I am not entirely happy with the photographs here but they will have to do for the time being.
The statues haver both recently been ascribed to the Westminster workshop of Henry Cheere
It is currently my belief that both statues emanate from the workshop of Louis Francois Roubiliac.
For me the argument that only Roubiliac reproduced/repeated the dress on busts of various of his subject and he appears to have used the same method of reproduction on the two statues depicted here. seems to confirm that they are both works from the Roubiliac workshop.
The busts of Streatfield, Ray and Jonathan Tyers are good examples - also the busts of Nicholas Hawksmoor at All Souls, the bust of Thomas Missing at Crofton /Stubbington, the bust on the Gounter Nichol Monument in the church at Racton and that of William Wither at Wooten St Lawrence are further examples of the repeated use of the drapery.
Another of my recent discoveries is the drapery on the bust on the monument dated 1737 to James Lawes in the church at Halfway Tree, Kingston, Jamaica (the monument is inscribed by John Cheere) that matches the drapery on the anonymous very fine bust in the V and A. On these busts even the hat is repeated.
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-monument-inscribed-by-john-cheere-in.html
The Monument to Bowater Vernon (died 1735).
St Mary's Church, Hanbury, Worcestershire.
here attributed to the workshop of Louis Francois Roubiliac or made under his supervision perhaps in the workshops of Henry Cheere.
note - Roubiliac did not move into his house and workshops on the North East side of St Martin's Lane, until Christmas 1740 (rate books) - it has in the past been frequently suggested that Roubiliac had his workshop in a building in Peter's Court on the west side of St Martin's Lane (which also housed the St Martin's Lane Academy but I remain doubtful. I suspect that until 1740 he was working from a property belonging to Henry Cheere - either at Millbank, Westminster or Spring Gardens, just South of Charing Cross.
The location within the Vernon Chapel in the Church at Hanbury is very dark and I don't like using a flash.
The monument has not been inscribed by the sculptor.
Pevsner is fairly damning stating that it is by Roubiliac but "not one of his best". Which seems a little unfair! I suspect that Pevsner was not a great fan of 18th century sculpture.
The earliest reference I can find to Roubiliac / Hanbury is in the 1860's in -
Noake's Guide to Worcestershire By John Noake. pub. 1868. A reprint of various articles which had previously appeared in the Birmingham Daily Gazette.
I have touched on the subject already see -
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-statues-of-henry-cheere.html
.............
Esdaile only mentions it in passing - Life and Works Roubiliac. pub. Oxford 1928.
Matthew Craske refers to the Cooke monument frequently in - The London trade in monumental sculpture and the development of imagery of the family in funerary monuments of the period 1720-1760.
https://files.core.ac.uk/download/30695800.pdf
Malcolm Baker is also silent on the subject in Roubiliac and the 18th Century Monument - pub. Yale 1995, or in the Marble Index pub Yale 2009..
......................
The two statues shown here for comparison.
There are obvious differences in that the Ashmolean statue is carved in the round - the Hanbury statue is made to be viewed only in 180 degrees and is roughly chiselled on the back. and the Putto and portrait relief are missing on the Ashmolean version
There are other subtle differences which are not immediately obvious but on close inspection the detailed carving on the Ashmolean version is of better quality.
It is obvious on the creases in the stockings and breaches and also in the musculature and veins on the arms and hands and the carving of the detail of the hair.
The statue of Sir George Cooke (1675 - 1740) in the Ashmolean. Circa 1749.
Marble Statue. 320 cm by 122 by 107cm.
See the images below.
In the past this statue has been attributed to Sir Henry Cheere (1703 - 81). I am, as Pevsner and others currently leaning towards Roubiliac. It is not inscribed!
There are 58 separate components to this work.
It is currently in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford having previously been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
See the two essays by Malcolm Baker - I suspect that he might have altered some of his views since writing these pieces but there is much of relevance.
https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/GGS_1984_11_Malcolm_Baker.pdf
Georgian Group Journal 1988 - page 21.
It is not clear in this article whether he thinks that these statues came from the workshop of Henry Cheere but it is mentioned along with the drapery on the busts of Nicholas Hawksmoore and Thomas Missing at Wooten St Lawrence which have the same dress -
and the bust of Sir Justinian Isham on the monument at All Saints Church, Lamport which is not really relevant but it certainly should be considered as a work by Roubiliac.
.................
Bowater Vernon - some biographical notes.
Thomas Vernon (1686 - 1721) amassed a fortune as an eminent Chancery barrister for 40 years, as well as becoming Whig MP for Worcester in 1715. He married Mary Keck in 1680 but they had no children, so the estate was passed to his second cousin, Bowater Vernon.
Thomas Vernon's success as a barrister enabled him to substantially increase his family’s estates, which by his death in 1721 amounted to around 7,000 acres, giving him an income of over £5,000 a year, and included land in Hanbury, Dodderhill and Feckenham in Worcestershire and further estates in Warwickshire, Shropshire and Lincolnshire.
Thomas and Mary had no children, and in his will he made his second cousin Bowater Vernon (1683-1735) his heir. However, there was a dispute over his will, as his closest relation was his sister Elizabeth, whose husband Roger Acherley, an unsuccessful lawyer, claimed he should be a substantial beneficiary. Acherley managed to protract the case for several years, but was unsuccessful, and Bowater continued to enjoy the fruits of his inheritance,
Bowater Vernon was born 21 May 1683, 1st Son of William Vernon of Caldewell, Worcs. by Phoebe, daughter. of Rev. Samuel Bowater of Shrawley, Worcs.
He married his first wife 1721, Mathia (d. June 1721 ‘three weeks after her marriage’) daughter. of George Wheeler, under-treasurer of Inner Temple,
He married his second wife Jane Cornwallis (1703 - 1760) daughter. and coh. of Thomas Cornwallis of Abermarlais, Carmarthen. 11 December 1732 at Fulham. She was sister of Francis Cornwallis MP.
His wives and children are recorded on the monument
His son Thomas was born 7 June 1724, daughter Jane Emma b. 29 June 1732 d. 6 May 1740, and Letitia born 8 September 1734 (d. May 1757).
Bowater Vernon divided his time between his London home in New Bond Street, Mayfair, and Holt Castle in Worcestershire during the life of Thomas’s widow Mary, who continued to live at Hanbury Hall until her death in 1733.
Finally arriving at Hanbury Hall, only two years later Bowater Vernon died from a stroke, leaving a son and a daughter.
His son Thomas (1724-71) inherited the estate, and when only 22 served as MP for the City of Worcester for 15 years. He married Emma Cornewall, a lady 13 years older than himself, and had two children, one of whom died young.
His only surviving child was Emma (1754-1818), who inherited when her father died, like his father, from a stroke when only 47, and after he died was brought up mainly in New Bond Street by her mother.
On inheriting the fortune of Thomas Vernon, Bowater Vernon stood for Bishop’s Castle, announcing that ‘he had brought down money to carry the election if that would do it’.
Described as a ‘South Sea man’, who was resolved to outbid the Duke of Chandos, ‘let him offer what he will’, he was returned after a contest as a government supporter. After sitting for four years he was unseated on petition, the elections committee finding that all but one of his 52 voters had been bribed, at a total cost of nearly £700. He did not stand again, dying 30 Nov. 1735.
Bowater Vernon was recorded as a spendthrift, who managed to run through his inheritance in record time, and lived a riotous life of parties and gambling.
As far as I know there is no documentary evidence of who
sculpted it..
Lot 223 - Sotheby's,
London (December 12, 2003).
The monument was commissioned by George Cooke's eldest son and heir the notable M.P. for Middlesex, George Cooke (jnr). It was erected some time after his inheritance of the property. William Vernon, who owned Belhamonds in the mid-nineteenth century, stated that this monumental statue originally stood in a grove 'close by the house at the South end of the terrace"
Quote below from
Sotheby's Catalogue written by Dr Matthew Craske.
He makes no reference to the Bowater Vernon Monument at Hanbury.
"The statue of George Cooke, the elder, made by Henry
Cheere, is a complex and subtle work. It is, in the simplest terms, a
commemorative statue. The initial function of the piece laid somewhere between
that of a household bust, funerary monument and decorative garden statue.
A church monument, probably? by Cheere, was set up to Cooke
in Hayes church in Middlesex. This statue, then, probably represents a second
phase of commemoration, closer to home. Payments to Cheere in the bank account
of the deceased’s son, George Cooke, the younger, dated 1744 and 1749 probably
represent these two commissions. As it
is likely that the church monument was erected first, this suggests that the
statue is to be dated, 1749'
English ancestral ‘images’ of the eighteenth century were
seldom set up in gardens. They were very rarely full length portraits. Rather,
they were generally bust images that were displayed inside the house. Such
works preserved the Roman tradition of setting up shrines, containing images,
in the halls of their homes. Occasionally, a Georgian connoisseur with a
particular regard for the art of sculpture commissioned a full length tribute.
A fine example is Rysbrack’s statue of the attorney, Ralph Willet (c. 1758), which stood at the base of the staircase of the now lost architectural gem, Merely Court in Gloucestershire. The only other surviving example of a commemorative statue erected in a garden of this era is Rysbrack’s impressive figure of the first Earl Strafford which was set up within a sham medieval ruin at Wentworth Castle in Yorkshire in 1741. The beautiful model for this figure is in the Victoria and Albert Museum'.
'The Elizabethan resonances of the piece were probably
intended to lend a political meaning. They refer to a noted contemporary cult
of nostalgia for the days of that Queen; days when Britain was believed to be
truly great, as it had ceased to be under a whig ministry of Robert Walpole and
his successors the Pelham brothers.
George Cooke, the elder, and his son and namesake who
commissioned this work, were politicians in opposition to the whig ministry. It
was no coincidence that Cooke, snr, had purchased an estate next door to that
of Lord Bolingbroke, at Dawley Farm, the latter being the greatest literary and
philosophical proponent of the opposition.
The English inscription to this piece includes a substantial, unacknowledged, quote from a poem by Bolingbroke’s celebrated friend, Alexander Pope: in specific his Epistle to Lord Burlington, On the Use and Abuse of Riches.
Pope’s political poem was intended to vaunt the ideal of
the retired and modestly tasteful gentleman who spent honestly acquired riches
in an honest and discrete manner. This type was intended to the ante-type of
the government minister who made his fortune from corruption and spent it upon
vast tasteless projects'.
For the installation at the Ashmolean see
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3190534%20(1).jpg)
