Portrait Sculpture at Wilton House, No 4.
Post under construction.
Updated 7 May 2025 after a visit to St Mary's Church at Narford, Norfolk.
I am very grateful to the Rev. Angela Hammett and her husband for opening the church at Narford and for making my visit so enjoyable.
Once again I am also very grateful to the 18th Earl and Countess of Pembroke for allowing me to visit Wilton House with my camera and for giving me free access to the sculptures outside of visiting hours.
I am also very grateful to all the staff at Wilton, Charlotte Spender, Sandie Buxcie, and in particular the House Manager Nigel Bailey and all at Wilton who made me feel so welcome.
............................
Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676 - 1753).
Louis Francois Roubiliac.
1747.
Purchased from Commander Andrew Fountaine in 1992.
The 1753 inventory of Narford described a marble bust as ‘the highly finished Busto in marble of Sir Andrew Fountaine, done after the life and very like him by Roubiliac.’ This is the bust which was put up on the monument in the church at Narford (see the images etc below).
Overall: 23 3/4 × 19 × 9 3/4 inches (60.3 × 48.3 × 24.8 cm).
Provenance.
The sitter; By family descent; sale, Sotheby's, 12 December
1991 (Lot 252).
I am suspicious of this bust - it is perhaps a fairly modern cast taken from the terracotta.
Close comparison with the terracotta now at Norwich Castle would suggest that this plaster was cast from the terracotta - the damage on the right hand side of the back of the base of the Norwich bust is replicated on this plaster.
The air bubbles visible on the surface might also arouse suspicion that this is a relatively modern cast.
The plaster bust (illustrated below) in a private collection in Cambridge is much more likely to have been manufactured in the workshop of Roubiliac who is known to have produced multiples.
The Black and White Photographs of the Yale plaster below from the Excellent Paul Mellon Archives.
(if only all archive images were this good!!)
https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/
The same bust at the YCBA in more recent photographs.
The back of the base of this bust has now been repaired
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1468
...............................
Bust of Andrew Fountaine on the Monument at St Mary's Church, Narford, Norfolk.
Previously suggested as a replacement - this needs to be confirmed.
Update 7 May 2025 - after visiting St Mary's Church at Narford I now have very little doubt that this was the bust which was removed from Narford Hall.
Narford a few notes.
For St Mary's Narford see http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/narford/narford.htm
Sir Andrew Fountaine surrounded Narford Hall with highly formal gardens of enclosed spaces and geometric avenues terminated by classical eye-catchers. ‘Fountaine was uniquely mingling the latest Palladian architectural styles from Hanover with the kind of structural atmospheric content gleaned from Dutch gardens. For an enthusiastic supporter of the Protestant succession, Narford was the ultimate politically correct garden.’7
A long canal extended north from the house, passing the church of St. Mary’s which still stands isolated NW of the Hall.
The 1753 inventory of Narford described the marble bust as
‘the highly finished Busto in marble of Sir Andrew Fountaine, done after the
life and very like him by Roubiliac.’
The inventory also recorded Roubiliac’s terracotta bust, which was the original model for the marble versions, which was acquired from the Fountaine
collection by Norfolk Museums Service in 1992 (see photographs above).
The Narford Hall Sales.
The collection of Sir Andrew Fountaine remained intact after his death in 1753. However, much was sold by Christie's in 1884, in a sale which took place over a period of four days.
There was a sequence of major dispersals of chattels from Narford with a ‘spectacle almost without rival’ in June 1884. Many of the 400+ pieces of “useless crockery” in the four-day Christie’s sale were acquired for the nation, displayed today at the British Museum and the V&A.
A month later dozens of paintings and over 800 prints would be knocked down. One decade on, Rubens’ ‘Return of the Prodigal Son‘ was among more Old Masters sold, followed in 1902 by another four-day sale of almost one thousand folios and manuscripts from Narford’s library.
.
.
I believe the present owners are slightly more accommodating but I am including this snippet for amusement
What makes it fascinating is that, since the mid-20th Century, very few people have been allowed in to see it. Pevsner's revising editor certainly wasn't. However, Pevsner was, albeit briefly, and we know this because of John Harris's wonderful and funny book No Voice From The Hall: Early Memories of a Country House Snooper.
After years of trying to see inside, Harris was finally granted permission in 1960 on the condition to which all visitors had to agree, no photography. He describes the eccentric Louisa Constance Catherine Fountaine, in an ostrich-feather dress and an ostrich-feather hat which covered her face, and the great Pelligrini painted hall, piled high to the ceiling with what appeared to be mostly unopened copies of the Times, the later ones just thrown to the top of the heap.
In fact,
Harris and Mrs Fountaine got on very well, and she proved very knowledgeable,
but during their tour there was another knock at the door.
"I am not expecting anyone," said Mrs Fountaine. The maid returned to report. "A man and a woman with a clipboard, Mum. Maybe from the Council, perhaps to read the meter." "I'd better see them," said Mrs Fountaine. "I didn't think they worked on Saturdays.'
There is a ripple of amusement on our part when the maid announces "it's a Dr and Mrs Pevsner asking to see the house. From the Buildings Council.' In come Nikolaus and Lola, she indeed with a clipboard in hand.
I wondered if
there could be anything more off-putting to the landed classes than to arrive
at the front door looking as though you'd come to read the meter.
Mrs Fountaine's husband Vice-Admiral Charles Fountaine had
been a Naval ADC to King George V, and their son Andrew was probably the most
infamous of the 20th Century Fountaine eccentrics. Born in 1918, he had fought
as a teenager on the side of Franco in the Spanish Civil War, before signing up
as an ordinary seaman in the Second World War. Before the end of the War he had
been appointed a lieutenant-commander. After achieving a First in Chemistry at
Cambridge, he became an active member of the Conservative Party, the ordinary
route into politics for a member of the East Anglian landowning class, and even
stood for parliament, but was eventually disowned by the party for his
increasingly bizarre and anti-Semitic speeches. In 1960 he became a founder
member of the British National Party, a far more radical party than the one
with the same name today. Its paramilitary wing, Spearhead, used the Narford
Hall estate for training with guns and for its annual British Aryan camp which
attracted followers from all over western Europe.
The Andrew Fountaine monument at St Mary's Church, Narford is inscribed by the little known N. Powley of Wells by Sea, Norfolk.
Harris Powley is noted in an advertisement in the Norwich
Mercury 6 April 1776 as a stonemason of Wells next the Sea making marble, Portland stone and freestone
chimney pieces, monuments tombs and gravestones.
At the Church of All Saints, Sculthorpe, Norfolk, on the
South West external wall of the church there are two mural monuments to members of the Matthew
family. Both set under a triangular pediments. One is inscribed Powley, which
must be Harris the son of John Powley, as the latest date is 1786, and John
Powley had died at Wells in 1774. (facts need checking).
.................................
There is a portrait of Andrew Fountaine by William Hoare of Bath at Wilton.
..........................
Andrew Fountaine, Roubiliac and the St Martin's Lane Academy.
A Statue of Venus by Roubiliac.
On November 13th, 1738, the London Daily Post and General Advertiser reported,
'Last week a fine Venus was finished at a Sculptor's in St. Martin's Lane for a Person of Quality; eight of the most celebrated Painters assisted at the Performance and the Lady who sate Nine Hours at different times for the same, had three and a half Crowns each Hour for her complaisance and trouble'.
This probably shows the personal connection between Roubiliac and Sir Andrew Fountaine.
............................
Sir Andrew Fountaine.
The Dassier Medallion.
Diameter: 51.3mm.
Struck 1745.
ANDREAS- FOUNTAINE EQ- AURAT
'A.A.A./F.F/ III VIR./ M.DCCXLV./ J.A DASSIER.
This is one of a series of thirteen medals of illustrious
Englishmen begun by Dassier in 1740. The dies were engraved in London, but
struck abroad, as no sufficiently powerful machinery was available in England.
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O311679/sir-andrew-fountaine-medal-dassier-jacques-antoine/
For the rest of the medallions in this series see -
http://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/10/jacques-antoine-dassier-16-medallions.html
.........................
Sir Andrew Fountaine (on the left) and Friends in the Tribune.
Giulio Pignatta (1684–1751).
1715.
H 145.5 x W 119 cm.
On loan to Norwich Castle Museum .
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/sir-andrew-fountaine-and-friends-in-the-tribune-228912
The Life and Works of Louis François Roubiliac
London: Oxford University Press, 1928. see -
At the east end of the South aisle, is an altar monument of white,
on which is placed a sarcophagus of Egyptian, and on that a pyramid of gray
marble; on which, are the crest, arms, and supporters of Fountaine, with this
motto;
On the outside, in the churchyard, is a very neat altar
tomb, placed like an altar; against the east wall of this isle, at the south
end, is a shield of Fountaine, with a crescent for difference on the fess; it
is of Portland stone covered with a black marble, and on the east side is this:
January 14, 1725, John Anstis, Garter King at Arms, by order
of King George I. granted by patent to Sir Andrew Fountaine, Knt. then
vice-chamberlain to the Princess of Wales, and tutor to his highness Prince
William, for whom he was installed (as proxy) knight of the honourable Order of
the Bath, supporters to his arms, viz. on either side a lion gul. with wings
erected or, with the old family motto of, Vix. Ea. Nostra Voco, and the ancient
arms of Fountaine, or, a fess gul. between three elephants heads erased sab.
Conversation Piece (Portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine with
Other Men and Women).
William Hogarth (English, 1697–1764).
c. 1730-1735.
Oil on canvas.
(47.6 x 58.4 cm).
The
John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928.
.....................
Perhaps........
Sir Andrew Fountaine.
by Jonathan Richardson 1665 - 1745.
Fountaine wearing the gilt bronze key of his office as
Vice-Chamberlain to Princess Caroline of Ansbach.
Leland Little, Hillsborough North Carolina. Lot 233, Jun 11, 2022.
Probably Richard Gipps (died 1743), West Harling Hall, Norfolk.
Sir Edmund Nugent, Bt. (died 1928), West Harling Hall, Norfolk by 1908 [Duleep Singh 1927 described it as a portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine attributed to Richardson]; the portrait, which had been extended on all sides and installed within a carved chimneypiece, passed with the house to the Government Forestry Commission [according to a letter dated 5 December 1933 from Frank Surgey to Bessie Bennett in curatorial file, Department of European Decorative Arts].
Acton, Surgey, London by 1931 [letter cited above and Connoisseur 1931];
sold with the chimneypiece to the Antiquarian Society for presentation to the
Art Institute, 1933 (added strips removed from the painting in 1964/65
conservation treatment).
.........................
Some notes and images on the reuse of designs for the drapery on the Roubiliac Busts.
The Roubiliac Bust of Thomas Winnington (d. 1746).
On the Winnington Monument at St Mary's Church, Stanford on Teme, Worcestershire.
...............................
The Monument to John Bamber (c.1754).
St Margaret of Antioch Church. Barking, Essex.
The bust attributed by me to Roubiliac again using the same body and drapery as on the bust of Andrew Fountaine and the bust of Thomas Winnington in the church at Stanford on Teme.
c.1754.
Photographs here by the author.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2019_04_05_archive.html
I believe that this monument is probably a collaboration between Henry Cheere and Roubiliac.
The monument is perhaps by Cheere typically showing
his use of coloured marbles, but the bust has all the hallmarks of the mature
Roubiliac and his mastery of depicting older men in a naturalistic fashion.
Another pointer is the lions paw feet supporting the Dove Grey Marble Sarcophagus of both the Bamber and Winnington Monuments.
These feet also appear on the monument to Monument to John Merick of Norcutt of c 1749. Church of St Mary the Virgin. Tentelow Lane. Norwood Green, Middlesex. This monument was attributed to Benjamin Palmer by Malcolm Baker in the Church Monument Society Journal vol X 1995.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2019/03/monument-to-thomas-winnington-stanford.html
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2019_04_05_archive.html
........................
Drawing of the Merick Monument at St Mary the Virgin Church, Norwood by Daniel Lysons.
Drawn between 1796 and 1811.
Image courtesy YCBA
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:16987
Included here to show the lions paw feet supporting the sarcophagus as used on the Winnington and Bamber Monuments.
..........................
......................
The reuse or repetition of Drapery on the Roubiliac Busts - Notes.
In my experience Louis Francois Roubiliac was the only
sculptor who reused the clothing from his prototypes on other busts - good
examples of this are the bust of George
Streatfield, Jonathan Tyers and John Ray and the busts of Hawksmoor at All
Souls Oxford and that on the Monument to William Wither. d.1732 in Wootton St
Lawrence Church, Hampshire which also both use the same almost baroque drapery.
For the Gounter Nichol Monument at St Peter Church, Racton, West Sussex and the Thomas Missing monument at Crofton and Stubbington Hampshire and the repetition of the drapery.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-gounter-nicoll-monument-racton-west.html
For the reuse of the drapery on the busts of William Wither at St Lawrence Church, Wooten St Lawrence, Hampshire, and the plaster bust of Nicholas Hawksmoor at All Souls, Oxford, see -
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-bust-of-william-wither.html
No comments:
Post a Comment