John Cheere - The Man at Hyde Park Corner.

(Post in preparation).

 John Cheere (1709 - 87), The Man at Hyde Park Corner.

Sculptor.

Son of John and Mary Cheere of Clapham.

Baptised in Clapham on 12 January 1709.

Younger brother of sculptor (Sir) Henry Cheere (1703 - 81).

In 1737 Henry Cheere and his brother John leased a property together from Anthony Noast (van Nost) in Portugal Row, Piccadilly.

Roque the mapmaker described himself as living next door to Cheere's Statuary Yard at the Duke of Grafton's Head. (1743 - 49) where he published his famous map of London.

see - https://mapforum.com/2022/03/09/biography-john-rocque/

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Statuaries at Hyde Park Corner.

Sculptor / statuaries Richard Osgood (d. 1724), Edward Hurst, Josias Iback, John Nost the Elder, Andrew Carpenter, (Charpentiere), the Huguenot Henry Nadauld (otherwise Nadue, Noddo, Neddos) 1653 - 1724, Thomas Carter I, William Collins, Richard Dickinson and Thomas Manning (d.1747) 

All had yards and workshops at Portugal Row and the Stone bridge at Hyde Park Corner on the North side of what after 1769, became Piccadilly.

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Stone Bridge - the street on a parcel of land of 9 acres originally Stone Bridge Field fronting Hyde Park Road - now Piccadilly.

The stone bridge over the Tyburn stream.

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Also Jean Tijou, the Ironsmith (who had his workshops on the site of Egremont House 1707 - 14 according to JT Smith).

In 1736 the Hyde Park Corner sculptor Andrew Carpenter (Charpentier) (c.1677 - 1767) previously the principal assistant of John Nost I -  had ceased trading.

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An Early Mention of Statuaries at Hyde Park Corner.

Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, William King, 1705.

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A Somewhat Critical Review of 1734.

In 1734 James Ralph (1705–1762) complained of the statuary yards around Hyde Park Corner: “Among a hundred statues you shall not see one even tolerable, either in design or execution,” blaming “this prostitution of so fine an art” on “the ignorance and folly of the buyers who resolve to purchase their follies as cheap as possible a statue should be good in itself  we cannot be too severe in our censure, or take too much pains to bring about a reformation.”

James Ralph, A Critical Review of the Publick Buildings, Statues and Ornaments in and about London and Westminster (London: C. Ackers, for J. Wilford and J. Clarke, 1734), 34–36.

A Critical Review of the Publick Buildings, Statues and Ornaments In, and ... By James Ralph.

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A few notes short on the sculptors / statuaries working at  Hyde Park Corner from the latter part of the 17th Century to be enlarged upon in due course.

Josias Iback FL. 1679 -1710.

April 1709 listed as figure maker paying £20/ annum at Stone Bridge - in 1719 an Heyback was still paying rates at Stone Bridge.

Iback supplied silver fireplace furniture for Ham House - He charged £82 10s 9d for a pr of silver andyrons and a pr. of silver dogs, and silver garniture for the iron pan' on 16th May 1786 and a further £34 10s 9d for a pr of silver dogs& silver garniture for ye shovel and tongues Iback also supplied a pair of brass andyrons for £8.

The Ham documents are the earliest references to his work and in April 1686 he is listed with London Goldsmiths company as an alien goldsmith.

 He also produced sculpture for the Duchess of Lauderdale at Ham - he was paid £20 in advance for a 'figure doinge for her grace' on 30 October 1674.

 Information above on Iback's work at Ham House from Ham House, 400 years of Collecting and Patronage, edited by Christopher Rowell, Published by Yale, 2013.

The Equestrian statue of Charles II at Windsor Castle is the perhaps the work of Grinling Gibbons, the Dutch woodcarver and sculptor working in England, appointed ‘Surveyor and Repairer of Carved Work at Windsor’ in 1682, and it was cast by the founder Josias Ibach whose signature is inscribed on the horse’s back left hoof ‘Josias Ibach Stada Bramesis 1679 FUDIT’. paid £1300.

Wren in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford refers to a German carver who first carved the horse in wood and one Ibeck who cast the statue

Also work in brass / bronze at Chatsworth 1692 providing 4 Vases and artificial tree and at Hampton Court between 1689 - 1700 where he repaired Finelli's fountain and recast brass shells paid £121. 19s.

see - https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/31958/charles-ii-1630-1685

see my post http://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2016/07/two-equestrian-statues-of-charles-ii.html

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Huguenot Henri Nadauld (1653 -1734) working in England by 1698. 

Rated for two houses in Portugal St in 20 Dec 1697 - his yard was in Portugal Row.

Worked at Hampton Court in 1698 and from 1700 at Chatsworth and from 1705 at Castle Howard.

Still at Portugal Row in 1706 - Carved the Monument for Lady Eland in Westminster Abbey.Only the relief survives.

Thomas Carter I. d.1702 - 56.

A brief biog to be expanded in due course.

Thomas Carter's craftsmanship is recorded in the archives of prominent country seats such as Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, Moulsham Hall, Essex, Blair Castle, Perthshire and Holkham Hall, Norfolk where, in circa 1740, he supplied a significant number of chimneypieces to the Saloon, Great Dining Room and at least two of the state bedrooms. A comparable chimneypiece formed of strongly contrasting marbles is in the west wing of Holkham, Christopher Hussey, English Country Houses Early Georgian 1715-1760 , London, 1955, p. 145, fig. 237). Furthermore, between 1747 and 1756, Sir Matthew Featherstonehaugh paid Thomas Carter nearly £1000 for chimneypieces for Uppark, Sussex. 

Thomas Carter seems to have had a predilection for the use of distinct colouring in his work; in 1745, he supplied two chimneypieces of 'black and yellow marble' and 'black and gold marble' for Mr. James West's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields (Robert Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors, London, 1951, p. 85)

Thomas Carter II (d.1795) nephew and son in law of Thomas Carter I.

Benjamin Carter (1719 - 66) Brother and business partner from about 1751 -56, of Thomas Carter I. He had premises next door to his brother. 

On the death of his brother Benjamin became business partner of  Thomas Carter II, who was working at his premises in 1758

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"If you please you may go see a great many statues at the statuaries at Hyde Park Corner" A New Guide to London 1726, page 83.

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John Bushnell (1636 - 1701) at Hyde Park Corner.

Apprenticed to Thomas Burman (1618 - 74).

His Yard appears to have been on Tyburn Lane (now Park Lane).

See Walpole Soc. Journal Vol 16 - p. 9 - 80. Mrs Esdaile (available online)

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 Walter Thornbury - Haunted London. pub 1880.

So lately as the beginning of the last century, the lane was almost, if not quite, destitute of habitation, for in it lived, moping away their existence in an unfinished house, commenced by their eccentric father, the sons of George Bushnell, who sculptured the statues which adorn Temple Bar. "This strange abode," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, in "Haunted London," "had neither staircase nor doors. . . . . 

Vertue, in a MS. dated 1728, describes a visit which he paid to the house, which was 'choked up with unfinished statues and pictures,' the sad relics of their father's wayward and eccentric genius."

John Bushnell, the sculptor who executed the statues on Temple Bar, being compelled by his master, Burman, of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, to marry a discarded servant-maid, went to Italy, and resided in Rome and Venice, and in the latter place executed a monument to a Procuratore, representing a naval engagement between the Venetians and the Turks. 

His best works are Cowley’s monument, that of Sir Palmes Fairborne in Westminster Abbey, and Lord Mordaunt’s statue in Fulham church. 

He also executed the statues of Charles I., Charles II., and Sir Thomas Gresham for the Royal Exchange. He had agreed to complete the set of kings, but Cibber being also engaged, Bushnell would not finish the six or seven he had begun. Being told by rival sculptors that he could carve only drapery, and not the naked figure, he produced a very despicable Alexander the Great.

 

The next whim of this vain, fantastic, and crazy man, was to prove that the Trojan Horse could really have been constructed.[8] He therefore had a wooden horse built with huge timbers, which he proposed to cover with stucco. The head held twelve men and a table; the eyes served as windows. Before it was half completed, however, it was[Pg 8] demolished by a storm of wind, and no entreaties of the two vintners who had contracted to use the horse for a drinking booth could induce the mortified projector to rebuild the monster, which had already cost him £500. 

A wiser plan of his, that of bringing coal to London by sea, also miscarried; and the loss of an estate in Kent, through an unsuccessful lawsuit, completed the overthrow of Bushnell’s never very well-balanced brain. He died in 1701, and was buried at Paddington. 

His two sons (to one of whom he left £100 a year, and to the other £60) became recluses, moping in an unfinished house of their father’s, facing Hyde Park, in the lane leading from Piccadilly to Tyburn, now Park Lane. This strange abode had neither staircase nor doors, but there they brooded, sordid and impracticable, saying that the world had not been worthy of their father. 

Vertue, in 1728, describes a visit to the house, which was then choked with unfinished statues and pictures. There was a ruined cast of an intended brass equestrian statue of Charles II.: an Alexander and other unfinished kings completed the disconsolate brotherhood. Against the wall leant a great picture of a classic triumph, almost obliterated; and on the floor lay a bar of iron, as thick as a man’s wrist, that had been broken by some forgotten invention of Bushnell’s.

8. Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting, vol. iii. p. 274.

Vertue - ‘He built that house near Hyde Park but did not finish it where still lives two sons of his like Hermitts or Brutes, because they converse with no man nor are sociable creatures, have nothing in them, but say the world is unworthy of their fathers works, so won’t let them be seen, & carelessly and malitiously destroy them daily. Into heaps of shater’d heads, arms, legs &c.’

Mrs Esdail in  The Volume of the Walpole Society, Vol. 15 (1926-1927), pp. 21-45

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Survey of London - Sir Walter Besant 1911 - Page 179.

Sackville Street to Brick Street was known as Portugal Row, Brick Street to Down Street called Stone Bridge, to the west was Hyde Park Road

At No. 94, Cambridge House (Naval and Military Club), standing in a courtyard, occupies the site of Carpenter's Statue Yard, which was succeeded by an inn. It was built in 1760 for the Earl of Egremont.

No. 105, on the site of Jan Van Nost's figure yard, the Earl of Barrymore built a house in 1790, which remained unfinished at his death. After being partially burned down.

No. 137, Gloucester House, stands on the site of Dickinson's Statue Yard.