The original by Joseph Wilton, (1722 - 1803).
The Harvard Corporation thanked Franklin in 1769 for sending
from London this “fine bust”.
At the time, Franklin was stationed in London as an agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly. (While there, he leveraged his connections and expertise to help procure a wide range of scientific instruments for Harvard, and ultimately played a vital role in building the college’s apparatus collection).
This donation—the bust of a British politician who advocated for peaceful relations with the colonies—harbored an obvious political charge in pre-Revolutionary Boston.
The Harvard Corporation acknowledged this significance
in a note f 12769 thanking the statesman and scientist “for his very acceptable present
of a fine bust of that great assertor of American liberties.”
Sizes - 68 x 42 x
19 cm (26 3/4 x 16 9/16 x 7 1/2 in.).
socle: 10.8 × 20.3 × 20.3 cm (4 1/4 × 8 × 8 in.).
Incised inscription on the back, Wm. Pitt / Earl of Chatham.
The Joseph Wilton ceramic or artificial stone bust of Pitt the Elder here uses the squatter later Roubiliac type socle.
This form of Socle appears on several other Coade or Coade Type busts including the pair of of Sir Walter Raleigh and Horatio Nelson on the Orangery at Bicton, Devon, Caracalla, Milton and John Wesley.
For the Coade bust of Caracalla and John Wesley see -
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2026/01/coadestone-bust-of-caracalla-indented.html
It has been suggested that the bust is of Coade Stone - if
this is the case then it is one of the earliest documented pieces of Coade
stone but given the date that it was sent to Harvard I think this is unlikely - the Coade business commenced at Narrow Wall, Lambeth in 1769 having taken over the business of Daniel Pincot.
I suggest that it was probably cast by Daniel Pincot and /or George Davy - both working at Goulston Square Spitalfields in the 1760's - it is unclear whether they were in some sort of loose partnership - both are thought to have produced other pieces later manufactured by Coade including the Borghese Vase and the Druid.
Davy wrote to his patron, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham requesting payment for four medallions of Alexander and Hercules (see Coade's Hercules POpe and Grey) explaining that they ‘were made by your particular Order and at the Sale I bought them for your Lordship but am now so poor that I cannot clare [sic] the lots therefore let me intreat your Lordship to be so kind as to advance me the money or else the goods will be resold and all the charges attending it will fall on me’.
He also informed him that if he had any further orders he should approach a ‘Mr Smith at Nightsbridge’who had bought all his moulds (Rockingham Vouchers, Sheffield City Library, No 1, microfilm A314).
Smith and Bridges were taken over by Mrs Coade in 1774.
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Given that we know John Bacon I was working at Pincot's premises at Paternoster Row, Spitalfields c. 1764 - 6 it is not unreasonable to suggest that he was responsible for many of the items sold by both Pincot and Davy and later by Smith and Bridges of Knightsbridge and that were modeled by him in the 1760's before he went to work in Lambeth with Pincot by 1769.
Around this time, Bacon conceived the idea of making larger scale statues in fired ceramic stone and invented ‘an instrument for transferring the form of the model to marble, (technically called getting out the points.)’ see - Rev. Richard Cecil, Memoirs of John Bacon Esq (London, 1821), p.137.
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On 26 May 1775, Bridge's stock-in-trade, consisting of ‘a great Variety of Statues, Vases, Bustos, and various kinds of Ornaments in Artificial Stone’ was sold by Messrs Christie, on the occasion of his ‘quitting that Branch of Business’ (Public Advertiser, 24 May 1775, 4).
Among the lots sold were medallions of the kings Alfred and Ethelred (8, 9); busts of Homer and Pitt (6, 7), statues of Ceres, Flora and Samson (2, 3, 5) and statuettes of Rubens and Van Dyck (4). A number of the lots, including a statue of a druid (1), were purchased by Eleanor Coade (see Coade Factory, of Lambeth). Eleanor Coade also bought the Knightsbridge factory itself, for in December 1778 she announced that she intended to sell all the equipment of ‘Mrs COADE’s Manufactory at Knightsbridge ... the Whole to be sold extremely cheap, on Account of clearing the Premises, the Business being carried on at King’s Arms’ Stairs, Lambeth’ (Daily Advertiser, 24 December 1778).
Some of Bridges’s moulds appear to have remained in use at the Coade factory, including those for the statue of a druid, which Bridges himself had probably acquired indirectly from George Davy.
1. A Druid. - see my essay on the various artificial stone statues of Druids
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2026/07/coade-statues-of-time-chronos.html
2. Ceres Statue. This and the following lot of Flora were both produced by Coade by 1784 (examples illusrated in the 1784 Catalogue).
3. Flora Statue.
4. Rubens and Van Dyck, statuettes (the pair of figures after the originals by Rysbrack) - at the time of writing no Artificial Stone versions have appeared. see this post with ref to the many reproductions of these figures
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-pair-of-statuettes-of-rubens-and-van.html and the following essays.
5. Samson.
6. Bust of Homer.
7. Bust of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham - A version was sent to Harvard University, America by Benjamin Franklin.
Another appears in the much later Coade Catalogue of the exhibits of the Coade's Westminster Bridge Gallery of 1799.
For the Coade Druid see -
https://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2026/07/coade-statues-of-time-chronos.html
The Harvard website states -
"The team noted that Wilton’s father was a successful architectural ornament manufacturer (and manufacturer of plaster decoation) my italics.
Furthermore, when the Harvard bust’s
dimensions are compared with an identical marble bust of Pitt in the collection
of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, Harvard’s bust is an average
of 5 percent smaller. Because Coade stone’s reported shrinkage upon firing is
also approximately 5 percent, Sigel posited that Harvard’s bust was probably
formed in a mold made from the Fitzwilliam bust".
Alternatively I would suggest it was possibly cast from the terracotta or a plaster original.
There is a plaster version at Saltram House, Devon (see the images below).
"Materials such as crushed glass and quartz (sand)
grains are also evident in the clay" .-
Coade's products have been subject to analysis and the mixture which was variable certainly included powdered glass.
This statement is not entirely accurate - the composition of Coade stone was variable but always used the same basic materials.
It's composition seems to have been widely known throughout the terracotta trade in the19th century.
In 1850, ten years after the closure of the Coade factory, Charles Fowler noted the generally used formula for the manufacture of artificial stone:
Therefore any mention of the formula being secret and lost when the business folded in 1840 as often quoted is basically nonsense.
See - Civil Engineering and Architectural Journal - 1850 vol 13 p.
215/216.
.jpg)
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George Davy, Daniel Pincot (d.1797), Mr Smith and Mr Bridges of Knightsbridge.
These business were all subsumed by Messrs Coade of Lambeth.
George Davy, an artificial stone manufacturer, took over the premises in Goulston Square, Whitechapel, London, formerly occupied by Daniel Pincot, some time between February and October 1767, when he advertised ‘a large Quantity of Goods of near 100 different Subjects, such as Figures, Busts, Tablets, Friezes, Medalions, Vases, Capitals of Different Orders of various Sizes’ for sale at his warehouse at 18 Long Acre, near Covent Garden.
He claimed that these goods were ‘more durable and higher finished than natural stone’ and, furthermore, undertook to sell them at the same price or cheaper than any equivalent work available in plaster or wood (Daily Ad, 23 October 1767).
At the end of December 1767 there was a sale of artificial stone produced at Goulston Square over the last year, at Christie’s, perhaps including work by both Davy and Pincot. The catalogue survives in the Christie archive and shows that prices were considerably lower than those of comparable items listed in the catalogue of the Coade Factory of Lambeth, published in 1783.
In March 1768 Davy announced that a large quantity of his artificial stone had been sold by John Moreing at the Great Sale Room in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, adding ‘if due Encouragement is given to this Undertaking, the Proprietor intends to continue the Manufactory’ (Daily Ad, 23/24 March 1768). Further sales at Moreing’s auction house and then at Blyth’s sale room in Dean Street, Soho were advertised throughout 1768 and in 1770. The public response appears to have been less than enthusiastic for Davy commented, ‘the Proprietor has reason to think that many Gentlemen entertain a less opinion of Artificial Stone by the Reports of some whose Interest it may be to deprecate it’ (Daily Ad, 27 May 1768).
Davy’s last known advertisements appeared in April 1771 (Daily Ad, 29 April 1771) and by July 1773 he was financially ruined.
He wrote to his patron, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham requesting payment for four medallions of Alexander and Hercules explaining that they ‘were made by your particular Order and at the Sale I bought them for your Lordship but am now so poor that I cannot clare [sic] the lots therefore let me intreat your Lordship to be so kind as to advance me the money or else the goods will be resold and all the charges attending it will fall on me’. He also informed him that if he had any further orders he should approach a ‘Mr Smith at Nightsbridge’?? who had bought all his moulds (Rockingham Vouchers, Sheffield City Library, No 1, microfilm A314).
The Kedleston medallions (55cms) of Alfred and Ethelred were produced by the Coade Manufactory of
Lambeth, London. They are derived from moulds produced by 'Bridges of
Knightsbridge', an artificial stone manufacturer whose stock-in-trade was
auctioned by Christies on 26 May 1775. Lots 8 and 9 of that sale were a pair of
medallions of Alfred and Ethelred. (info National Trust - https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/109000.1)
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The Fitzwilliam Cambridge Bust of Pitt the Elder.
Joseph Wilton.
This is the same version as the Harvard Bust.
A plaster version is at Saltram House, Devon (see below).
It uses the typical oval socle frequently used by Wilton but with a rectangular panel on the front.
Bust Height 25 in - Socle Height 5 3/4 in
Provenance -
Collection of the Duke of Newcastle at Clumber Park. Sold in
the Earl of Lincoln's Sale, Christie's catalogue, 19th October 1937, lot 344.
https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-15810
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The National Portrait Gallery, London, Marble Bust of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham.
by Joseph Wilton.
They say this version circa 1766 or after.
Here the dress is different - he wears a chemise and the toga? has a button.
28 3/4 in. x 20 7/8 in. (730 mm x 530 mm) overall.
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The Goverment Art Collection Bust Pitt the Elder.
740 x 225 x 225 mm.
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https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/2116/william-pitt-1st-earl-chatham-1708-1778-
Joseph Wilton was born in London, but trained in the
Netherlands, France and Italy from 1744 to 1755.
He was appointed Statuary to His Majesty George III in 1761, and in 1768 became a founder member of the Royal Academy.
However in the same
year he inherited a large legacy from his father and neglected sculpture
thereafter; he was bankrupted in 1793.
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