Busts of David Garrick at the Garrick Club.

The Busts of David Garrick 

at the Garrick Club.

Some Notes and Images.

Plaster Bust

After John van Nost III

Height: 54cm Width: 50cm Depth: 20cm

This form of the socle was used by Nollekens but its use here suggests a later cast perhaps by Shout or a later cast by Sarti.

A bust of Shakespeare by Shout (below) is in the Garrick Collection and has a very similar socle detail.

Shakespeare.

Plaster. 

Inscribed Shout on the back.

Height: 55cm Width: 45cm   Depth: 22cm

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David Garrick.

Wedgwood.

1779?

From a plaster bust supplied to Wedgwood by Hoskins and Grant.

Reworked by William Hackwood?

Height: 43.5cm  Width: 30.5cm  Depth: 18cm

Socle replaced.

According to the Wedgwood archives, James Hoskins and Benjamin Grant supplied Wedgwood with busts of Garrick and Sterne in 1779.

 

Other busts supplied to Wedgwood during the previous four years included Swift, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, Addison, Pope, Locke, Dryden, Dr Johnson, Ben Jonson, Sir William Reigley, Prior, Congreve, Fletcher, Beaumont, Bacon, Boyle, Harvey, and Newton.

 

The bust is based on an example of the Van Nost bust; the ribbons and folds around the neck are reproduced exactly. However, there is much more flare in the modelling of the hair, and the face is modelled with more distinction.

 

James Hoskins (d.1791) was apprenticed to the sculptor John Cheere (1709-87) in 1747. In partnership with Samuel Euclid Oliver, Hoskins managed a workshop on St Martin’s Lane. His stock-in-trade was plaster casts, many of which were copies of antique originals. In his capacity as ‘moulder and caster in plaster’ to the Royal Academy, Hoskins supplied plaster casts throughout the 1770s and 1780s. He also supplied Wedgwood with reliefs, busts and moulds, many of which were reproduced in black ‘basalt’ stoneware. Among Hoskins’s clients was Sir Joshua Reynolds, who commissioned a ‘plaister bust of Dr Johnson moulded after his death’, an object that still survives today.

Adam commissions: In the early 1770s, Adam commissioned Hoskins to produce two plaster figures – Apollo and Mercury – for Sir Edward Knatchbull at Mersham-le-Hatch in Kent. He paid £24 6s for the pair, but took some persuading from Adam. Knatchbull expressed concern that the nude Apollo figure might lack decorum: ‘I must send for a taylor to cloath him for as we sometimes have chaste and delicate eyes … nakedness might possibly give offence’.HAN VAN OLDENBARNEVELT

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Life Mask of David Garrick

Supposedly taken by John van Nost III.

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The Life Mask of David Garrick.

Mezzotint.

Robert Edge Pine (1730 - 88).

4 April 1779.

12" x 9".

Image courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library.

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