Leadwork Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 42.--Mercury.]

When sculptors learn again that their art is to shape many materials in various ways for diverse uses, and that a statue is not necessarily of whitest marble or to be exhibited on the 1st of May, then we may get back the delight of sculpture in the garden.

Sculptured marble, unless the art is of a high order, does not please us out of doors by a pond or on a terrace, if it is not weathered down to a ruin, but lead is homely and ordinary and not too good to receive the _graffiti_ of lovers' knots, red letter dates and initials. Here is a sketch of a Mercury not at all too fine for further decoration of this sort; it came from a London sale room, the surface was quite white and exfoliated like old stone. The jaunty messenger has a garden thought too, for it is honeycomb in his hand.

One of the best known of these garden statues was a group of Cain and Abel that so recently gave an interest to the great gra.s.s quad of Brasenose College, Oxford. It was given by Dr. Clarke, of All Souls, "who bought it of some London statuary." Hearne speaks of it as "some silly statue"--superiority has always been the greatest enemy to beauty.

Forty or fifty years ago there was a Mercury in Tom Quad which has also been improved away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 43.--Sun-dial, Temple Gardens.]

Our next example fulfils a purpose. It is the sun-dial formerly in Clement's Inn, which was known locally as the "Blackamoor." It is strongly, if simply modelled, a piece of art full of character, and we may be glad that it has been restored to us although now placed in the gardens of the Inner Temple, instead of before the "Garden House" in Clement's Inn.

The negro is the full size of life and bears the stone disc of the dial on his head with one hand, the other being free. The dial is beautifully engraved and is signed on the edge of the gnomon _Ben Scott in the Strand Londini Fecit_. The sides have the initials of the donor, P. I.

P., and the date, 1731. Mr. Hare in his _Walks in London_ states that it was brought from Italy late in the seventeenth century by Holles Lord Clare, whose name is preserved in the neighbouring Clare market. This statement is also found in Thornbury's _Old and New London_, and the statue is said to be bronze, which it is not, nor do the initials and date above agree with Mr. Hare's statement, who goes on to remark that "there are similar figures at Knowsley, and at Arley in Cheshire," but he does not say if these also were brought from Italy by Lord Clare.

No authority is given by Mr. Hare, but his statement is in the main a transcript from John Thomas Smith, who also gives the verses quoted by Mr. Hare, said to have been attached to the statue on one occasion with a pitying reference to the legal atmosphere the African had to breathe.

That it was brought from Italy is seemingly local gossip added to the account of Mr. Smith who knew well enough the English workshop, as we shall see, where these figures were made.

Similar figures are mentioned by this writer in his gossiping _Antiquarian Rambles in London_ in which he wrote the memories of his own travels in the streets in the beginning of the present century, and gives quite a history of this "despicable manufactory." The founding of these lead garden statues seems specially to have been an industry of the eighteenth century; with the dreary opening of the nineteenth "a purer taste," so we are a.s.sured, banished these and most other charms of an old-fashioned garden. "In Piccadilly, on the site of the houses east of the Poulteney Hotel including that, now No. 102, stood the original leaden figure yard, founded by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who came to England with King William III. His effects were sold March, 1711." As late as 1763 a John Van Nost (supposed descendant of the former) was following the profession of a statuary in St. Martin's Lane, on the left, a little farther up than where the old brick houses now stand in 1893. The original business was taken in 1739 by Mr. John Cheere, who served his time with his brother, Sir H. Cheere, the statuary who did several of the Abbey monuments.

"This despicable manufactory must still be within memory, as the attention of nine persons in ten were arrested by these garden ornaments. The figures were cast in lead as large as life and frequently painted with an intention to resemble nature. They consisted of Punch, Harlequin, Columbine and other pantomimical characters; mowers whetting their scythes; haymakers resting on their rakes; gamekeepers shooting; and Roman soldiers with _firelocks_; but above all an African kneeling with a sundial upon his head found the most extensive sale.

"For these imaginations in lead there were other workshops in Piccadilly, viz., d.i.c.kenson's, which stood on the site of the Duke of Gloucester's house, Manning's at the corner of White Horse Street, and Carpenter's, that stood where Egmont house afterwards stood.

"All the above four figure yards were in high vogue about the year 1740.

They certainly had casts from some of the finest works of art, the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, &c., but these leaden productions, although they found numerous admirers and purchasers, were never countenanced by men of taste; for it is well known that when application was made to the Earl of Burlington for his sanction he always spoke of them with sovereign contempt, observing that the uplifted arms of leaden figures, in consequence of the pliability and weight of the material, would in course of time appear little better than crooked billets.... There has not been a leaden figure manufactory in London since the year 1787, when Mr. Cheere died."

Walpole knew little of these lead-working sculptors, his only notice occurring under "Carpentier or Charpentiere"--our Carpenter above--"a statuary much employed by the Duke of Chandos at Canons, was for some years princ.i.p.al a.s.sistant to Van Ost (our Van Nost) an artist of whom I have found no memorials, and afterwards set up for himself. Towards the end of his life he kept a manufactory of leaden statues in Piccadilly and died in 1737, aged above sixty." The original Van Nost came from Mechlin, and married in England the widow of another Dutch sculptor.

In the account books of the building of Somerset House the following entry, which occurs under 1778, is interesting as showing John Cheere working on particular works, and for giving us the composition of the metal and the price. "John Cheere, figure maker; to moulding, casting, and finishing four large sphinxes in a strong substantial manner, lead and block tin, at each 31."

It is curious if Lord Burlington gave the critical dictum attributed to him, that there were so many lead garden statues at his villa at Chiswick, in 1892 dismantled by the Duke of Devonshire. Doubtless they belonged to that garden described by Walpole as in the Italian taste, where "the lavish quant.i.ty of urns and sculpture behind the garden front should be retrenched," a wish that time accomplishes. There was a Bacchus, a Venus, an Achilles, a Samson, and Cain and Abel.

In the first quadrangle at Knole there are two good reproductions of the antique, one being a crouching Venus. In the courtyard of Burton Agnes in Yorkshire stands a Fighting Gladiator.

Studley Royal, near Ripon, is a fine example of the best effort of park-gardening, if the phrase be allowed, for the term "landscape gardening" is degraded to mean productions in the cemetery style, an affair of wriggling paths, little humps, and nursery specimens, which might best be described as _cemetery gardening_, and between which and the manner of Kent there is no parallel. Here lakes in ordered circles and crescents occupy the gra.s.sy flat between hanging woods, and several groups of lead statuary stand above the water.

In the beautiful old gardens at Melbourne in Derbyshire are a large number of lead figures, two of which are drawn in _The Formal Garden_.[26] There are two heroic sized figures of Perseus and Andromeda beside the great water; a Flying Mercury after Giovanni Bologna; two slaves, which are painted black, with white drapery, carrying vases on salvers; and several Cupids in pairs or single. Of these "the single figures" Mr. Blomfield says "are about two feet high. One has fallen off his tree, another is flying upward, another shooting, another shaping his bow with a spoke shave. All of these are painted and some covered with stone dust to imitate stone, a gratuitous insult to lead which will turn to a delicate silver grey if left to its own devices."

[26] Blomfield and Thomas. Macmillan, 1892.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44.--Cymbal Player.]

In the old gardens at Rousham described by Pope are still some Cupids riding on swans; at Holmerook Hall are statues and other objects in lead, and at Newton Ferrars in Cornwall are two statues of Mars and Perseus. At the Mote House, Hersham, are some garden figures.

There are also some figures of lead in the gardens of Castle Hill, Lord Fortescue's house in Devonshire. In the two niches of a garden temple there is a Cymbal Player from the antique and a Venus in the manner of William and Mary. Amongst the foliage of a wood-path is a terminal figure of Pan, the pillar being stone and the head and shoulders only of lead. In the gardens here are also two large couchant lions, four sphinxes, and some greyhounds. At Nun Moncton in Yorkshire, on a terrace by the river Ouse are several lead figures on each side of the walk, these have gilded trappings. At Glemham in Suffolk are figures of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene at the entrance. In the garden are two black slaves with sun-dials, and the Seasons: also hounds at the gateway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 45.--Terminal at Castle Hill.]

In the garden at Canons Ashby is a figure of a shepherd playing a flute.

In a garden at Exeter are four or five figures, amongst which is a Skater and a Flower Girl, and at Whitchurch is a Quoit Thrower.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 46.--Time.]

In the niches of a large circular yew hedge at Hardwick are four figures, three are playing on musical instruments; pipe, trumpet, and violin, and the fourth represents Painting. There are also two other figures in the gardens. At Temple Dinsley near Hitchin is a figure of Time, hour-gla.s.s in hand, of which a sketch is given. The left hand formerly held a scythe, now lost. At Shrewsbury is a Hercules.

The statues in the grounds at Blarney celebrated in the "Groves of Blarney" were of lead:--

"There's statues gracing this n.o.ble place in All heathen G.o.ddesses so fair, Bold Neptune, Plutarch and Nicodemus All standing naked in the open air."

These statues were sold by auction to Sir Thomas Dene who bought the castle, and pictures:--

"And took off in a cart ('Twas enough to break my heart) All the statues made of lead and pictures O!"[27]

[27] _Reliques of Father Prout_, i., 140.

The eighteenth century must have been busy in the "manufacture" of these garden figures and ornaments, some of the gardens mentioned have as many as twenty to thirty pieces still. A great number was doubtless absorbed in the London public gardens and the villas up the Thames. In old Vauxhall was a statue of Milton by Roubilliac, but it is difficult to attribute many specimens to individuals. The negro we saw was sold by Mr. John Cheere in St. Martin's Lane, but likely enough the model was a part of the stock of Van Nost, as also the fine vases at Hampton Court.

Many of these statues were destroyed to suit the "purer taste" of this century, and a great number were exported during the American War to become bullets, because at that time as "works of art" the lead escaped the Customs. A large number have been accidentally crushed by the fall of a tree or otherwise destroyed, and many not adequately supported have flattened down out of shape.

There was a large display _a la_ Louis Quatorze, of lead casting in the gorgeous gardens of Versailles; where in the fountains, groups of statues, and vases, the greatest sculptors of the time worked indifferently in marble, bronze, or _plomb dore_. Francois Girardon was one of these. Born in 1628, at Troyes, he lived to the year 1715, achieving a reputation that placed him amongst the foremost of French artists of that time.

The immense structure entirely of lead known as the Fountain of the Pyramid is his work. From a basin in which sport three man-sized tritons rises a pedestal, with a circular basin much enriched by gadroons, set on three cla.s.sic zoomorphous legs; and above it three other like basins of diminishing size, each supported from the one below around the rim; by baby tritons for the lowest, the next with dolphins, and the last with lobsters. In the last basin is a vase. The whole is a composition showing great refinement of scholarship, recalling in general form the great pine cone of bronze in the Vatican gardens, once the fountain in the atrium of old St. Peter's. It is exquisitely drawn and engraved by Rouyer et Darcel[28] together with two vases also of lead from the Basin of Neptune.

[28] _L'Art Arch. en France_, vol. ii.

Other groups, some of colossal proportions--"France Victorious," "The Four Seasons," and so on--were the work of Thomas Renaudin of Moulins, J. B. Tubi from Rome, Pierre Mazaline and Gaspard de Marcu; their individual works, with ill.u.s.trations, may be distinguished in the volume of engraved statues of the Versailles gardens by S. Thoma.s.sin published in Paris 1694.

Versailles certainly set the fashion, which we followed and which influenced the gardens of the most of Europe. In Russia a Swiss gardener arranged a labyrinth at the summer palace of Peter the Great with animal groups from aesop in gilt lead forming fountains. Beckford, writing from Lisbon in 1789, describes a garden at Bemfica "which eclipses our Clapham and Islington villas in all the attractions of leaden statues, Chinese temples, serpentine rivers, and dusty hermitages."

-- XV. OF LEAD FOUNTAINS.

None of the old English gardens were complete without a fountain, and no fountain was complete without a figure. Bacon says--"For fountains ...

the ornaments of images, gilt or of marble, which are in use do well."

Paul Hentzner writes of the sixteenth century garden of Theobalds, the seat of Lord Treasurer Burleigh--"There was a summer house, in the lower part of which, built semicircularly, are the twelve Roman emperors in white marble and a table of touchstone (alabaster) the upper part is set around with cisterns of lead into which the water is conveyed by pipes so that fish may be kept in them, and in summer time they are very convenient for bathing."

At St. f.a.gan's, near Cardiff, in front of the house is a remarkable lead tank; it is octagonal, ten feet across and nearly four feet high; it is ornamented round the sides with flowers, and shields in panels, and is dated 1620.

At Syon House there is a fountain in which a lead figure forms the jet d'eau.

At Wooton in Staffordshire there is a fountain basin with a lead duck so suspended as to float on the water spouting water from its bill. The Swan which seemed to float on the water described by Borrow in _Lavengro_ must have been of lead. At Sprotborough in Yorkshire are some lead toads about nine inches long, which also seem to have belonged to a fountain.

Some of the figures mentioned before stand in the centre of basins, and occasionally simple groups, as of Neptune in a two-horsed chariot, may be found, but we have nothing in England to compare to the great fountain compositions of the Versailles Gardens or to the fountain called _Le Buffet_ in the Trianon Park, designed by Mansard, and profusely decorated by the gilt lead sculptures of Van Cleve and other artists.

In Germany some of the earlier town fountains are of lead.