Clipping from the London Courier - 26 June 1815.
This is an important piece of evidence regarding the manufacture of various pieces by the Coade Manufactory over a long period.
The decease of her partner (John Sealey) is used as an excuse.
This suggests also that the Gallery at the foot of Westminster Bridge was possibly closing.
Charity and three childeren, a grand statue of a River God
Statues of his majesty, Ancient Briton and Norman, Shakespeare, a Druid, Time, Neptune with the Sea Horse, an Egyptian, Dying Galadiator, Minerva, Venus, Bacchus Fountain, Nymphs, Vestels and Sybils etc.
The centrepiece of the Garden Hall is a sculpture of the Dying Gladiator acquired by Frederick Howard, the 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748 - 1825) in Rome in 1768. (this info needs confirmation).
It would seem odd when casts were available in England - but either he was unaware or wanted a first generation cast.
Matthew Brettingham exported various casts of Antiquities including the Dying Gladiator from Rome in 1756 for Charles Lennox, the Duke of Richmond.
..............
The Matthew Brettingham Cast of the Dying Gladiator (Archives at Goodwood House).
The Matthew Brettingham Cast of the Dying Gladiator.
Goodwood Archives, Box 36/20. Brettingham's receipt, dated 13 Nov. 1756, is for the following casts: Petus and Arria , £30; Dying Gladiator , £20; Meleager , £20; Apollo Belvedere , £20; Flora , £20; St Susanna , £18; Callipygian Venus, £12; Apollino , £8; Camillus from Wilton survive, but only for smaller objects.
This is most likely the Dying Gladiator in Charles Lennox, the Duke of Richmond's Gallery at Richmond House, Whitehall.
The Gallery was created in 1758 and the collection opened for the use of students of painting, sculpture and engravings, with instruction provided and silver medals offered for designs and bas-reliefs.
For Brettingham and Statuary see his Rome Account Book (1747
- 54). John Kenworthy Brown, Published by the Walpole Society 1983. available online for free if you sign up. -
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41829483?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Brettingham had intended to open an Academy in London on his return from Rome and had purchased many plaster casts of classical statuary. He had struck a deal with Paulo Posi to obtain casts of subjects in the Vatican Collection.
Joan Coutu suggests that Prince Frederick was enthusiastic about the idea which eventually came to fruition with the opening of the Charles Lennox, the third Duke of Richmond's Gallery at Richmond House in Whitehall in 1758.
Unfortunately although highly regarded it only survived as a place for artists to study and draw from the antique until about 1768 .
The foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768 must have
hastened its demise although some of the casts remained at Richmond House until 19 July
1820 when the majority were sold by Christies.
see also - ‘The Duke of Richmond’s Gallery in Whitehall’,
British Art Journal X.1, 2009. Kenworthy Brown. This is an account of the
Duke’s academy of plaster casts, for artists and students of art, 1758-1767:
details of the location, contents and the students who attended. This is an
expanded version of a paper read at a conference on Plaster Casts, at Oxford,
September 2007.
This is the only in depth look at the short lived Duke of Richmonds Gallery.
See also -Taste and the Antique, Yale 1981 and 1998 by
Nicholas Penny and Francis Haskell chapter XI -The Proliferation of Casts and
Copies.
The Gallery was destroyed by fire in 1791, but the contents were saved.
Presumably the Duke of Richmond's cast of the Dying Gladiator is that at the Royal Academy at Somerset House in the illustrations (below).
...............................
A Guide through the Royal Academy - Joseph Baretti (1719 -89), pub. 1781.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t1qg51v8s&seq=16&view=1up
Page 23. The Cast of the Dying Gladiator.
This is a useful publication for anyone interested in the plaster casts and drawing school at the R.A. aside from the casts it also details the sculptures on the building by Carlini, Wilton, Cerracci and Bacon.
For the sculpture on the Somerset House see also the British Art Journal, Vol X no 1.
.....................
The Antique School at Old Somerset House, 1779.
Edward Francis Burney (1760 - 1848).
The Royal Academy occupied several London premises before moving to their current premises at Burlington House in 1868.
Teaching originally took place at premises in Pall Mall, 1768 then in 1771 at Old Somerset House on the Strand from before the Academy as a whole was given apartments in New Somerset House and later in the National Gallery building at Trafalgar Square.
According to an inscription on the back
of the sheet, this drawing shows students at work in Old Somerset House,
crammed with copies of statues like the Apollo Belvedere (centre left). In the
right-hand corner of the room is Leonardo da Vinci's famous cartoon for 'The
Virgin and Child with Saint Anne' (also known as 'The Burlington House
Cartoon', c.1499-1500; National Gallery). However, as Old Somerset House was
being demolished from 1776 onwards, it is possible that this scene in fact
shows the RA Schools operating from a different building altogether, another
part of the Somerset House complex or it may have been drawn from memory. By
1779, Academy was getting ready to move into its apartments in New Somerset
House.
This drawing below is one of the pair by Edward Francis Burney (1760-1848) in the RA Collection which together provide a glimpse of daily life at the Royal Academy during the 18th century.
Both portray students of the RA
Schools drawing casts of Classical and Renaissance sculptures in the 'Antique
School'. Skilful draughtsmanship was essential for aspiring artists at this
time and students at the Academy spent up to three years drawing casts before
they progressed to life drawing.
Richard Dalton - Painter, antiquarian, draughtsman, dealer, engraver; began his career as a painter, but then became an antiquarian-dealer, principally through his activities as Librarian to George, Prince of Wales (subsequently George III).
He first travelled to Italy in 1739 to continue his studies, first at Bologna, then at Rome, where he specialised in highly finished red chalk drawings after classical statues. By mid-1741 Dalton had also become active as a dealer, particularly in prints. He returned to London in 1743, but left again for Rome in 1747.
In Sicily in 1749 he encountered Lord Charlemont and his party and joined them as travelling draughtsman on their tour of Constantinople, the Levant, and Greece. The drawings Dalton then made are important as the first visual records of a number of ancient monuments; many were subsequently published in Dalton's 'Musaeum Graecum et Aegyptiacum' (Antiquities of Greece and Egypt, 1751 with additional later issues) and 'Antiquities and Views in Greece and Egypt' (1791).
In 1754 he offered casts
after the antique as well as prints after Raphael et al. at his London
lodgings; in 1755 he was appointed Librarian to George, Prince of Wales. In
order to enrich the royal collection Dalton travelled to Italy again in 1758-9,
where, among other things, he examined Cardinal Albani's collection of drawings
(later acquired for the King through James Adam). Dalton became Antiquary at
the Royal Academy in 1770. He went to Italy again in 1768-9 and 1774-5, buying
paintings and drawings both for the Royal collection and his own, as well as a
number of British noblemen. He was appointed Keeper of King’s medals and
drawings in 1774 and Surveyor of paintings in 1779. His collection, which
included some antiquities, was sold at Christie's in 1791.
Les Proportions Du Corps Humain, Mesurées sur
les plus belles Figures de l'Antiquité (Paris: 1683), pl. 23
..............................
Statue of the Dying Gladiator by Peter Scheemakers, circa 1743.
In part of the landscape garden of 1733 to 1740 created by William Kent at Rousham
House, Oxfordshire, built for General James Dormer.
...............................
The Dying Gladiator.
Bronze.
Iford Manor, Somerset.
Size not known. Approx half life size.
........................
Smuglerius.
A plaster cast écorché (the flayed man).
from the original by Agostino Carlini of 1776.
Cast by William Pink (1809 - 57).
Royal Academy.
Research in 2010 tentatively identified the
"smuggler" as James Langar, hanged on 12 April 1776 after being
convicted at the Old Bailey on 21 February as a footpad (convicted on two
charges, and acquitted on two other charges). However, Langar was not sentenced
to be dissected and anatomized (unlike, for example, Thomas Henman and Benjamin
Harley, smugglers convicted of murdering a customs officer on 22 May 1776 and
executed 5 days later).
Agostino Carlini modeled the anatomical Ecorche making a plaster mold of the body flayed, perfectly composed in the position of the famous roman statue.
The mold was also useful to make a wax model then cast in bronze
with lost wax process. This Bronze by Carlini has disappeared.
Text here and image from the RA website
William Pink (1809–1857) was a maker of plaster figures who
first exhibited busts at the Royal Academy in 1828. In 1830 Pink was imprisoned
for debt, and also worked for a short time as a coal dealer and greengrocer to
support himself.
Around 1834 Pink made a new cast of the famous écorché
Smugglerius (originally cast in the 18th century), and it was on the strength
of a recommendation from the RA that in 1839 Pink was hired by the British
Museum as formatore (the Italian term used by the museum to distinguish their
craftsmen from jobbing plaster figure makers). Pink remained in this post until
his death in 1857, when he was succeeded by Domenico Brucciani.
Pink’s later work included repairs to works by John Flaxman
in preparation for the opening of the Flaxman Gallery at University College
London in 1850.
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/smugglerius
https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/the-encroacher
Agostino Carlini (1718–1790).
Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh).
The work is part of the Edinburgh College of Art cast collection.
It was cast after a now lost bronze cast from 1776 made by the sculptor Agostino Carlini for William Hunter, professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy Schools, from the body of a criminal, flayed after he was hanged at Tyburn and posed like the famous antique sculpture The Dying Gaul.
The criminal
was thought to be a smuggler, so the cast of his body was given the
pseudo-Latin name 'Smugglerius'.
Images below from the ARTUK website
https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/smugglerius-292003
No comments:
Post a Comment