King Edward I (1239–1307) and his Wife Queen Eleanor (of Castile) (1244/5 – 1290)
John Deare (Liverpool 1759 - Rome 1798)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1787 - circa 1788
Materials
Plaster
Measurements
930 x 1080 x 10 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
NT 208109
Summary
A relief plaster plaque, King Edward I (1239–1307) and his wife Queen Eleanor (of Castile) (1244/5 – 1290) by John Deare (Liverpool 1759 - Rome 1798). The relief depicts the legend of Queen Eleanor of Castile, risking her life to suck the poison from a wound her husband, King Edward I, sustained during the crusades - he was wounded in the arm by a dagger that was thought to be poisoned. The subject matter and elements of the composition may have been suggested by Angelica Kauffman's painting of the same subject, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776 during Deare's time as a student (now in The Huntington, California; acquired in 2001). Between 1776 and 1783 John Deare served an apprenticeship to the London carver Thomas Carter. He enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1777 where studied anatomy, attended dissections and examined life casts, and he won a Gold Medal in 1780. From 1785 he spent three years in Rome under a Royal Academy pension on the condition that he sent back a work for the Royal Academy's annual exhibition. He proposed sending his relief of The Judgement of Jupiter; but at 3 metres wide it was the largest 18th century relief by a British artist, and the Academy baulked at the size and it was never sent to the exhibition. His next relief was Edward and Eleanor (drawn from a play by James Thomson), commissioned by the Catholic Henry Blundell (1724 - 1810) and shown in 1788, his only Royal Academy exhibition. Soon after (1790), Sir Andrew Corbet commissioned a marble version for Adderley Hall, Market Drayton, Shropshire (demolished 1955) - it is very possible that the Wimpole plaster plaque may have been taken from a mould of this marble version.
Provenance
Given by Mr Beales to the National Trust, 1994
Makers and roles
John Deare (Liverpool 1759 - Rome 1798), sculptor