The Portrait Busts and Statue of Isaac Newton

Some fairly random notes and illustrations of the portraits and busts of Isaac Newton.

The entries on the portrait sculpture of Isaac Newton in this blog are intended to complement and expand on the excellent work of Milo Keynes.

see - The Iconography of Isaac Newton, Milo Keynes, Cambridge, 2005.

I will edit and repost this information on my main blog in due course. This might take some time.
I apologise for the amateurishness.

see -

http://bathartandarchitecture.blogspot.co.uk/

I am currently using this blog as an aide memoire and somewhere to file information.

Sir Isaac Newton

by Sir James Thornhill

102 x 122 cms.

c. 1710.

Trinity College, Cambridge.


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Newton by Thornhill

127 x 101.2 cms

In the Study Woolsthorpe Manor Lincs.

c1709 /12

National Trust.



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Mezzotint of Isaac Newton

by and published by John Simon, after Sir James Thornhill
mezzotint, circa 1700-1725.

13 7/8 in. x 9 7/8 in. (352 mm x 252 mm) paper size.


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The David Le Marchand Ivory Busts of Isaac Newton.

Possibly David le Marchand (1674 - 1726) with the Ivory bust of Isaac Newton.

by Joseph Highmore (1692 - 1780).

Oil on canvas, circa 1723.
48 3/4 in. x 39 1/4 in. (1240 mm x 997 mm)
Purchased, 1991
NPG 6142

© National Portrait Gallery, London

David Le Marchand was born in Dieppe. His family had produced painters, and probably also ivory carvers as the port was known for this craft. A Protestant, he appears to have left France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and is first recorded in Edinburgh in 1696. In that year he was given permission to open a shop there and his earliest portrait, of a member of the Cromartie family, was carved in the same year. 

By 1706 he was certainly in London, where he carved portraits of Queen Anne and George I, members of the Whig aristocracy, wealthy Huguenots and leading intellectuals of the early years of the eighteenth century. Although clearly successful until a few years before his death, he died in poverty six weeks after entering the French Hospital, London, at the expense of the charity.

Text British Museum Website.

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1. Ivory bust of Isaac Newton.

by David le Marchand.

Signed and dated on the small marble pedestal

Inscribed D.L.M. Sct. 1714.

186 mm.

Provenance Lord Halifax (Sold Cocks, Covent Garden 1739)

2nd Earl of Oxford (1689 - 1741),Wimpole Hall Cambridge.

James West (Sale Langfords London 6 March 1773 lot 19

Countess of Gosford 1930's bought from dealers Alfred Spero

Presented to the Gallery in 1939.

George Vertue in his notebooks describes a bust with the same date in the sale of the pictures of Lord Halifax.

National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.




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British Museum bust of Isaac Newton
by David le Marchand

2. The Raper Ivory Bust of Isaac Newton

David le Marchand

Signed and dated -

ISAACUS NEWTON/EQ:AVRA/ An:1718:/le Marchand/Sc. ad vi.

Height 248 x width 151 x depth x 140 mm.

Given to the Museum by Matthew Raper III, FRS.

British Museum.

The Rysbrack Conduitt Bust of Newton and its versions are derived from this bust

Originally paired with a bust of John Locke (see below).

 The bust was carved from life from a single elephant tusk in 1718, and is one of Le Marchand's most striking and famous works. The ivory, taken from the broader lower zone of an exceptionally large tusk, is particularly pleasing in colour. The work appears to be the bust shown in a painting of the carver by Joseph Highmore dating from around 1723.(above).

This bust and other ivory portraits of Newton by the same artist are fully discussed by Charles Avery, who comments that it was probably commissioned by the Rapers, either by Matthew Raper, the donor's father, or by Moses, his uncle. Both men were merchants with strong connections to the Bank of England.

Alternatively, the Museum bust may be the one commissioned by Newton, which after his death was recorded as having cost him one hundred guineas. The entry in one of George Vertue's note books records 'a head of Sr. Isaac Newton, carvd. in Ivory, pretty large, bald head - by. Le Marchand. 1718', which Vertue evidently saw not long after it was done.

Text above from - British Museum Website.

 For an in depth study of le Marchand see - Charles Avery - David le Marchand, 1674-1726: 'an ingenious man for carving in ivory', pub. Lund Humphries, London, 1996.

For the busts of Isaac Newton see - Milo Keynes, The Iconography of Sir Isaac Newton, pub Boydell, 2005.

For the British Museum Ivory Bust of Newton and a plaster bust by Rysbrack see Aileen Dawson, Portrait Sculpture, A catalogue of the British Museum Collection c. 1675 - 1975. pub British Museum Press, 1999. 

For the Early le Marchand ivory portrait reliefs of the Mackenzie family of 1696, made in Edinburgh just after his arrival in Scotland see -

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/38366


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3. Bust of Isaac Newton

Le Marchand (possibly after) or studio of.

Bought Sotheby's lot 7, 26 March 1965

19 cms

Ivory

Collection of Lord Thompson of Fleet. Toronto, Canada.

NB the lack of shirt featured in the Raper bust.

This bust is now Paired with the bust of Locke below.

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The once presumed lost Ivory bust of John Locke by Le Marchand,

215 mm.

The pair to Rapers bust of Newton by le Marchand.

Provenance The Raper family, Alfred Morrison, Mrs Michael Wright, 3 Barton St, London, SW1 

This photograph was taken when the bust was lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum for study in 1936.

see - Charles Avery - David le Marchand, 1674-1726: 'an ingenious man for carving in ivory', pub. Lund Humphries, London, 1996.

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3. Bust of Isaac Newton

Le Marchand (possibly after) or studio of.

Bought Sotheby's lot 7, 26 March 1965

19 cms

Ivory

Collection of Lord Thompson of Fleet. Toronto, Canada.

NB the lack of shirt featured in the Raper bust.

This bust is now Paired with the bust of Locke below.

Ivory bust of John Locke

now paired with the bust of Newton (above)

20 cms.

Purchased from Alfred Speelman in 1953

Collection of Lord Thompson of Fleet. Toronto, Canada.

This would appear to be the missing Ivory bust of Locke above.



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3. Bust of Isaac Newton

Le Marchand (possibly after) or studio of.

Bought Sotheby's lot 7, 26 March 1965

19 cms

Ivory

Collection of Lord Thompson of Fleet. Toronto, Canada.

NB the lack of shirt featured in the Raper bust.

This bust is now Paired with the bust of Locke below.

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Isaac Newton

Lord Thompson of Fleet Collection

Art Gallery of Ontario. Toronto, Canada

 197.5 x 130 mm.

Provenance: Dr Richard Meade - sold 11 March 1755 by A. Langford in association with Samuel Baker

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A Small relief of Isaac Newton

Cast from the ivory by le Marchand.

Babson Collection. USA.

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Mezzotint of Isaac Newton 1712.   J. Smith after Kneller.
The resemblance to the ivory relief above might suggest that the mezzotint was used to create the relief.

_____________________________________     Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton   Engraving Houbraken after Kneller (370 mm x 234 mm).     Sir Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller 1702. Oil on Canvas. 756 mm x 622 mm. Purchased 1936. National Portrait Gallery

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The Roubiliac Terracotta of Isaac Newton.
National Maritime Museum Greenwich.

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  Marble Bust by Roubiliac

Royal Society.

On Newton's death in 1727, his nephew, John Conduitt, allowed John Rysbrack to take casts of his face. Two of these were obtained by Roubiliac and in about 1731 Conduitt commissioned him to make this terracotta bust from them.  It was later owned by the surgeon John Belchier FRS, who at his death in 1785 left it to the Royal Society with instructions that it should be placed in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

In his will Belchier also stated that, as a portrait, it was 'esteemed more like than anything extant of Sir Isaac'. Some forty to fifty years later, at Greenwich, the head was broken off in an accident and, after being repaired, the whole was painted white. The result was that by the later 19th century the bust was mistaken for a low-value plaster one and it remained at the Observatory up to and throughout the Second World War, on occasions provided with a tin hat, before moving to Herstmonceux with the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) organization in the 1950s. The original was considered 'lost' until the error was discovered in 1961, when it was stripped of paint and expertly restored by the British Museum. After the RGO later moved to Cambridge, it was lent to the Fitzwilliam Museum, mainly for safety. It returned to Greenwich and the NMM's custody on the closure of the RGO in 1998.

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Marble bust of Sir Isaac Newton

by Louis Francois Roubiliac

With the Royal Society since 1738.

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Another version of the Roubiliac bust of Newton

From a Lincolnshire Collection. see:

http://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/?/exhibitions-and-events/gallery/lincolnshires-great-exhibition

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Isaac Newton

Life size marble bust.

1759.

by Louis Francois Roubiliac

Trinity College, Cambridge

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/cambs/plate-262



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Plaster cast of the Roubiliac Newton at Trinity College, Cambridge - origins obscure.

Institute of Astronomy Library.

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 Silver Medallion by John Croker (1670 - 1741). dated 1726.

on the reverse side - FELIX . COGNOSCERE . CAVSAS.

Happy in the knowledge of causes

Diam. 51 mm.

Croker was born in Dresden, moved to England in 1691, worked at the Royal Mint from 1697 -

Croker became chief engraver at the Royal Mint in 1705.

The dress of Newton is very similar that on the le Marchand ivory bust and it possible that it was   the source, but the bust by Rysbrack although generally assumed to be later could also have provided the source for this relief. The hair above the forehead is certainly closer to the Rysbrack version but it is equally possible that it was the source for Rysbrack's bust.

The reverse side is repeated on the unusual base of Rysbrack's Conduitt bust of Newton and represents science holding a diagram of the Solar System.

Bronze Medallion of Isaac Newton by John Croker (1670 - 1741). dated 1726.

on the reverse side - FELIX . COGNOSCERE . CAVSAS.

Happy in the knowledge of causes.

Diam. 51 mm.

British Museum

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From A Treatise of the System of the World. Isaac Newton, London: for F. Fayram, 1728.

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The Conduitt Marble Bust of Isaac Newton

by Michael Rysbrack.

With the base showing Science holding a diagram of the Solar System.

According to George Vertue (Note Books III), 1732 Mr Rysbrake did Sir Isaac Newton immediately after his death, from pictures or draughts - he does not mention a death mask.

The bust was commissioned by John Conduitt FRS (1688 - 1737).

Katherine Esdaile had claimed that the bust was by Roubiliac but she was unaware of the signed  version of the bust at Trinity College Cambridge.

This mistake was repeated by David Bindman and by Malcolm Baker in Roubiliac and the Eighteenth Century Monument. pub by Yale 1995.

I had pointed out this mistake to Malcolm Baker sometime in 2000, but he goes on to repeat the assertion in The Marble Index. published by Yale in 2015

A very fine plaster version of the Rysbrack bust of Isaac Newton.

sold at Christie's Lot 105 - 5th December 2013.

59.7 cms

The catalogue suggests that it is the same as the version in the British Museum but even a cursory glance tells us that it is a much finer cast. Unfortunately there is not a photograph of the back.

It is very close to the plaster version in the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Government Art Collection attrib. to Michael Rysbrack

Perhaps a 19th century copy.

height: 72.50 cm, width: 56.00 cm

Bought Bruton Gallery 1982.

Isaac Newton

Michael Rysbrack

Plaster - it has been mistaken for terracotta in the past.

Trinity of  College, Cambridge.

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Isaac Newton

Plaster Cast

After Michael Rysbrack.

Height 574mm x width 528 mm x depth 230 mm.

British Museum.

Text Below from British Museum Website.

On the basis of photographs Dr Katherine Eustace does not believe that this bust is by Rysbrack; a terracotta bust by him in Trinity College, Cambridge, dated 1739 appears to be the source for the Museum plaster. Dawson 1999.

Displayed: c. 1756 'A busto of Sr. Isaac Newton in plaister of Paris [with Dr. Mortimer]', 

Recorded in Sloane Catalogue, no. 1985 (kept in the MLA Dept); 1817, removed from Mr Baber's department to over the bookcases in the Print Room (letter from J. T.Smith, 17 November 1817, P&D Dept Archive);

1847, possibly still in the Print Room as one of the 'Clays or Casts: a Large portion of them by Roubiliac' in Sir Henry Ellis's memorandum of 3 June 1847 (BM Central Archive Officers' Reports); 1881, probably still in the Print Room;(1) 1960, Dept of British and Medieval Antiquities (MLA dept record).

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Life size stone bust of Isaac Newton

Michael Rysbrack.

Circa 1729/ 30

Made for the Temple of Fame at Stowe designed by Gibbs

Moved to the Temple of Worthies, at Stowe in 1733.

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Design for the Monument of Isaac Newton

in Westminster Abbey.

by Michael Rysbrack

Designed and signed by William Kent

297 x 133 mm.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

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The Monument to Isaac Neton

Designed by William Kent

this drawing by Michael Rysbrack

340 x 175 mm.

© The Trustees of the British Museum.

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Engraving of the Kent Rysbrack Monument to Isaac Newton

From an unidentified book (Published after 1731).

218 x 175 mm.

© The Trustees of the British Museum.

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Terracotta Model of a reclining Isaac Newton by Michael Rysbrack

for the Monument in Westminster Abbey

Designed by William Kent

c. 1729.

36 x 53 x 23 cms.

Provenance

Rysbrack's retirement sale of 24/25 January 1766, Langford's Covent Garden. First day sale, lot 42: 'Two ditto (figures) a sketch of Sir Isaac Newton, and a Bishop' in a section headed 'MODELS', which seems to mean 3 dimensional models, though not specified as terracotta.

Illustrated in a photograph of the Museum at Badger Hall, Shropshire, 1888 (National Monuments Record BB74/2928).

Previoulsy on loan to the Museum by Dr. Hildburgh F.S.A. from 7 October 1945, and subsequently given by him to the Museum as a New Year gift in 1938.

The V & A say -

Commissioned by John Conduitt (the husband of Newton's niece), terracottas such as this were already being collected in the eighteenth century, and in the 1770s some of Rysbrack's models for monuments in Westminster Abbey were advertised as "ideal for any library or grotto."

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Old photograph.

"H. S. E. ISAACUS NEWTON Eques Auratus, / Qui, animi vi prope divinâ, / Planetarum Motus, Figuras, / Cometarum semitas, Oceanique Aestus. Suâ Mathesi facem praeferente / Primus demonstravit: / Radiorum Lucis dissimilitudines, / Colorumque inde nascentium proprietates, / Quas nemo antea vel suspicatus erat, pervestigavit. / Naturae, Antiquitatis, S. Scripturae, / Sedulus, sagax, fidus Interpres / Dei O. M. Majestatem Philosophiâ asseruit, / Evangelij Simplicitatem Moribus expressit. / Sibi gratulentur Mortales, / Tale tantumque exstitisse / HUMANI GENERIS DECUS. / NAT. XXV DEC. A.D. MDCXLII. OBIIT. XX. MAR. MDCCXXVI"

This can be translated as follows:

"Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726".

Aquatint by A. Pugin and T. Rowlandson.

Welcome Library

The monument originally stood out against the flat front of the choir screen, but was enclosed within the present decorative arch when Edward Blore re-modelled the screen in 1834.

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Photographs Courtesy -

https://themathematicaltourist.wordpress.com/tag/astrology/

This photograph courtesy -

http://experiencingexchange.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/no-photos-allowed-challenge-accepted.html

Isaac Newton Bust

Engraved by George Bickham

352 x 251 mm.

1732.

British Museum.



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Design for the Monument of Sir Isaac Newton

by Sebastiano Ricci

c.1728.

40.3 x 32.7 cm (sheet of paper).

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Marco Ricci

dated 1728.

31.5 x 45.5 cms.

Gouache

Consul Joseph Smith at Venice, was Seb. Ricci's patron, and published at least two books connected with his work via the Pasquali Press. Smith also commissioned a gouache of the same subject by Marco Ricci (RCIN 400585) which is dated 1728. The monument is similar to the tomb by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack to the designs of William Kent in Westminster Abbey that was not completed until 1731.

Smith was in contact with John Conduitt, husband of Newton's niece, who commissioned the Rysbrack tomb and it is possible that he obtained preliminary sketches from him that he passed on to the Riccis.

Smith was also well aware of the project embarked upon by the impresario and art dealer Owen McSwinny for a series of twenty-four allegorical tombs in celebration of great English men since the Revolution of 1688.

Newton's study of optics which was of interest to painters, and his clarity of thought linked him to the contemporary philosopher John Locke. McSwinny's project was launched from Smith's house in Venice with Lord March in the 1720s.

It should be noted that the conception of this monument is not that far from the completed Westminster Abbey Monument by Michael Rysbrack in c 1732 which might suggest that Rysbrack was aware of it.

This entry was adapted from the Royal Collection website.

31.8 x 41.5 cms. approx.

- Both the Ricci Images courtesy -

Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2016

https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/search#/18/collection/907124/design-with-a-monument-to-newton

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Isaac Newton, aged 83.

Portrait by Vanderbank.

Engraved by George Vertue, 1725.

Frontispiece to 'Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica' (3rd ed. 1726).

215 x 150 mm.

© The Trustees of the British Museum.

Hogarth The Performance of the Indian Emperor

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Lead Bust of Isaac Newton attributed to John Cheere.

27.9 x 17.8 x 8.3 cm.

Yale Centre for British Art

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Death Mask of Isaac Newton

Huntington Library, California.

http://huntingtonblogs.org/2011/08/newtons-death-mask/

Death Mask of Isaac Newton

Royal Society.

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Sir Isaac Newton

Engraving by John Faber after John Vanderbank

dated 1726.

351 mm x 255 mm - plate size.

© National Portrait Gallery, London.

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Isaac Newton after James Thornhill

Mezzotint by John Smith.


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Isaac Newton

Engraving by George Vertue

After John Vanderbank

1726

240 mm x 183 mm paper size.

© National Portrait Gallery, London.

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The Robert More Portrait of Isaac Newton
Enoch Seeman
Sold Christie's London 9th March 2016.

Enoch Seeman (circa 1694-1744) and Studio, Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, Kt. (1642-1727), three-quarter-length, in a white cravat and green cloak, seated at a table with a copy of The Principia and an astrological globe.  

Oil on canvas, 49 7/8 x 52 in. (126.7 x 132.1 cm.). Estimate: £25,000-40,000. 

This lot is offered in Linley Hall, Shropshire: Property from the Collection of the Late Sir Jasper & Lady More on 9 March 2016, at Christie’s in London.

126.7 x 132.1 cm.

Notes from Christie's Catalogue:

Provenance - Robert More F.R.S. M.P. (1703-1780), and by descent at Linley Hall, Shropshire, to the present owner.

Milo Keynes, who dates the picture to 1726 (op. cit., p. 33), considers this to be the prime version of the portrait that exists in a number of versions, including those in the National Portrait Gallery, London, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Babson College, Massachusetts. John Ingamells (op. cit., p. 191), however, considers it likely that all were painted posthumously and derive from a bust-length portrait, dated 1726, by Seeman which is also preserved in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge. Robert More, whilst not a direct contemporary of Newton, was also a fellow of the Royal Society (elected 1730), and a renowned bibliophile. More himself, whilst a young man, was also painted by Seeman and that portrait remains in the collection of the present vendor.

see - The Iconography of Isaac Newton, Milo Keynes 2005.