A Lead Sculpture of a Dog.
John Cheere.
Circa.1760.
Height 24" (61cm).
Provenance :- Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Bt. (1708-1781), West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire; by descent at West Wycombe to Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Bt., until 1987; Sold Sotheby’s London;
The Hon. Simon
Sainsbury.
Cheere is known to have worked for Sir Francis Dashwood at West Wycombe at various times between 1751 and 1778 (payments of over £200 are recorded, which suggests a considerable amount of work when compared to the £800 Cheere received for his largest known commission, of no less than 98 lead sculptures for the Palace of Queluz in Portugal).
This lead sculpture appears in two inventories from
West Wycombe Park, firstly in 1782 (The Inventory of Sir Francis Dashwood’s
Effects at West Wycombe Park, Room 16, Gallery ‘a lead figure of a dog’), and
again in the house’s Heirloom Inventory, 1862, ‘A marble cast of a bull mastiff
sejant (lead cast)’.
Sotheby’s London, European Works of Art, Sculpture, Metalwork and Pewter, 7th April 1987, lot 174
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