Updated 8 Feb. 2021.
The Portrait Sculpture in The Codrington Library.
at All Souls College, Oxford University.
Part 28.
Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661 - 1736).
Bronzed Plaster Bust.
Here attributed to Louis Francois Roubiliac.
(Currently with no documentary evidence).
With grateful thanks to Gaye Morgan, Chief Librarian and Conservator at the Codrington, All Souls Oxford for making this entry possible.
It appears that there is another bust - perhaps by the same hand and inscribed Giles Bennett, / Manciple 1736 that was in The Buttery at All Souls in 1925, but I have not yet had the opportunity to closely inspect it on my visits (see below).
Mrs Webb suggests that they were both made by Henry Cheere in about 1736.
Both of these busts are noted as at All Souls (Bennett in the Buttery) in A History of the University of Oxford Including the Lives of
the Founders ... By Alexander Chalmers pub.1810.
The Bust of Giles Bennett in the Buttery at All Souls, Oxford.
Height 53.3 cms
dated on the support 1737.
This bust has in the past again been attributed to Henry Cheere but I remain unconvinced.
Image below from art uk website -
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The Plaster bust of Nicholas Hawksmoor.
All Souls College, Oxford.
Photographs taken by the Author.
The Roubiliac Hawksmoor and Wither Busts Compared.
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The William Wither Monument.
Monument to William Wither. d.1732.
Wootton St Lawrence Church, Hampshire.
Bust with very similar drapery to that on the bust of Hawksmoor .
The church was rebuilt in 1863.
see Roubiliac and Cheere .... Malcolm Baker in the Journal of the Church Monuments Society Vol X 1995.
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Nicholas Hawksmoor.
Bronze .
1962
546 mm wide.
A modern cast taken from the original plaster at All Souls, Oxford.
Cast by the Morris Singer Foundry.
Given to the NPG by the Warden and Fellows of All Souls in 1962.
Image Courtesy National Portrait Gallery.
If it were up to me I would replace the socle with a smaller and less clumsy and insensitive version as in the black and white photograph above.
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The Busts on the Monuments of Thomas Missing and Charles Gounter Nichol.
Here again the two busts use the same drapery.
Shown here for comparison.
Two busts which have been attributed to Henry Cheere but are probably by Roubiliac.
The reuse of the drapery in further busts by using some sort of pointing machine seems to be a practised that was only used by Roubiliac.
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Thomas Missing.
Marble Bust on the Monument.
Probably Louis Francois Roubiliac.
Holy Rood Church, Crofton and Stubbington, Hampshire.
Formerly Crofton.
1738.
Thomas Missing built the south transept in 1725 to
accommodate his family pews and mausoleum. He was MP for Southampton and the
merchant responsible for victualling Gibraltar. He was presumably responsible
for the shaped gable and segmental windows to the south transept shown in a mid
C19 illustration in the National Monuments Record.
Noted in the London Magazine of November, 1738.
Thomas Missing, a Portsmouth merchant whose parentage has
not been ascertained, was made a freeman and alderman there in January 1711.
In
March 1715 he obtained a lucrative contract for victualling the garrison at
Gibraltar, which he held till his death. Five years later he was given similar
contracts for troops in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Returned, presumably as
a Whig, for Southampton in 1722, he was defeated in 1727.
In September 1728 he
proposed to the board of Trade that ‘as he hath a correspondence that way and
hath with reputation carried over a great many to America’, he should be
engaged to transport yearly a number of Protestant Palatines to Carolina ‘and
victual them till they can support themselves’.3
He died 6 July 1733.
Whilst the link is tenuous, the son of Thomas Missing another Thomas, was married to Anne Streatfield daughter of Henry Streatfield whose bust by Roubiliac is in the Mausoleum at Chiddingstone in Kent.
see - http://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.com/2015/07/jonathan-tyers-and-his-bust-by-roubiliac.html
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The Gounter Nicoll Monument, Racton, Sussex.
c.1733/4.
The monument probably made in the workshop of Henry Cheere, the bust by Roubiliac.
The 18c memorial inscription reads
Here be the Remains
/ Of the Honourable Sr. CHARLES
GOUNTER NICOLL / Knight of the most Honourable Order of the
Bath; /
Descended from a long Train of Ancestors
/ Fam’d for their Religion, Loyalty and Virtue, / He
had all the Qualifications / Of a compleat and accomplishe’d Gentleman, / Amiable in his Person, /
Gracefull in his Address. / In
Private, / He was easy, affable, condescending’ / In
Publick, / He was steady, uniform consistent; /
Favour’d by this Prince, / And a Friend to his Country. / In
this distinguish’d Situation, /
Esteem’d, belov’d and honour’d, /
He died the 24th Day of November 1733
/ In the 30th Year of his Age.
ELIZABETH, his belov’d Wife
/ Daughter and Heiress of WILIAM
BLUNDEN Esqr. / (By whom He left two Daughters /
ELIZABETH and FRANCES-CATHERINE)
/ Erected this to his Memory.
These images and words from
I will return to this subject once things become clearer and I can obtain better images.
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