Anne Seymour Damer.
The Sculptures.
Some notes and images.
post in preparation.
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James Smith. (1775–1815).
James Smith was an English sculptor. Sometime assistant to Mrs Damer.
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The Shock Dog.
(a nickname for a dog of the Maltese breed).
White Marble.
Size 33.3 × 38 × 32.1 cm
Metropolitan Museum, New York.
Private Collection, London , Italy (until 2013; sold at 28th
Biennale Dell-Antiquariato, Florence, October 5–13, 2013, to Zietz); [ Rainer
Zietz Limited , London, 2013–14; sold to MMA ].
Incised on oval at rear, in Greek:
ΑΝΝΑ.ΣΕΙΜΟΡΙΣ.ΔΑΜΕΡ.ΕΠΟΙΕΙ. [made by Anne Seymour Damer].
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/642422
Available as a reproduction see -
https://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/clt/d/brooklyn-metropolitan-museum-of-art-met/7810037333.html
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Some more Damer Dogs.
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Caroline Campbell, Countess of Aylesbury.
Daughter of John, 4th Duke of Argyll and widow of Charles Bruce, 3rd Earl of Ailesbury.
Mother of Mrs Damer
Carved in 1789.
Inscribed:
On the front of the socle:
‘CAROLINA •/ CAMPBELL •/ ARGATHELLAE •/ DUCIS • FILIA •’
On the left-hand side of the socle:
‘ANNA •/ SEYMOUR • DAMER •/ FECIT •’
On the back of the bust:
‘ANNA/ ΣΕΙΜΟΡΙΣ/ ΔΑΜΕΡ/ ΕΠΟΙΕΙ/ ΦΙΛΗ ΜΗΤΗΡ/ ΑΥΤΗΣ’
Bequeathed by the artist to her cousin Lady Louisa Johnston;
Captain Frederick Campbell-Johnston (1812-1896), son of the
above;
By inheritance in the Campbell-Johnston family;
Campbell-Johnson sale, Sotheby’s London, 8th December, 2006,
lot.142;
Private collection Kagan, New York to 2022;
Previously on Exhibition at Metropolitan Museum, New York until 2021.
with London Dealers Libson Yarker, 2022.
https://www.libson-yarker.com/recent-sales/caroline-campbell-lady-ailesbury
Mrs Damer, portrays her mother, Caroline Campbell. The busts dual signatures in Latin and Greek reflect Damer’s erudite connection with the classical tradition. Damer’s personal dedication of the work to her, "friend and mother" is inscribed solely at the back.
Damer kept this bust throughout her life. She carved another version for her mother’s tomb in Saint Mary’s Church, Sundridge, Kent, where Damer is buried. She was daughter of Marshal Conway.
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Engraved: by John Jones, ‘Caroline Campbell Countess of Ailesbury, from the original bust in marble executed by her daughter.
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Miss Farren as Thalia.
Countess of Derby.
Mrs Damer.
Marble.
Sizes 600 mm x 300 mm overall.
National Portrait Gallery.
Given by Rupert Gunnis, 1965.
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Mary Berry (1759 - 1829).
( Called the Queen of Comedy by Horace Walpole, Elizabeth
Farren was the star of Drury Lane for 20 years until her marriage to the 12th
Earl of Derby in 1797.
Mary Berry was, like her friend the sculptor Mrs Damer, a favourite of Horace Walpole, who bequeathed her his books and manuscripts, and the house next door at Strawberry Hill.
Berry became known for her writings, including 'Social Life in
England and France from the French Revolution' in 1831, and the posthumously
published 'Journals and Correspondence' in 1865.
The paragraph below from https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/anne-damer-with-dr-caroline-gonda/
Dr Caroline Gonda: "Some of Damer’s letters to Mary Berry survive, because Berry couldn’t bring herself to destroy the evidence of having been the object of such faithful devotion. But most of Damer’s papers are lost.
Her four notebooks, at the Lewis Walpole Library, are full of extracts from Mary Berry’s loving letters to her, and (particularly in the first notebook) classical quotations from the literature both women loved.
The record Damer chooses to preserve in these notebooks is an intense and intimate one, of a relationship often seen as a likeness of souls. It’s a relationship of care, sharing confidences and small everyday details as well as comments on reading and study. It’s not always an easy relationship, particularly given the pressures of social expectation, but it is a strong and loving one".
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Mary Berry.
Mrs Damer.
Size 455 mm x 200 mm.
The NPG Bronze Bust.
Purchased 1997.
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw09879/Mary-Berry
This bronze is a cast of the terracotta portrait bust made
for Horace Walpole and was originally at his house at Strawberry Hill.
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Elizabeth (née Farren), Countess of Derby; Thomas King as Lady Emily and Sir Clement in Burgoyne's 'The Heiress'.
NPG.
Elizabeth (née Farren), Countess of Derby.
by Francesco Bartolozzi, published by Bull & Jeffryes,
after Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Stipple engraving, published 1 January 1792.
by Henry Adlard, published by Longman & Co, after Anne
Mee (née Foldsone).
stipple engraving, mid 19th century.
(222 mm x 143 mm).
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Bust of one of the daughters of Niobe,
Signed and dated: anne damer 1780 fecit
Terracotta
Sothebys. Lot 111, 8 July 2011.
Bequeathed by the artist, as part of her studio, in 1828 to
her cousin Louisa Campbell, daughter of Lord William Campbell and wife of Sir
Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of Ceylon(1775-1849);
By descent to Louisa Charlotte Campbell Johnston, who
married Sir William Trollope,10th.Bt., in 1894;
Thence by family descent to the present owners.
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Bust Portrait Of Prince Henry Lubomirski In The Character Of
Bacchus
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
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Joseph Banks.
Mrs Damer.
c.1800.
British Museum.
Presented to the BM by the artist 1814; exhibited RA 1813 (912). Probably from the terracotta that was exhibited RA 1806 (838).
Plaster casts in the Natural History Museum and the British Library.
She began to work in bronze around 1800 and this portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, botanist, President of the Royal Society and
one of the Museum's greatest Trustees and patrons, may be based on the terra-cotta model exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806, now lost.
There are also busts of Banks by Turnerelli (NMM Greenwich 1814) and Chantry (1822 British Museum)
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1814-0312-1
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Terracotta Bozzetto of a seated woman.
English, late 18th/ early 19th century.
Together with a Verona marble portrait relief of Lady
Aylesbury, mounted on red velvet in an oval ebonised wood frame
Provenance -
Bequeathed by the artist, as part of her studio, in 1828 to
her cousin Louisa Campbell, daughter of Lord William Campbell and wife of Sir
Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of Ceylon(1775-1849);
By descent to Louisa Charlotte Campbell Johnston, who
married Sir William Trollope,10th.Bt., in 1894;
Thence by family descent to the present owners.
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The Statue of Apollo on the Roof of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. London.
Attributed to Mrs Damer.
The lofty attic stage of the theatre shell was uniformly arcaded, with eleven equally spaced arches on the north and south sides, and five on the west and east. Every arch framed a large window, recessed within a marginal surround, and the unmoulded arches rested on wide piers with plain imposts, and had keystones rising to meet the crowning cornice. This was surmounted by an open balustrade broken by wide pedestals containing the chimneys. From the leaded flat roof at the west end rose the octagonal lantern, a veritable Tower of the Winds, surmounted by the statue of Apollo, 10 feet in height, "designed and made by Anne Seymour Damer".
There is still some dispute regarding the authorship of this statue.
If Damer was not the eventual sculptress, at least she intended to realize a statue for the theatre.
Another cartoon, Hobby Horses,
published in 1797, shows a sculptress, again probably Damer, working on a
colossal erect statue, saying: “I intend it my dear for the top of Drury Lane
Theatre for I cannot tell whether the one that is there be Man, Woman or
Child.” Mary Dorothy George and Frederic George Stephens, Catalogue of Personal
and Political Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, vol. 6, 1784–92
For much more on the architecture and the statuary at the theatre see -
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-lead-statue-of-shakespeare-and-its.html
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She also created two bas reliefs for the Boydell Shakespeare
Gallery of scenes from Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.
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Bartholemew Papera (d. 1815).
In 1802, Wedgwood purchased busts of Siddons, Lord Nelson
and the Hon. Mrs. Damer, from B. Papera, see Reilly Wedgwood, 2:457.
Bartholomew Papera was said to have been a lapsed Roman Catholic clergyman of Italian birth, if Richard Beamish’s account in the Phrenological Journal of the life of James Philip Papera can be credited.
He is also said to have helped Anne Seymour Damer to escape Paris
after the Peace of Amiens and to have numbered Sir Thomas Lawrence among his
acquaintances.
The first record of Papera’s activities dates from 1790, when he was listed in Wakefield’s London Directory at Marylebone Street, Golden Square.
In the Petworth House archives is a receipt dated 29 January 1801 from ‘B Papera’ for several models which included a ‘3 foot figure’ at £3 12s’ a ‘Gladeator’ and ‘Hercules’ at 16 shillings each, and a ‘Laying Venus’ which cost 8 shillings (1).
The following year Wedgwood paid him for three busts and ‘one vase with lamp’ (Wedgwood MSS L108/20403, Papera acct, 12 June 1802) and in 1806, as ‘Mr Papera figure-maker’, he supplied busts to Lord Bridport (Soane, Abstract of Bills 3, fol 118) (5).
An advertisement in The Times of 23 November 1805, announced that casts after the bust of Nelson by Anne Seymour Damer could be had at his shop (4) and his trade card of 1806 describes him as ‘B. PAPERA Figure Maker TO HER MAJESTY No16 Marylebone St, Golden Square’ (BM, Banks Collection 106.22).
Papera later sold a figure of Hercules to the clock
and decorative metalwork manufacturer, Benjamin Vulliamy (2). A modified
version of this figure, modelled by James Smith, was used for several sets of
candelabra produced by the firm. The earliest examples were two pairs supplied
to Thomas, Viscount Anson for Shugborough, Staffs, in 1812 and the model was
still in use as late as 1821. In his will, which gives his christian name as
Bartholomew, Papera left all his property to his wife Susannah. It mentioned
his daughter Louisa Papera and a son called James, who may well have been James
Philip Papera.
Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 289; Clifford 1992, 61;
Yarrington 1997, 41, 43 n76; Murdoch 2004, 98-9
Archival References: GPC
Wills and Administrations: ‘Bartholomew Papera, Figure Maker of st James, Westminster’PROB 11/1572 (8 August 1815)
For a more in depth look at the Papera family see -
Trade Card of Papera - British Museum
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From the Diary of John Cam Hobhouse (1786 - 1869) --- available online
Wednesday December 20th 1820: Matthews – walking or riding, &c. – dined with Mrs Damer at York House in Twickenham, where Queen Anne was born.
That singular man Sir W. Waller there – how such a man should have had the choice between two widows, Lady Sligo and Lady Howe, is unaccountable.
Mrs Damer is a fine old lady for seventy upwards – her teeth good – she is a great Queenite – [she] was at Brandenburgh House on Monday. She still works at her sculpture.
She had Strawberry Hill for her life, but left it – she did not like to live in a place where all the furniture was ticketed.
Height 55 cm, Width 38 cm.
Châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau,
Mrs Damer became a keen supporter of Fox, and of the Foxite Whigs
who tended to oppose the war with France and to support American Independence.
Fox agreed to sit for her after she and Georgiana had campaigned for him in an
election.
On a visit to France in 1803 she met Madame de Stael, Mademe
Recamier, Napoleon's mother, the Empress Josephine (whom she had met
previously) and at last, to her great delight, Napoleon himself.
Having waited for some time to present her bust of Charles James Fox to Napoleon, she seized the opportunity after his flight from Elba. The fact that England and France were technically at war did not stop her. So this indefatigable lady of some 66 years delivered the bust to Napoleon at the Elysee Palace on May 1st 1815, not long before Waterloo. The bust had been promised to him at the time of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. It is now in the British Museum
According to a notice that appeared in the Times, Napoleon
told her that if Fox had lived there would have been peace, that the debt of
England would have been less than a million, and that many thousands of men
would still be alive.
Her gesture was evidently not universally popular. In the
same edition of the Times, the Moniteur reported that some idiotical English
woman presented to the Corsican the Bust of Charles James Fox.
In return Napoleon 1 May 1815 presented her with an enamelled snuff box, with his
portrait on the lid, set in a circle of 27 diamonds.
Napoleon arrived in England before Mrs Damer got back -
although of course he was not allowed to land. Her friend, Miss Berry wrote
somewhat disapprovingly to her on July 23 1815:
You little thought that your friend at Paris would be in
England before yourself, and that your bust may return to that country it never
ought to have left, without going out of the possession of the person to whom
you gave it.
A Snuffbox was presented by Napoleon on 1st May 1815 to the Hon. Anne Seymour Damer, sculptress, on receiving from her a bust of Charles James Fox, promised to him at the time of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. - British Museum.
As a friend of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, she probably met Nelson in Naples in 1798, afterwards offering a bust of the Hero to the City of London.
On his return to London in 1800, Nelson gave Damer a sitting during
which he presented her with his uniform coat worn at the Battle of the Nile.
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The Paragraphs below adapted from - https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn08/the-invisible-sculpteuse-sculptures-by-women-in-the-nineteenth-century-urban-public-spacelondon-paris-brussels
In January 1799, Damer offered a plaster cast of her bust of Nelson in modern dress to the City of London Court of Common Council.
The marble version, which followed later—it was only finished in 1803 and publicly exhibited the year after—was initially put in the Common Council Room, then in the dining room of the Guildhall when Nelson’s death was announced, and finally in the present Guildhall Art Gallery.
Damer knew that
donating portraits, especially celebrity-portraits, could be a clever strategy
to further her career, and she employed that strategy frequently.
Immediately after Nelson’s death in 1805, Damer attempted to secure a commission for a public monument in his honor for the Guildhall.
The
London Common Council read a letter during its meeting of November 26, 1805 in
which Damer nominated herself for the execution of a monument for Nelson:
"My Lord, understanding that a statue or monument is to be decreed to the memory of Lord Nelson, I take the liberty most respectfully to offer my services to the City of London on this occasion, encouraged by the honor they have already done me in their acceptance of my bust of that immortal hero.
Should I be so highly flattered by the City of London to succeed in my request, no pains nor exertion on my part to the utmost of my power will be spared on the execution of this grand object and every attention will be paid to the orders I may receive on the subject and to the taste of those who shall do me the honor to employ me.
Proper models will be made for their inspection and approbation and as no emolument will be required by me, the whole of the sum destined to this work may be employed in the materials to the surplus disposed of as they may decide hereafter…"
In response to her request, the Council members assured Damer that “they have felt flattered by your very generous and patriotic offer,” but, in the same letter, they informed her that it was decided to hold an anonymous contest. Damer participated, but James Smith won.
It was probably an exceptional triumph for Smith; he had
sculpted many of Damer’s plaster casts into marble for her, and had publicly
vented his anger over the fact that she did not mention his contribution.
Cunningham, “Anne Seymour Damer,” 220, 234–35.
Copy of an original by Anne Seymour Damer which she is thought to have made in Naples towards the end of 1798, where Nelson stayed for a period to recover from injuries after the Battle of the Nile in September 1798.
It has been suggested that this plaster copy was made by the sculptor
Bartholomew Papera (d 1815) who by 1805 was advertising the sale of casts after
Damer's bust at his shop in London, and in 1802 made a similar painted plaster
bust for Wedgewood.
Advertised by B. Papera in the Oracle and Daily Advertiser - 11 December 1805.
On the back is impressed, ‘Anna S. Damer Fecit’ and ‘Pub. As the
Act Dir’.
