House and Landsdowne House were initially consolidated by the Duke of Buccleuch in the 1860s and became a public park in 1887.
The grounds of neighbouring Cardigan
House were added in the 1920s. None of these houses is still standing but the
C19 layout of their gardens is still very much in evidence.
Sizes - H 157 x W 236 x D (?) cm; Plinth: H 87 x W 212 x D 89 cm.
The land on Richmond Hill was originally clay pits and brick works.
During the period 1765-1771 parcels of land in this area of Richmond Hill were acquired for George Brudenell, the Earl of Cardigan and Duke of Montagu.
The land purchased consisted of a parcel on the riverside west of the Lower
Road (now Buccleuch Gardens) and included the Tile Kilns / brickworks and the wharf, as well
as adjacent plots to the east of Lower Road.
The coat of arms on the figures are those of the city of London. This figure was originally purchased by George Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, the Duke of Montague in 1781 for his house on the site of the present day Buccleugh Gardens and was placed in the Pleasure Gardens nearby.
Horace Walpole said of a visit in 1790 that '[the garden] is
perfectly screened from human eyes, tho' in the bosom of so populous a village:
and you climb til at last, treading the houses under feet, you recover the
Thames and all the world at a little distance. I am amazed that it is not more
talked of'. In 1796 the house and gardens were described by Daniel Lysons: 'At
the foot of the hill the Duke of Buccleuch has a villa ... It is situated on
the banks of the Thames. From the lawn there is a subterraneous communication
with the gardens and shrubberies on the opposite site of the road, which
extends almost to the summit of the hill. They are laid out with taste and have
local advantages to most places of the kind in the kingdom'.
The house was demolished in 1936 - 38.
In 1887 the Vestry acquired the existing site and
opened what is now Terrace Gardens to the public. The original position of the
work is unknown, but it was discovered in the early 1990s buried in a nearby
patch of undergrowth in a neglected state. In 1993 it was restored and reset as
part of voluntary community project by the Richmond Society on behalf on the
London Borough of Richmond on Thames with the help of grants and donations from
numerous organisations and individuals.
For Adam's unexecuted designs see -
https://collections.soane.org/SCHEME1214
The image below from
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The Moor Park Coade Stone River God.
The recently rediscovered Moor Park River God lies semi-hidden at Moor Park at Rickmansworth. Although headless and armless it is recognisably the same as the Ham House river god, even to the Code signature nestling inside.
It appears to have been moved to its present position in a 19th century shrubbery during a remodeling of the gardens by Lord Ebury and was still intact when the mansion was sold to Lord Leverhulme in 1919 to convert to a country-club come golf course.
Lady Susan Grosvenor returned to her childhood haunts and described ‘Neptune’ as being ‘brown with age,…, head engulfed in a Portuguese laurel’ but with water still trickling from the pitcher in his hand (though it looks more like tucked under his arm).
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Inside the bottle kiln at theCoade Manufactory.
European Magazine.
"Publish'd by J. Sewell, Cornhill
1786".
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1978-U-1958
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The Coade Manufactory - a View of the Yard.
Two men mixing something by the Pump.
George Shepherd (c. 1782 - c. 1830).
Watercolour.
They suggest c. 1800.
https://www.watercolourworld.org/collections/89f0de8d-1ed4-37b1-bbf8-6516a3a1e9bc/?s%3DCoade&pos=4
Image courtesy London Picture Archive.
https://londonpicturearchive.org.uk/view-item?i=17371
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Coade at Lleweni (Lleweny), Denbeigh.
Clipping from - The British Architect 30 April 1875.
The statue of Water mentioned here must be The Naiad no. 18 in the 1784 Coade Catalogue.
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A slightly later version of the water nymph, by now called
Sabrina and dated 1802, is at Croome Court. (National Trust - (NT 105007).
One of Capability Brown's greatest achievements was the creation of an artificial serpentine lake that meanders for 1.5 miles through the estate's central valley.
The Croome Lake is a scaled down 'model' of the Severn River, which marked the western boundary of the estate.
Sabrina takes her name from the nymph spirit of the Severn.
The grotto in which she was placed was originally
decorated with exotic shells, coral and gems and supplied with water from one
of the branches of the culvert drainage network. This water was directed through
a pipe in the grotto and flowed from the urn held under Sabrina's right arm on
to the banks of the lake below.
The Coade Naiad was commissioned from Coade at Croome Court, laid out by Capability Brown and which is described in an 1824 guide to Croome by its gardener William Dean:
"Beyond the Grotto, appears the figure of a Water Nymph, reclining on the bank, and holding an urn - through which, the waters, collected from a copious spring, at some distance, are made to flow, in a perpetucal stream, falling among pieces of broken rock; and afterwards mingling with the waters of the lake".
This water nymph represents Hafren (Roman Sabrina), supposedly the ancient spirit of the river Severn.
According to Alison Kelly in Mrs Coade's Stone. The Croome Court Naiad was not
far from the Severn, and either Mrs Coade or John Sealy showed some literary
knowledge by referring to the figure, in their handbook, as Sabrina, the nymph
of the Severn in Milton's Comus
The Croome Court Coade and Sealy Sabrina / Naiad.
Indented COADE & SEALEY LONDON 1802.
Much restored.
Dimensionms 320 mm (Height) x 300 mm (Depth); 1840 mm (Length).
https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/105007
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An Artificial Stone Naiad from the Coade Moulds.
By H. Bentley 1844.
46in. (117 cm.) high; 72 in. (183 cm.) long; 21 in. (54 cm.)
deep.
Sold Christie's Lot 68, 20 June 2013.
Provenance Sotheby's, Billingshurst, 24 September 2001, lot 512.
No further provenance.
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5693802
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Another Naiad at Wrest Park.
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Lleweni House and Bleach works - ownership.
Sir Robert Cotton, 3rd Baronet (d. 1748). He had no issue
and the property passed to his brother Sir Lynch Cotton, 4th Baronet, and then
to his son Sir Robert Salusbury Cotton, 5th Baronet, who sold the property;
In 1776 Lleweni leased to the Hon. Thomas Fitzmaurice MP
(1742-1793), brother of William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, Prime Minister of
Great Britain for £110,000.
The 1810 notice of the sale of the estate runs as follows:
"The very extensive and valuable FREEHOLD ESTATES
comprising the noble Mansion of Lleweny Hall, which contains ample
accommodation for a family of the first distinction, together with a new
erected and very commodious bleach works, water corn-mill, and iron forge, all
well supplied with water, a public-house, and several improvable farms: the
whole containing near 4000 acres of extraordinary rich meadow, pasture, arable,
and wood land, in a high state of cultivation, and lying nearly in a ring fence"
Sold to William Hughes in 1810 for £280,000. Hughs demolished the major part of it and used the elements for building Kinmel.
The Statue / fountain of the Naiad is just visible in front of the domed centrepiece
Mark Henry Blanchard was born at Portsea, Hampshire and
christened on 30 August 1817. He was apprenticed at the Coade Factory in
Lambeth in the firm's declining years, probably when it was managed by Thomas
John Croggon between c.1835 - 37, or after the business had been let to Thomas
Routledge and John Danforth Greenwood 1837 which endured until 1840.
Blanchard commenced business in Blackfriars Road, Lambeth
shortly after 1840 (probably working initially in plaster) and then appears to
have acquired some of the Coade Factory's moulds when Routledge and Greenwood
consigned them at auction in 1843.
Note the continued use of a varient of the Coade engraving
in Blanchards promotional material (below) and the mention of John Bacon as
designer.
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Keystones at Croome
The two masks forming the keystones for the Dry Arch Bridge, 1797.
Designed by James Wyatt, put up by William Stephes, Wyatt's stonemason.
The bridge was first built under Lancelot Brown's instruction in the 1770s
to enable the passage of carriages over the pedestrian lake walk, then
renovated under Wyatt's supervision in 1797. The two keystone masks
were by Coade and have been previously repaired, in part with an inappropriate
cement mix.
The Bottle Kiln.
https://www.hamishjacksonpottery.com/blog/2018/5/30/winchcombe-pottery-kiln-restoration-project
https://www.thepotteries.org/bottle_kiln/bottle_kiln_two.htm
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of Tangential Interest.
Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames
A painting 4 of 6 in
the series 'The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture'.
James Barry (1741–1806)
Royal Society of Arts.
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/commerce-or-the-triumph-of-the-thames-218503
