Henry John Cockayne Cust
Emmeline Mary Elizabeth Welby-Gregory (1867 - 1955)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1905 (signed and dated)
Materials
Marble on marble plinth
Measurements
880 x 640 mm
Place of origin
Great Britain
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436777
Summary
Marble on marble plinth, Henry John Cockayne Cust (1861-1917), Emmeline Mary Elizabeth Cust (1867-1955), 1905. Henry Cockayne Cust, known as ‘Harry’, with moustache and wearing an open-neck shirt, looking straight ahead. The bust is mounted on marble plinth with spreading base inscribed clockwise from left: ‘C.H.Ɔ. THIS.HEAD:OF. | HENRY.COKAYNE.CVST: | IS.BY.HIS.WIFE:: C.H.Ɔ. | ANNO. SAL: MD:CCC.V’.
Full description
The bust is by Harry Cust’s wife Emmeline, better known as Nina. It is dated 1905 (‘MDCCCCV') and shows Harry at forty-four, with a moustache, wearing an open-neck shirt. NT 436783, a plaster portrait of Harry, is a model for the final work in marble. Nina Cust was a writer, poet and accomplished sculptor who exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her husband Harry was a poet, editor and Unionist MP for Lincolnshire and later Bermondsey. Together they were members of an aristocratic intellectual circle called the ‘Souls’. Authors in their own right, Nina and Harry collaborated on an anthology of poems and Nina reviewed books for the Pall Mall Gazette under Harry's editorship. Though intellectually matched their marriage was strained, marred from its inception by Harry's numerous affairs. Nina remained devoted to Harry nonetheless, and was at his side when he died aged 55 in 1917. Perhaps Nina's greatest tribute to her husband is the monumental marble effigy in Belton Church. See also Nina Cust's self-portrait (NT 436834), her busts of Adelbert, the 3rd Earl Brownlow (NT 436814 and 436816), and her rendering in marble of the hand of Katherine Kinloch, ‘Kitsie’, the first wife of Harry Cust's nephew Peregrine, 6th Baron Brownlow (NT 436781). Alice Rylance-Watson October 2018
Provenance
Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984.
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1994)
Marks and inscriptions
Clockwise from left, base of plinth: C.H.Ɔ. THIS.HEAD:OF. | HENRY.COKAYNE.CVST: | IS.BY.HIS.WIFE:: C.H.Ɔ. | ANNO. SAL: MD:CCC.V
Makers and roles
Emmeline Mary Elizabeth Welby-Gregory (1867 - 1955), sculptor