Tuesday, 4 March 2025

6. The John Cheere Colossal Lead Statues off Samson and the Philistine (Cain and Abel). Anglesey Abbey.

 

The Anglesey Abbey Lead statue of Samson and the Philistine.

Assumed to be a version cast by John Cheere until further information appears.

Unknown provenance prior to 1951.


Purchased by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966), c. 1951; and bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Fairhaven in 1966 with the house and the rest of the contents.

Lord Fairhaven acquired his Samson around 1951, when, in November of that year, he received a letter from his friend Sir Albert Richardson enclosing a photograph of the Harrowden cast on its pedestal and a pencil drawing of a proposed plinth for the Anglesey Samson based on the Harrowden example.

Richardson, himself a celebrated collector, sourced statuary and other works of art for Lord Fairhaven including the Cheere lion and lioness on Temple Lawn (NT 515157–515158) and may also have found the Anglesey Samson, or simply advised on its plinth.

Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust).

https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/515133

The photographs available are of a very low resolution - unfortunately it is impossible at this stage to make comparisons.

















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