Part 2.
The Lead Statues of Samson and the Philistine.at Harrowden Hall and Wimpole Hall.
Frequently referred to as Cain and Abel in the 17th/18th Centuries
Both are attributed to John van Nost I (the Elder) d. 1710. but lack of documentation means that the attribution cannot be confirmed with certainty.
The Harrowden Hall, Northamptonshire, Samson and the Philistine.
John
Nost the Elder (d.1710)
of Hyde Park Corner, supplied leadwork to Chatsworth and must have known the
original marble sculpture of Samson because of his commissions for Buckingham House (c.
1703).
Originally from Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium he had arrived in England before 1686.
An early
18th century cast of the Samson group attributed to John Nost I is at Harrowden
Hall (reproduced Country Life 1908, Jackson Stops, 1974 (see image below) and a
‘Cain and Abel, of John de Bellone, lead’ was one of the sculptures sold at
Nost’s end-of-life sale in 1712 (O'Connell 1987).
Van Nost’s moulds were evidently reused by John Nost II (d. 1729) (and also by the firm’s apprentice, possible collaborator and later competitor, Andrew Carpenter (c. 1677-1737), as a Cain and Abel was sent by van Nost II to Hopetoun House in 1718, and the Stowe cast (installed by 1738; sold in 1922, now at Trent Park) are attributed to Carpenter (Bevington 1994, p. 114).
We can also be certain that Carpenter his former assistant also produced copies of Giambologna’s group because a Cain and Abel group is recorded on the price list sent to Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle (1669-1738), in 1723.
His price list submitted to Lord Carlisle at Castle Howard in 1723 gives some indication of the range he was able to provide. It was £20 for a six foot Cain and Abel or Diana and Stag. A six foot Venus de Medici was £15.
Henry Cheere (1703 – 81) with his younger brother John Cheere (1709 – 87) took over the yard of Anthony ‘Noast’ Nost at Hyde Park Corner in 1737 in what became Portugal Row, Piccadilly, but Henry Cheere’s workshops specialising in marble monuments and Chimneypieces were in Westminster and quite separate from the Hyde Park Corner site.
For the John van Nost II version see - https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2025/03/3-lead-statue-of-samson-slaying.html
After the death of John Nost II his widow Catherine nee Cheesborough) took over the administration of the Yard in Portugal Row, Hyde Park Corner at £20 /year rising to £40 in 1734. when the Equestrian statue of William III was supplied to Glasgow
Anthony van
Nost was paying the rates at Hyde Park Corner from December 1735 until the yard was taken over by the Cheere brothers in 1737.
The Harrowden Hall, Northamptonshire Samson Slaying the Philistine / Cain and Abel.
Unfortunately there are no good photographs available at present.
.................
Illustration from English Leadwork by Laurence Weaver pub 1909.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t7fr05c48&seq=10
John Nost carved several magnificent baroque monuments but
his principal activity was the design, manufacture and supply of lead garden
statues. He was a native of Mechelen (Malines) in Belgium, but nothing is known
of his training or family, except that he had a sister, Mary, mentioned in his
will. He arrived in England some time before 1686, and was ‘foreman’ to Arnold
Quellin before the latter’s death in London that year (Vertue IV, 35). Nost
subsequently married his master’s widow and sole heiress, Frances, née
Siberechts, a daughter of the landscape painter, Jan Siberechts.
He seems to have established himself quickly with influential
patrons. In the 1690s he supplied marble tables to the Duke of Devonshire (71),
wooden equestrian figures of monarchs for the ‘line of Kings’ at the Tower of
London (7) and in 1695, statues of King William and Queen Mary for the Royal
Exchange, for which he received £120 (9, 11). In 1697 the agent for one patron,
Lady Noel (Lord Irwin’s widow: 2), described Nost as ‘one of the best hands in
England’ (Gilbert 1962-3, 5).
He acquired a property in the Haymarket in 1692, rated at £60, which remained in the family until the death of his widow in 1716. His affluent neighbours included the Dutch ambassador and Lord Orrery.
In 1698 Nost took another property in Portugal Row. Here, and in neighbouring Stone Bridge, both on Hyde Park Corner, the Nost family owned premises until 1737, when John Cheere took them over. Richard Osgood, Edward Hurst and Josias Iback were all neighbours.
Nost’s visitors included the architect William Wynde, who in 1703 wrote to Lady Mary Bridgeman that he was searching for ‘a statue fitt for yr Ladys garden’ and ‘in order thereunto I was at Mr Nostes ... and Mr Ansgood’ (presumably Osgood).
The architect appears to have recommended Osgood’s work
(Wynde/Bridgeman). Nost’s apprentices and assistants included William
Colebourne, William Palmer and Andrew Carpenter, who according to Vertue was
‘for some years principal assistant (to Mr. Nost Senr, Carver) in Modelling.
& Carving…’ (Vertue III, 83).
By 1700 Nost was occupied with an extensive contract at Hampton Court. This included several marble chimney-pieces, two of which were costed at £235 and £275 (55, 57). Both are intricately carved and count among his finest works, the first with a relief of a reclining Venus in her chariot and the second with a relief of two intertwined doves.
In 1701 he provided
‘several drawings of the King’s statue for the marble fountain’, charged at £2
and clay models for a fountain (64). One had four mermaids seated on dolphins
and four shells between them, whilst the alternative had four figures of young
men on dolphins and four swans between them (TNA WORK 5/52 fol 32). A third
model had shells, dolphins, a sea-horse and 11 other figures (TNA WORK 5/51 fol
506). He was also responsible for the statue of a blackamoor and submitted
accounts ‘for modelling a figure of a Blackamore kneeling being 5 ft high
holding up a sundial’ and then for ‘casting the said Balackamore in hard metal
and repainting’ (14). Pedestals of Portland stone were provided by Nost for
statues of the Gladiator, Diana, Hercules and Apollo (68) (TNA WORK 5/51 fol
506; 5/52 fol 340).
His sculpture was evidently noticed by members of the Court, for one of Nost’s most discerning and extensive patrons was Thomas Coke of Melbourne Hall, vice-chamberlain to Queen Anne. Among Coke’s many purchases were the stupendous Four Seasons vase (67), dramatic figures of Perseus and Andromeda (29) and copies of the Blackamoor and Indian which Nost had originally supplied to Hampton Court (24). A letter to Coke in the Melbourne archives suggests that there were problems with the casting process and that the sculptor was under pressure: ‘Hon.red Sir, I hope you will pardon my not answering your desires sooner. I had set up 2 moulds of boys but thay weare not to my minde and having had some Exterordinary brake which Call’d me out of towne which hath beene a great hindrance to me in my Buisines. But I wish now with all speed Dispatch y.or Boys’ (Nost I/Coke). Enclosed with the letter were his prices for lead figures: ‘The Sabine Rape, £90’, ‘Hercules and Centoure, £70,’ and ‘Hercules and Anteus, £80’. Nost claimed that he ‘made as nice a calculation as can be and find it cannot be done under the prises that is rated above’, but Coke, who was a demanding client, found them too expensive (Melbourne Hall archives, quoted in Gunnis 1968, 280).
In the library at Melbourne
Hal is Nost’s copy of Serlio’s Five Books of Architecture,‘Englished by Robert
Peake’, 1611, bought by the sculptor in 1696, and later purchased by Coke for
15s at the sale of Nost’s effects.
In 1706 Lord Ashburnham asked Brian Fairfax to ascertain Nost’s charges for the ‘statues for the attic of the Duke of Buckingham’s London house’ (66). They had cost £27 each. In a later letter Lord Ashburnham complained that Nost had raised his prices, which were now so excessive that he would have to find another sculptor for his house at Ampthill (Letter-book of the 1st Lord Ashburnham in Gunnis 1968, 280). His complaint sounds unjustified: with the exception of the Melbourne commission, Nost’s charges appear to have remained stable, and comparable to those later proposed by Carpentiere: his ‘Prices of Statues and Flowerpotes proposed for the Earl of Hoptone’ submitted in 1709 included a six foot high Hercules and his Mistress, a Venus and Adonis and a Bacchus and Ceres, all at £30, as well as two figures of Hope, a Flying Horse & Fame, Four statues about the fountain, and four six foot high urns at £25 each (Nost/Hopetoun MS).
What, if anything, was purchased from this
list, prepared for Charles, 1st Earl of Hopetoun, is unknown. Eight years
later, in 1718, his cousin, John Nost II, who had taken over his business,
signed two contracts to supply the earl with a total of eight ‘Mettle statues’.
Nost provided several important monuments, though many
attributed to him have not been fully established as his work. The identified
memorials range from a relatively modest wall-tablet, costing £50 (5) to the
monument to Viscount Irwin, at £600, which has a tabernacle frame enclosing a
full sized effigy and grieving widow (2). The monument to the Duke and Duchess
of Buccleuch at Durisdeer, his most elaborate work, has an inner segmental
frame surrounded by a rectangular frame with Corinthian capitals and urns at
its corners and above that a richly swagged baldacchino. Putti carrying a
scroll hover above the two effigies. The design, model and monument survive and
indicate that the patron expected few changes to the proposed composition (4).
Nost died, apparently childless, in August 1710, and ‘left
behind him a good fortune’ (Vertue IV, 35). In his will, signed on 2 August, he
bequeathed half of all ‘moneys, stocks, rights, credits, effects and estate
whatsoever’ to his wife, Frances, and one third of the other half to his
sister, Mary. He also left £60 to his cousin, John Nost II, £10 of which was to
go ‘towards discharging his debts’. The rates for Stone Bridge continued to be
paid after 1710 by a John Nost, which suggests that his cousin took over the
running of the yard.
In 1712 a sale of Nost’s effects was held ‘at his late
Dwelling House in Hyde-Park-Road (near the Queen’s Mead-house)’. The
catalogue’s title-page described the collection as ‘the most Valuable that ever
was Exposed to Sale in this Kingdom’. A year later an advertisement in The
Guardian (no 60, 20 May 1713) informed the public that there remained ‘several
extraordinary fine things belonging to the late famous sculptor Mr John Nost …
fine inlaid tables, marble chimneypieces, figures etc’ and that Mrs Nost ‘designing
to go beyond seas, will dispose of them at reasonable prices at her house near
Hyde Park Corner where attendance will daily be given’. When she died in 1716
she left over £1,460 and various chattels, including a bequest to ‘my cousin
John Nost [of] all the marble goods and figures which belongs to me’. She also
left her share in an unidentified business to her partner and cousin, Mary
Macadam. This may have been the yard, or perhaps a separate business run from
the Haymarket property, where ‘Widow Mackadam’ continued to pay the rates.
Nost was an influential figure in the history of garden sculpture. Versions of his Blackamoor, for instance, were being produced until the late-18th century. Many of his garden ornaments must have perished, including the leadwork at Stonyhurst, which was apparently melted down by a Jesuit father to mend the roofs.
The few known facts of his life offer little
insight into Nost’s character. Until recently he and his cousin, John Nost II,
were thought to be one person, and this, coupled with countless attributions,
has prevented any conclusive evaluation of his oeuvre.
MGS
Literary References: Vertue IV, 35; Webb/Gunnis 1954, 25;
Blakiston 1957, 54-58; Croft-Murray and Hulton 1960, 476-7; Gilbert 1962-3,
4-5; Stonyhurst 1964, 478-481; Gunnis 1968, 279-82; O’Connell 1987, 802-6;
Whinney 1988, passim; Davis 1991 (1), passim; Schellekens 1995, 80-94; Grove
23, 1996, 253-4 (Murdoch); Spencer-Longhurst 1998, 33, n 26-29; ODNB
(Sullivan); Sullivan 2005, 8
Archival References: WCA, Poor Rates 1692 (F1176), 1694
(F422), 1696 (F1222), 1698 (F1241), 1699 (F1245), 1706 (F1281), 1711 (F440-1),
1717 (F3602), 1737 (C126); Wynde/Bridgeman; Nost I/Coke; Nost/Hopetoun MS
Wills: Arnold Quellin (proved 3 September 1686, PROB
11/384/fol 332); John Nost (proved 12 August 1710 LMA, Archdeaconry of
Middlesex, AM/PW 1710/89); Frances Nost (proved December 1716, PROB 11/555/fols
195v-196v)
Drawings: attributed design for the monument to William
Douglas, Earl of Selkirk and 3rd Duke of Hamilton (†1694), HMI, Leeds; four
attributed drawings of putti (VAM Box H10); ‘Design of the Two Pedestalls for
the two Statues [Bacchus and Ceres] in the Inner Court at Hopetoun-house
1709/10, Linlithgow NRA (S) 888 Bundle 630
Auction Catalogues: Nost I ,1712 (1); Nost I, 1712 (2); Nost
I, 1713
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