Statuette of William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
attributed to John Cheere (London 1709 – London 1787)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1756
Materials
Plaster of paris, Paint
Measurements
510 mm (H); 330 mm (W); 150 mm (D)
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ham House, Surrey
NT 1139984
Summary
Plaster, bronzed; William Shakespeare; attributed to the workshop of John Cheere (1709-1787); model c. 1750. The statuette of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is closely based on the marble memorial to Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey, designed by William Kent and executed by Peter Scheemakers in 1740. It shows the playwright leaning pensively against a triangular pedestal, embellished with the heads of three English monarchs, holding in his hand a scroll bearing Prospero’s speech from The Tempest. .
Full description
A statuette in bronzed plaster depicting William Shakespeare (1564-1616), derived from the marble monument in Westminster Abbey designed by William Kent (1685-1748) and executed by Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781). The poet is depicted standing, wearing ‘Van Dyck’ dress, leaning with his legs crossed against a triangular pedestal. Shakespeare rests his right elbow on a pile of three books and gazes outwards in pensive mood. The pedestal is embellished at the bottom with three portrait heads of English monarchs, Queen Elizabeth I and Kings Henry V and Richard III. On the inner face of the pedestal is a trophy with a wreath of bay leaves (for immortality), a dagger (symbol of tragedy) and a dramatic mask. Extending over the edge of the pedestal a white-painted scroll, bearing Prospero’s famous speech beginning ‘The Cloud Capped Towers’ from The Tempest, Act IV, scene 1. The sculpture is on an integral rectangular base and is flat at the back. The thumb of the left hand is broken off. The statuette of William Shakespeare is one of three figures of famous English poets in the Library at Ham House, the others Edmund Spenser and John Milton (NT 1139985 and 1139983). The three figures were bought in 1756 by Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart, who made significant additions to the house, including building the famous Ham Library, the books from which were sold in 1938. The figures, particularly suitable subjects for a room devoted to books, are recorded in the Library in the 1844 inventory of Ham House, along with ‘Three plaister busts’ and two unspecified ‘fancy figures’, none of which are still at Ham. The three figures are part of a much larger group of statues of famous architects, artists and writers, most of whom worked in Britain, that were produced from around 1749 in the London workshop of John Cheere. Cheere was the younger brother of the sculptor Sir Henry Cheere (1703-81), who ran a significant business in monuments, statues and chimneypieces, employing numerous assistants. Lord Dysart certainly would have known John Cheere personally, since in 1739 he paid Sir Henry Cheere for work at Ham, as well as his other seat, Helmingham Hall. John Cheere began his working life as a haberdasher but by the later 1730s had joined his brother, developing a thriving business that he ran from workshops at Hyde Park Corner. During the 1740s and 1750s John Cheere was the dominant figure in the manufacture of high-quality lead figures, often for display in gardens. In their 1766 play The Clandestine Marriage, David Garrick and George Colman had one character exclaim that ‘You have as many rich figures as the man at Hyde Park Corner.’ (For Cheere, see Friedman and Clifford, The Man at Hyde Park Corner). Many of Cheere's works survive in National Trust collections. In producing his set of famous figures from British history, Cheere was responding to the eighteenth-century fashion for series of sculptures celebrating national achievement, seen perhaps in its most famous form in the series of busts adorning William Kent’s Temple of British Worthies at Stowe, created in c. 1734-35. Among the busts at Stowe are William Shakespeare and John Milton, but the series also includes monarchs such as Elizabeth I and parliamentarians such as John Hampden. Cheere’s series of modest-sized statuettes was clearly designed for use in libraries and similar spaces for intellectual thought, and accordingly the selection of subjects is more focussed on the arts. According to a letter sent by John Cheere in July 1754 to a Yorkshire patron, John Grimston of Kilnwick Hall, there were twelve models available: ‘Homer, Virgil, Horace Demosthenes, Socrates, Shakespear, Chaucer, Milton, Dryden, Spencer, Locke, Newton, Tillotson, Boyle.’ (The Man at Hyde Park Corner, Appendix D). In addition, similar figures of artists, Inigo Jones, Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens, were also available and are included within the subjects in the most extensive extant series of these figures, the signed series also dated 1749, formerly at Kirkleatham Hall, some of which are now in York City Art Gallery (for the Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton, see The Man at Hyde Park Corner, nos. 45, 52, 54). A similarly conceived series of library sculptures is the set of sixteen bronzed plaster busts at Belton House (NT 436763) by an anonymous sculptor, installed in around 1734. For his figure of Shakespeare, John Cheere’s model was the work of another sculptor, Peter Scheemaker’s famous monument in Westminster Abbey. For the Milton and the Spenser on the other hand, the invention may have been Cheere’s, although both sculptures in many respects depend from the highly influential type defined by Scheemakers in his Shakespeare monument. Jeremy Warren December 2021
Provenance
Acquired in 1756 by Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart; recorded in 1844 in the Library, ‘Three Plaister figures of Milton, Dryden and Shakespeare.’; thence by descent, until acquired in 1948 by HM Government when Sir Lyonel, 4th Bt (1854 – 1952) and Sir Cecil Tollemache, 5th Bt (1886 – 1969) presented Ham House to the National Trust. Entrusted to the care of the Victoria & Albert Museum until 1990, when returned to the care of the National Trust, to which ownership was transferred in 2002.
Marks and inscriptions
On scroll: The Cloud Capt Towers, The Gorgeous Palaces, The Solemn Temples, The Great Globe it self Yes all which in Inherit, Shall Dissolve, And like the baseless Fabrick of a Vision Leave not a wreck behind. (Prospero’s speech from The Tempest, Act IV, scene 1)
Makers and roles
attributed to John Cheere (London 1709 – London 1787), sculptor after Peter Scheemakers (Antwerp 1691 - Antwerp 1781) , sculptor
References
Friedman and Clifford 1974: Terry Friedman and Timothy Clifford, The Man at Hyde Park Corner. Sculpture by John Cheere 1709-1787, exh.cat., Temple Newsam, Leeds, and Marble Hill House, Twickenham, 1974 Rowell 2013: Christopher Rowell (ed.), Ham House, 400 Years of Collecting and Patronage, Yale University Press, New Haven & London 2013, pp. 291-92, fig. 293.