Plaster cast of Hubert le Sueur's portrait bust of Sir Thomas Richardson (1569-1635)
after Hubert Le Sueur (c.1580 - Paris 1658)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1839
Materials
Plaster
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset
NT 1257712
Summary
Sculpture, plaster; portrait bust of Sir Thomas Richardson (1569-1635); after Hubert Le Sueur (c. 1580-1658); 1839. A plaster bust taken by William Nainby (1799-1858) from the monument to the lawyer Sir Thomas Richardson in Westminster Abbey, the work of the French-born sculptor Hubert Le Sueur. One of two casts ordered by William Bankes from the modeller William Nainby. The second cast was sent to France to the sculptor Baron Carlo Marochetti, to serve as a model for the portrait bust of Sir John Bankes (1589-1644), also at Kingston Lacy, which had been commissioned from Marochetti by William Bankes.
Full description
A plaster cast of the bronze portrait bust of Sir Thomas Richardson, made by Hubert Le Sueur in 1635 for the monument to Sir Thomas in Westminster Abbey. The subject is depicted frontally, with a small pointed beard, dressed in judge’s robes and with a large ruff at his neck. On his head are a skull-cap and a cap. The central badge of a rose and parts of two links is all that remains of a chain. On an integral rectangular stepped socle. The plaster was cast from the monument in Westminster Abbey to the lawyer Sir Thomas Richardson (1569-1635). The monument is made from black touchstone with, in the centre, a bronze portrait bust by King Charles I’s royal sculptor Hubert Le Sueur, signed and dated 1635 (Avery 1982, pp. 163-64, 189, cat.43, Pl. 61a). Sir Thomas Richardson was a successful if not greatly respected lawyer. Knighted in 1621, he was a Judge and Barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in 1595 and became Lent reader and Sergeant-at-law in 1614. He was appointed Speaker of the House of Commons in 1621, as Member of Parliament for St Albans, and then in 1626 Chief Justice of Common Pleas. In 1628, Richardson refused to allow John Felton (1595(?)-1628), the assassin of the Duke of Buckingham, to be racked to induce confession, a step that marked an epoch in the history of criminal jurisprudence. In 1631 Sir Thomas became Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, subsequently coming into conflict with William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1573-1645) for his suppressing of ‘wakes’ or Sunday revels. The plaster cast was one of two casts of Le Sueur’s portrait bust that were commissioned by William Bankes in 1839 from a jobbing plaster modeller, William Nainby (1799-1858). Bankes ordered the casts in connection with his plan to commission a portrait bust of his ancestor Sir John Bankes (1589-1644), who had followed Richardson in the post of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, serving in the role from 1641 until his death in 1644. In the early stages of Charles Barry’s renovations at Kingston Lacy, undertaken between 1836 and 1840, Bankes and his architect had evidently envisaged for the entrance hall a series of portrait busts of ancestors. Bankes eventually commissioned two portrait busts of Sir John in bronze (NT 1255240.1 & 2), as well as a full-length standing figure (NT 1255195.1). All three works were made by the Italian sculptor Carlo Marochetti (1805-1867). William Bankes much admired the work of Marochetti, who came into prominence in the late 1830s. As well as commissioning several works from Marochetti for Kingston Lacy, he was an active and vociferous supporter of the sculptor’s successful bid in 1840-41 to make a bronze equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington. Bankes evidently realised that he needed to provide Marochetti with a suitable model of contemporary English legal dress; having attended Westminster school and with his London home in Old Palace Yard, next to the Abbey, he would have known Westminster Abbey and its furnishings very well. He jotted in a notebook kept during the renovations at Kingston Lacy, ‘Get squeeze from Chief Justice Richardson’s monument in Westminster Abbey which is in bronze, also from the cartouche below it and perhaps the garland which encircles it’. Bankes decided in the end to order two casts of the portrait bust only, one for Marochetti, at this time based in France, whilst the second was to be sent to Kingston Lacy. The cast sent to France survives in the collection of Baron Marochetti’s French descendants, but as the head alone. William David Nainby (1799-1858; thanks to Jacob Simon for biographical information) was born in Kingston upon Hull. His father Peter may have been the P. Nainby, tax collector, who in 1821 was jailed in Hull for embezzling £3,000 by collecting taxes from people who in fact were not liable and then keeping the money (Royal Cornwall Gazette, 24 February 1821). He married Mary Hutchinson on 20 January 1833 at All Souls, Langham Place, London, but later in the same year was imprisoned for debt, at which time he was described as a journeyman bricklayer, plaisterer and modeller, formerly of 56 Crawford St, Bryanstone Square, then of Loughton, Essex, then of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, and late of 6 Avery Row, Bond St (London Gazette, 4 June 1833). Nainby was described as a modeller at the birth of his son Francis in 1836, and in the 1841 and 1851 censuses. In 1850 he was listed as an ornamental plasterer in the lying-in-hospital records for the birth of another son (‘England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1936’ at ancestry.co.uk). He was recorded in the 1851 census as aged 51, as living at Upper Charlton St, Marylebone, with his wife Mary and five children, his eldest son Francis, then aged 15, being a modeller like himself. William Bankes had already employed William Nainby once before, in 1838, when he commissioned from him the making of a glass dome for Kingston Lacy, presumably for the safe display of some delicate work of Art. On 2 October 1839, following the completion of the taking of the casts of the bust of Sir Thomas Richardson, Nainby submitted a statement of account for work for Bankes, totalling £36 19s.3d. (Dorset History Centre, Bankes Archive, D-BKL/H/J/13/167). As well as the casts from the bust in Westminster Abbey, the account included details of several other jobs that had been undertaken by Nainby, including the preparation of a cast of a shield from ‘the Blue Chamber’ and plaster casts of a large and a small flower. Nainby’s description of the casting of the two busts of Richardson, for which he charged £16 12s. (£16.60), is exceptionally detailed: ‘Moulding a Bust of Lord Chief Justice Bankes [sic] at Westminster Abbey. Modelling Back part of Head, fill & casting & finishing 2 complete Busts in plaster with Order round each, casting and finishing on Head of Bust with fill and seasoning, one of the Busts with Boiled Oil.’ The ‘Order’ refers to the chain of office of the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a gold chain of esses (S’s), which Sir John Bankes wears in both of Marochetti’s bronze busts, but which is almost entirely missing from the bronze bust of Richardson today. The chain was still present when the monument was illustrated by John Dart in his history of Westminster Abbey published in 1742, but may have disappeared some time between then and 1839, when the cast was made, although Nainby’s cast does preserve on the surface of the plaster traces of marks from a chain. Nainby’s statement of account also listed four shillings (20 pence) for ‘packing Bust for France’ and 11s. 6d. (58 pence) for ‘Packing Case, sawdust etc for Bust for Kingston Lacy’. Jeremy Warren March 2025
Provenance
Commissioned by William John Bankes in 1839; by descent to Ralph Bankes (1902-1981), by whom bequeathed in 1981.
Makers and roles
after Hubert Le Sueur (c.1580 - Paris 1658), sculptor William Nainby (Kingston-upon-Hull 1799 - London 1858), modeller
References
Avery 1982: Charles Avery, 'Hubert Le Sueur, the 'unworthy Praxiteles' of King Charles I', The Walpole Society, Vol. 48 (1980-82), pp. 135-209 Ward-Jackson 1990 Philip Ward-Jackson, “Expiatory monuments by Carlo Marochetti in Dorset and the Isle of Wight” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 53,1990, pp.266-280, illus. pl.32c