Three Busts of a Moor by Francis Harwood.

This post under construction.

Updated 4 Dec 2024 - to be continued. I have been meaning to do this for a long time.

 Bust of a Moor.

Attributed to Francis Harwood (1727 - 83).

Working in Italy mainly in Florence from 1752 until he died.

Patinated Plaster.

A Life Mask / Head and Upper Torso

Height 65 cms.

A recent discovery.

Sold by - Auctioneers Pandolfini Casa d'Aste, Florence. Italy.

 Lot 101 on June 30, 2020.

https://www.pandolfini.it/uk/auction-0340/toscana-secolo-xviii-12020002941

Where is it now??

In the absence of any more high resolution photographs - it would appear that this bust is the prototype for the two busts below, but at this point I cannot be 100% sure - the scar on the forehead is not visible and there are real differences in the hair. 

These differences in the hair can probably be accounted for because when making the plaster piece mould the sitters hair would have needed to be protected (probably by some sort of grease) in order to prevent the hair being caught in the setting plaster.

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What to me is plainly obvious is that this bust has been taken from life - the closed eyes suggest that a mould was created around the head and shoulders of the model and a cast then taken.

In order to make the marble busts the eyes would have had to be remodelled and carved but the bust and the rest of the head could be relatively easily transferred to the marble with the aid of a pointing machine.

It is my belief that Roubiliac would have used this method on more than one occasion.

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I have written about Harwoods sculpture previously in my post

http://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2019/02/marble-bust-of-oliver-cromwell-by.html

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Bust of a Black Man

 Studio of ? Francis Harwood.

 c. 1758.

Black limestone (pietra di paragone) on a yellow Siena marble socle.

 

Overall: 28 × 20 × 10 1/2 inches (71.1 × 50.8 × 26.7 cm

 

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

 

The centre website is rather vague on the provenance of this remarkable bust.

 

Before Paul Mellon bought it in 1967, the Yale bust had been part of the Esterhazy Collection in Vienna, where it was misattributed to the Renaissance artist Alessandro Vittoria (1525–1608) and called “The Blackamoor”, and in 2006 it became part of the Yale Center for British Art collection.

Excellent images Courtesey

https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1669707

In my previous post I wrote

"This remarkable bust may be a portrait: details such as the small scar on the man’s forehead and the subtle depressions in the skin around his temples, nose, and eyes suggest close study of an individual sitter. However, the sculptor Francis Harwood, who was based in Italy, specialized in making copies of classical statues for sale to English Grand Tourists, and so it is also possible that this is a copy or adaptation of an Antique model."

 

"A third possibility is that the bust was made as an allegorical image of “Africa.” A passage from Joseph Baretti’s "Guide through the Royal Academy" (London, 1781) suggests that, by 1781, Harwood’s "Bust of a Man"—or something very similar—had entered the cast and sculpture collection of the Royal Academy. Though we cannot be sure that Baretti is referring to the sculpture on display here, his description suggests that works like it may have been difficult to categorize even in the eighteenth century: AFRICUS.

 

"For want of a better, I give this name to a Head of a Blackamoor, which is in the Niche of this Room.

 

A Friend of mine would have it called Boccar, or Boccor, an African King named in one of Juvenal’s Satires. But, as it has no ensigns of Royalty about it, I imagine it to be a Portrait of some Slave, if not a fanciful performance intended to characterise the general Look of the African faces.

 

Whatever it be, I think it a fine thing of the kind".

 

In the nineteenth century, Harwood’s bust was mistakenly believed to be a portrait of an athlete named Psyche in the service of the first Duke of Northumberland".

 

Another version of this sculpture, which bears Harwood’s signature and the date 1758, is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

 

Text above lifted from the Yale Centre for British Art  website

In light of the appearence of the plaster bust it would seem some of this needs to be reappraised

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For several interesting articles on the Harwood busts see:

https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/index/article-index/bust-of-a-man/issue/issue-1/page/1

 

http://pdf.britishartstudies.ac.uk/Issues/issue-1.pdf

 

http://idiscoveredamerica.com/?p=52

 

http://idiscoveredamerica.com/?p=149

 

http://idiscoveredamerica.com/?p=292

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Photographs of the two busts shown here side by side for comparison.

 

The details of the ear make it clear that these busts are of the same man.

 

It would seem fairly obvious to me that the detail of the new scar on the forehead would suggest that the Yale bust is the original and that the Getty bust is a later version.

 

The scar on the Yale bust clearly shows the stitch marks which have healed over in the Getty bust.

the hair on the Yale bust has much deeper drilling and the curls are much more defined.

 

The early history and provenance of both of these busts is unclear.

 

It has been suggested that the date on the Getty bust has been recut, but the inscribed signature is close to that on other busts such as the Sotheby's Caracalla.

 

The date of 1758 on the Getty busts implies that it was sculpted in Italy.

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Bust of A Man

 Francis Harwood

 inscribed 1758

 Black stone (pietra di paragone) on a yellow Siena marble socle

 

at the J Paul Getty Museum

http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/1199/francis-harwood-bust-of-a-man-english-1758/?

see also, for a rather verbose article on the two busts:

 http://pdf.britishartstudies.ac.uk/Issues/issue-1.pdf

The surface of this bust has undergone at least one program of restoration - the Getty "conservation work and analysis shows that the bust’s original, eighteenth-century coating was a medium, translucent brown. 

In fact, conservators have in recent years removed much of the thickly applied black paint, wax, and shellac that had been applied to the bust in the 1980s, in an attempt to bring the surface colour closer to the varied texture and tone of the underlying marble".

 

 

"With noble bearing, this man proudly holds his chin high above his powerful chest. Sculptor Francis Harwood chose a black stone to reproduce the sitter's skin tone. Harwood also chose an unusual antique format for the bust, terminating it in a wide arc below the man's pectoral muscles. Harwood was familiar with antique sculptures from time spent in Florence reproducing and copying them. He may have deliberately used this elegant, rounded termination, which includes the entire, unclothed chest and shoulders, to evoke associations with ancient busts of notable men. Although the identity of the sitter is unknown, the scar on his face suggests that this is a portrait of a specific individual. This work may be one of the earliest sculpted portraits of a Black individual by a European".

 

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Provenance:

 1758 - 1786:    possibly Hugh Percy, first Duke of Northumberland, English, 1714 - 1786, possibly commissioned by him from the artist, possibly by inheritance to his son, Hugh Percy.

 

1786 - 1817:    possibly Hugh Percy, second duke of Northumberland, English, 1742 - 1817, possibly by inheritance to his son, Hugh Percy.

 

1817 - 1847:    possibly Hugh Percy, third duke of Northumberland, English, 1785 - 1847, possibly by inheritance to his brother, Algernon Percy.

 

1847 - 1865: Algernon Percy, Fourth duke of Northumberland, English, 1792 - 1865 (Stanwick Hall, Yorkshire, England)

Described in the 1865 after-death inventory of Stanwick Hall as "a fine bust in black marble - W. Richmond the pugilist - on Italian Marble Plinth."

 

1865 - 1922

Percy Family, English (Stanwick Hall, Yorkshire, England) [sold, Anderson and Garland, Stanwick Hall, Yorkshire, May (no day), 1922, lot 189]    -  description of lot 189 as "A Carved Black Marble Bust of a Negro, 27 in. high, by F. Harwood, on circular Sienna marble plinth and wood pedestal, 4ft, high (in the margin in black ink is indicated the amount of 2.10 pounds)

 

Before 1987  Private Collection (England) [sold, Christie's, London, April 9, 1987, lot 83 to Cyril Humphris]

 

1987 - 1988 - Cyril Humphris, S.A. (London, England), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988.

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Of Tangential Relevance -

This dropped into my in box from John Sullivan on 4 Dec 2024.

I thought that this was the most relevant place to save it.

While scanning for news from 'the American plantations' for the year 1735, I came across this remarkable paragraph in Hooker’s Weekly Miscellany. As far as I can tell it has never been quoted or otherwise mentioned in the relevant literature. 'Richard Hooker, Esq. of the Inner Temple’ was the literary alter ego of Dr. William Webster (1689–1758), a Cambridge-educated “country clergyman” and writer on religious topics who had a rather bumpy career, which ended in poverty and isolation. Samuel Richardson was heroically kind to him in his capacity as printer, forgiving debts, etc. Christopher Smart dedicated an ode to him (a powerful poem, especially the first half), and Pope twitted him glancingly in the Dunciad. He gets several pages in Nichols' 'Literary Anecdotes," for anyone interested:  https://archive.org/details/literaryanecdote05nichuoft/page/160/mode/2up

1735 is obviously an interesting year in which to find someone discussing "species" and race or slavery--this is the very year in which Linnaeus publishes his Systema Naturae (a work that Webster couldn't have known, at the time of writing). This is not to imply that the terms of Webster's argument were wholly novel or would have struck his readers as unfamiliar. The discourse around the question of whether the various races of humankind could be taken to represent different "species" had its own tradition by then, and earlier writers had put forward versions of the position adopted by Webster (e.g., the Scottish physician David Abercromy, who writes, in his 1686 'Discourse of Wit,', "[Y]ou shall not be allowed hence to infer, that there are different Species of Men: For this Denomination we take from what is most obvious to our Senses, that is from the Bodies. In which we can observe no such difference...") Winthrop Jordan, in his White Over Black, charts these debates over a couple of centuries. And plenty of more narrowly focused essays and monographs have been published in the decades since, refining the picture. All of which leaves one the more surprised that Webster's little article has totally eluded notice. It reads as follows: 

"It were to be wished, that some Method might be fallen upon in the Plantations, where those miserable Negroes are so very useful, to make the Yoke under which they grown [sic] more tolerable to them. Much might be said on this Head, with regard to the Cruelty of their worse-than-Egyptian Task-masters, and the Barbarities wherewith these poor Wretches are used, as if they were not of the same Species with them, because of a different Complexion; but we refer our Readers on this Subject to the PROMPTERS No[s] XVI and XVIII. which well deserve the serious Consideration of all those who wish well to our American Colonies, and at the same time would cherish and propagate that Spirit of Benevolence to the whole human Species, which is the Glory and Distinction of a generous Nature.”

(Note: The two then-recent issues of the Prompter (the poet-projector Aaron Hill's "theatrical paper") referenced by Webster are those involving the speech of one Moses Bon Sáam, a Free Black military leader in the mountains of Jamaica, who supposedly delivered the fiery address to his Maroon army. The speech is all but certainly fictitious, as is Bon Sáam, but it made a powerful anti-slavery statement and created some waves in that year. Among other published reactions inspired by it was Webster's paragraph.) 

What stands out to me about Webster's paragraph in Hooker's Miscellany, in the context of the abovementioned long-running conversation regarding race and "species," is a certain enlargement of meaning that seems to occur between its first and second deployments of the word "Species"--or that exists, rather, as a vibration between the two. First Webster decries those cruel enslavers who would justify their own behavior under the false pretense that the enslaved "were not of the same Species with them, because of a different Complexion." Later in the same sentence he writes that persons of a "generous Nature" are marked by a "Spirit of Benevolence to the whole human Species," where "the whole human Species" is specifically understood to indicate all races, and most emphatically, Black and white. Against intra-species variation and demarcation, Webster sets species unity and solidarity, and all in the form of an anti-slavery message. I don't know of any other passage, certainly not from this early in the 18th century, to put beside that one.

One could argue that two slightly different shadings of the word "species" are operative here, the first being more precisely zoological--the Homo category, in use since the late 16th century, just about to be revived, later in 1735, by Linnaeus--and the second an older, more general meaning, one that is more (for lack of a better word) humanistic, suggesting humankind in a loose sense (à la OED II.9.e.: "the species, the human race"). There is overlap between the two, needless to say, not perfect but considerable. It may be that the significance I seem to locate in this passage lies precisely in how those two sub-shadings are brought together. The first and more scientific instance can't help but bolster or amplify the second and more general. A generous person maintains a spirit of benevolence toward the "whole species" (humankind) in part because we are all "the same Species" (Homo sapiens, albeit a bit avant la lettre). 

I would highly value the thoughts of any list-members who find this passage intriguing, especially any who are more deeply read than I in the scholarship on this subject. Possibly I'm making the passage out to be more interesting than it is, owing to an imperfect familiarity with the corpus of writings on "species" from the first half of the 18th century.  

At the very least poor forgotten Webster deserved to have this moment of forward thinking chalked up to his otherwise dodgy credit!