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
__________________________
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
__________________________________
Life Mask of David Garrick
Supposedly taken by John van Nost III.
___________________________
The Life Mask of David Garrick.
Mezzotint.
Robert Edge Pine (1730 - 88).
4 April 1779.
12" x 9".
Image courtesy Folger Shakespeare Library.
