This post has been updated 5 August 2023 with the photograph below of the 1759 Wentworth Woodhouse Harwood bust of Cromwell in the Paul Mellon Archives.
Sold Christie's King Street, Lot 69. 4 December 2018.
Sold Christie's King Street, Lot 69. 4 December 2018.
Information below lifted entirely from Christie's catalogue entry.
Formerly the property of The Earls of Granard, Castle Forbes, Newtownforbes, County Longford, Ireland.
Terracotta bust, 19th century?
Height 419 mm.
Provenance James Loft c.1856;
Messrs. Foster, from whom purchased
1861.
______________________
Notes from the NPG website.
1 R. L. Poole, Wal. Soc., XI, 1923, p 39n. K. Pearson &
G. K. Morant, ‘Portraiture of Oliver Cromwell’, Biometrica, XXVI, 1935, p 96,
pl.lxxvii-lxxix. The sculptor James Loft may even have modelled NPG 132 (D.
Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait
Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 96).
Probably 19th century. Based on the marble bust in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which, although inscribed E. Pierce Fecit, is now
considered to be possibly by Joseph Nollekens. [1]
Footnotes
1) N. Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the
Ashmolean Museum ..., III, 1992, pp 142-43 as ‘perhaps by Joseph Nollekens’.
Reference.
Pearson and Morant 1935.
K. Pearson & G. K. Morant, ‘Portraiture of Oliver
Cromwell’, Biometrica, XXVI, 1935, p 96.
Penny 1992.
N. Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean
Museum ..., III, 1992, p 142.
Piper 1963.
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in
the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 96.
_____________________
I think it now safe to say that the creation this terracotta bust has nothing to do with Pearce / Pierce, Nollekens, and is most likely to be an early prototype version of the Francis Harwood marble busts above.
The quality of the modelling is very fine particularly of the hair and facial features, and suggests to me that it was perhaps a modello for the marble busts.
Purchased by the NPG in 1861.
The early purchase date would suggest that it is unlikely to be a fake.
National Portrait Gallery.
For comparison below is a very poor reproduction of the Nollekens bust of Cromwell in the Regent's Gallery at Belvoir Castle.
Hopefully I will be able to obtain some better photographs of this bust in due course.
......................................
Photographs below added 5 August 2023
From the Paul Mellon Archive.
_________________________
Some more busts by Francis Harwood.
Some notes and images.
Faustina
Francis Harwood.
Marble Bust
Height 51 cms.
Inscribed on the back F. Harwood Fecit. 1764.
Christie's Lot 101, 5 December, 2013.
Photograph from Christie's website
_____________________
Faustina the younger.
Marble Bust with slightly weathered surface
Signed and dated F. Harwood. Fecit 1762
51 cms
Sold Sotheby's Lot 77 - 8 July 2005.
___________
FRANCIS HARWOOD (1726/1727-1783).
ITALIAN, FLORENCE, DATED 1764
BUST OF FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER
Lot 106 2 July 2019 Sotheby’s, London.
Lot 106 2 July 2019 Sotheby’s London
Marble, on a grey marble socle
signed: F. Harwood Fecit 1764
bust: 52cm., 20½in.
socle: 12.5cm., 5in.
This very fine bust is a rare autograph marble by the
important 18th-century British sculptor resident in Florence, Francis Harwood.
Relatively little is known of Harwood’s life.
His biography is formed principally by a series of
anecdotes and snapshots, of which the most amusing is Joseph Nollekens’ badly
written line in a letter dated 1769 referring to an ‘FH… [who was] knocking the
marbil about like feway [fury] & belive he as got more work to do than any
One sculptor in England’ (Roscoe, op. cit., p. 584). What is clear is that
Harwood spent most of his life in Italy, arriving in Rome in 1752. He
subsequently settled in Florence (from 1753), where he worked in the studio of
Giovanni Battista Piamontini, which he ran after the latter’s death in 1762.
The awarding of a public commission for a statue of Equity to surmount the new
Porta San Gallo underscores Harwood’s burgeoning status as an important
sculptor. It was this commission which brought Harwood to the attention of
visiting Grand Tourists and, in particular, to the British envoy and revered
aesthete Horace Mann, who praised the sculptor’s talent and later gave him the
commission for his own tomb. Prominent patrons included James and Robert Adam,
who instructed Harwood to create the lifesize Apollo for the magnificent dining
room at Syon House in Middlesex. Harwood was celebrated for his very fine
copies of busts after the antique, of which this is one. Compare with the bust
of Homer which sold in these rooms on 3 December 2014, lot 105, for £242,500 (aggregate).
RELATED LITERATURE
R. Cremoncini, 'Alcune note su Francis Harwood. La
bottega di uno scultore inglese a Firenze in via della Sapienza: nella purezza
del marmo, classicità e storia,' Gazzetta Antiquaria, December 1994, pp. 68-73;
D. Bilbey and M. Trusted, British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. A Concise Catalogue
of the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2000, pp. 88-9;
Daniel Katz: European Sculpture, exh. cat. Daniel Katz Ltd, New York, 2004,
text Gordon Balderston, pp. 90-91, no. 30; I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G.
Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, New
Haven and Yale, 2009, pp. 583-5
___________________________
Homer.
Francis Harwood
Marble
Dated 1764.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The pendant bust of Seneca by Harwood - inscribed f. 1763 is also in the V &A collection but no photographs are currently available.
Given by Dealer Bert Crowther.
Formerly at Gordon Castle, Banffshire, Scotland. Given by
Bert Crowther, Isleworth in 1958, though actually received into the Museum in
1948 together with its pendant bust of Seneca (V&A. mus. no. A.26-1948). On
long-term loan to Chiswick House from 1958, returned to the Museum in December
1990.
This bust was sculpted in Florence, where the sculptor spent some of his working life mostly undertaking commissions
for British visitors on the Grand Tour.
Francis Harwood (born about 1727; died 1783) spent 30 years
working in Italy first in Rome and then mostly in Florence. He specialised in carving busts and
figures after the antique, including the Venus de' Medici and the Apollo Belvedere (Syon House).
Thomas Patch described him as portly drunken Englishman.
The sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) wrote in a letter from Rome in 1769
in his idiosyncratic style: 'there is F.H. at Florence who is knocking the
marbil about like feway, & belive he as got more work to do than any One
Sculptor in England'.
Another bust of Homer is in the collection at Castle Ashby Northamptonshire and is dated 1760.
A third bust of Homer by Harwood was offered for sale by Sotheby's in 2014
see - https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/fine-art-antiques/rare-francis-harwood-sculpture-of-homer-rediscovered-in-ireland-1.1975597
see Sotheby's Catalogue entry below:
_____________________
Homer
Francis Harwood
1757
signed and dated: F. Harwood Fecit 1757 and inscribed: HOMERVS
Sold Sotheby's London 3 December 2014. Lot 105.
Photographs and description below lifted from Sotheby's website, see:
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/old-master-sculpture-works-art-l14233/lot.105.html
Francis Harwood (fl. 1748-1783)
Italian, Florence, 1757
After the Antique
HOMER
signed and dated: F. Harwood Fecit 1757 and inscribed:
HOMERVS
white marble, on a nero portoro marble socle and a veined
grey marble column
bust and socle: 66cm., 26in. overall.
column: 112cm., 44 1/8in.
Provenance:
By repute Powerscourt House, County Wicklow, Ireland;
Canon Joseph Furlong (d. 1971), Ireland, by circa 1960;
by descent to the present owner
Catalogue Note:
This important marble bust was carved by Francis Harwood, a
British 18th-century sculptor who spent most of his life working in Rome and
Florence. Harwood gained an international reputation for himself by creating
fashionable, brilliantly executed, library busts and figures carved after the
antique. His patrons included some of the most influential collectors and
tastemakers of the day, notably Catherine the Great of Russia, the 1st Duke of
Northumberland, and the Neoclassical designer par excellence, Robert Adam.
Sculptures by Harwood are rare: Ingrid Roscoe lists only
seventeen figurative models and records an oeuvre of less than forty marbles
(excluding architectural work). The present bust was recently rediscovered in
Ireland and is particularly significant as it is dated 1757, making it one of
the sculptor's earliest known essays in marble, carved at a point in Harwood's
career when he was forging his reputation as one of the leading sculptors in
mid-18th-century Florence. The bust appears to be the prime version of the
artist’s Homer, of which only two others are known, one, dated 1760, at Castle
Ashby in Northamptonshire, and the other, from 1764, in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London (inv. no. A8-1958).
Francis Harwood has come to be celebrated for his ability to
adapt famous ancient models and create stirring visions of the past, which
follow the formal characteristics of their original prototypes, but are infused
with a sense of 18th-century originality. The present bust of Homer is an
exemplar of Harwood’s approach. It follows a well-known antique model described
by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23/4-79 CE) as having been invented for
the library of the Attalid kings of Pergamon in the 2nd century BCE. This
engaging portrait shows the blind poet of Greek antiquity staring into the
black distance, ‘seeing’ the events of his epic Iliad and Odyssey unfold. The
success of the portrait lies in the inherent irony that its focus is found
solely in the deeply drilled ocular orbits and the frowning brow: the poet’s
blindness is apparent only because of his transfixed gaze. Multiple ancient
Roman versions of the model exist, the most notable being the Homer Caetani in
the Louvre (inv. no. MR 530), which was purchased by Pope Clement XII in 1733,
before being confiscated by France in 1797. Given that Harwood resided in Rome
in the 1750’s, he would probably have known this particular bust and may have
used it as the basis for his own invention.
With its deeply undercut hooded brow, matched only by the
superbly drilled beard and ringlets of hair, Harwood’s Homer follows the spirit
of its Hellenistic prototype. However, rather than slavishly following
precedent, the sculptor has added a deep torso, which recalls heroic Roman
portraiture. Harwood appears to have favoured deep torsi at this time as he
chose to adopt the same format (but with bared chest) for his masterpiece, the
Bust of an African in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (inv. no.
88.SA.114). The later version of the Homer in the V&A, dated 1764, has a
noticeably shorter truncation and more rounded shoulders. Significantly, both
busts, along with the version at Castle Ashby, bear the titular inscription
HOMERVS and are signed and dated. The presence of signatures on such works,
which are clearly derived from antique models, can, according to Roberta
Cremoncini, be read as a declaration by Harwood of his belief in the
originality of the sculptures he produced and as an affirmation of his status
as an artist and not merely a copyist (Cremoncini, op. cit., p. 69).
Relatively little is known of Harwood’s life. His biography
is formed principally by a series of anecdotes and snapshots, of which the most
amusing is Joseph Nollekens’ badly written line in a letter dated 1769
referring to an ‘FH… [who was] knocking the marbil about like feway [fury]
& belive he as got more work to do than any One sculptor in England’
(Roscoe, op. cit., p. 584). What is clear is that Harwood spent most of his
life in Italy, arriving in Rome in 1752. He subsequently settled in Florence
(from 1753), where he worked in the studio of Giovanni Battista Piamontini,
which he ran after the latter’s death in 1762. The awarding of a public
commission for a statue of Equity to surmount the new Porta San Gallo
underscores Harwood’s burgeoning status as an important sculptor. It was this
commission which brought Harwood to the attention of visiting Grand Tourists
and, in particular, to the British envoy and revered aesthete Horace Mann, who
praised the sculptor’s talent and later gave him the commission for his own
tomb. Prominent patrons included James and Robert Adam, who instructed Harwood
to create the lifesize Apollo for the magnificent dining room at Syon House in
Middlesex.
The present bust is remarkable for its superlative quality,
witnessed particularly in the masterful carving of the hair, beard, and
carefully delineated folds of flesh around the brow. It is reputed to come from
the palatial Irish 18th-century country house, Powerscourt, formerly the seat
of the Wingfield family. The Homer would certainly have been acquired by a
Grand Tourist of considerable financial means, adding credence to the reputed
provenance. Like the Homer in the V&A, which is paired with a Seneca, the
present bust may have once had a pendant.
RELATED LITERATURE
J. Fleming and H. Honour, ‘An English Sculptor in XVIII
Century Florence,’ Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, Berlin, 1968, pp. 510-516; D.
Bilbey and M. Trusted, British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. A Concise Catalogue of
the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2000, pp. 88-89; R.
Cremoncini, 'Alcune note su Francis Harwood. La bottega di uno scultore inglese
a Firenze in via della Sapienza: nella purezza del marmo, classicità e storia,'
Gazzetta Antiquaria, December 1994, pp. 68-73; I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G.
Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, New
Haven and Yale, 2009, pp. 583-585
______________________
Caracalla
Francis Harwood
Sold Sotheby's 5 December 2017, Lot 117.
Francis Harwood (1726/1727 - 1783)
Italian, Florence, 1762
After the Antique
BUST OF CARACALLA
signed and dated: Harwood. Fecit. 1762 and entitled:
CARACALLA
white marble
72cm., 28¼in. overall
PROVENANCE:
Hugh Honour FRSL (1927-2016) and John Fleming (1919-2001),
Villa Marchiò, Tofori, Tuscany, Italy.
LITERATURE:
J. Fleming and H. Honour, ‘An English Sculptor in XVIII
Century Florence,’ Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, Berlin, 1968, pp. 510-16
(illustrated pl. CCXXIII);
F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of
Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and Yale, 1981, p. 173, n. 15
CATALOGUE NOTE:
This impressive marble bust was carved by Francis Harwood, a
British 18th-century sculptor who spent most of his life working in Rome and
Florence. Harwood gained an international reputation for himself by creating
fashionable, brilliantly executed, library busts and figures carved after the
antique. His patrons included some of the most influential collectors and
tastemakers of the day, notably Catherine the Great of Russia, the 1st Duke of
Northumberland, and the Neoclassical designer par excellence, Robert Adam.
Harwood's bust follows the iconic portrait of the Roman
Emperor Caracalla (joint emperor AD 211-12 and emperor AD 212-17), of which the
most celebrated and earliest known version is that formerly in the Farnese
collection and now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples (inv. no. 6033).
It is not known where or when the Caracalla was discovered, though the model
was known as early as 1556 when Aldrovandi recorded examples in five Roman
palazzi (Haskell and Penny, op. cit., p. 172). The model was much admired in
the 17th and 18th centuries. Girardon owned a bronze copy at the end of the
17th century, and numerous high quality marble versions were executed in the
18th century. A very fine example is the bust by Bartolomeo Cavaceppi
(1716/17-1799) in the J. Paul Getty Museum (inv. no. 94.SA.46). Discussing the
present bust in 1968, John Fleming and Hugh Honour attributed the fascination
of 18th-century British Grand Tourists for the model to the fact that Caracalla
was elected Emperor at York and, as such, had a direct connection to the
British Isles. The model has long been regarded as one of the most successful
Roman portraits, with Winckelmann stating that it surpassed even Lysippus.
Haskell and Penny observed that 'the impact of the turned head and ferocious
gaze of this bust was given great historical resonance by the fact that it
represented an emperor whose murder of his own brother and whose ruthless rule
were familiar to every educated European. As one looked at the bust, or rather
was looked at by it ... the past suddenly and dramatically became present'
(Haskell and Penny, op. cit., p. 173). Interestingly, it is thought that the
portrait may have been intended to portray the emperor-god as preoccupied with
his higher purpose, and was not designed to intimidate. Some scholars believe
the model to be a 16th-century invention (Haskell and Penny, op. cit., p. 173).
The present bust is undoubtedly one of the finest
18th-century versions of the model. It captures the dynamic turn of the head,
the furrowed brow and curled lip of the tyrant emperor. Harwood's skill as a
marble carver is particularly evident in the sensitively delineated moustache
and locks of hair, as well as in the folds of the cloak.
Another version, dated
1763 and formerly in the collection at Finchcox, Kent, was with Daniel Katz,
New York, in 2004 (op. cit., no. 30).
Relatively little is known of Harwood’s life. His biography
is formed principally by a series of anecdotes and snapshots, of which the most
amusing is Joseph Nollekens’ badly written line in a letter dated 1769
referring to an ‘FH… [who was] knocking the marbil about like feway [fury]
& belive he as got more work to do than any One sculptor in England’
(Roscoe, op. cit., p. 584). What is clear is that Harwood spent most of his
life in Italy, arriving in Rome in 1752. He subsequently settled in Florence
(from 1753), where he worked in the studio of Giovanni Battista Piamontini,
which he ran after the latter’s death in 1762. The awarding of a public
commission for a statue of Equity to surmount the new Porta San Gallo
underscores Harwood’s burgeoning status as an important sculptor. It was this
commission which brought Harwood to the attention of visiting Grand Tourists
and, in particular, to the British envoy and revered aesthete Horace Mann, who
praised the sculptor’s talent and later gave him the commission for his own
tomb. Prominent patrons included James and Robert Adam, who instructed Harwood
to create the lifesize Apollo for the magnificent dining room at Syon House in
Middlesex.
RELATED LITERATURE
R. Cremoncini, 'Alcune note su Francis Harwood. La bottega
di uno scultore inglese a Firenze in via della Sapienza: nella purezza del
marmo, classicità e storia,' Gazzetta Antiquaria, December 1994, pp. 68-73;
D.
Bilbey and M. Trusted, British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. A Concise Catalogue of
the Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2000, pp. 88-9;
Daniel Katz: European Sculpture, exh. cat. Daniel Katz Ltd, New York, 2004,
text Gordon Balderston, pp. 90-91, no. 30;
I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G.
Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, New
Haven and Yale, 2009, pp. 583-5;
N. Penny, 'Obituary: Hugh Honour (1927–2016)',
The Burlington Magazine, 158 (2016) [available online at http://burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/201609,
page last accessed 30/10/2017]
_____________________
Bust of A Man
Francis Harwood
1758
Black stone (pietra di paragone) on a yellow Siena marble
socle
at the J Paul Getty Museum
The surface of this bust has undergone at least one program of restoration - the Getty "conservation work and analysis shows that
the bust’s original, eighteenth-century coating was a medium, translucent
brown. In fact, conservators have in recent years removed much of the
thickly applied black paint, wax, and shellac that had been applied to the bust in
the 1980s, in an attempt to bring the surface colour closer to the varied
texture and tone of the underlying marble".
"With noble bearing, this man proudly holds his chin high
above his powerful chest. Sculptor Francis Harwood chose a black stone to
reproduce the sitter's skin tone. Harwood also chose an unusual antique format
for the bust, terminating it in a wide arc below the man's pectoral muscles.
Harwood was familiar with antique sculptures from time spent in Florence
reproducing and copying them. He may have deliberately used this elegant,
rounded termination, which includes the entire, unclothed chest and shoulders,
to evoke associations with ancient busts of notable men. Although the identity
of the sitter is unknown, the scar on his face suggests that this is a portrait
of a specific individual. This work may be one of the earliest sculpted
portraits of a Black individual by a European".
___________________
Provenance:
1758 - 1786:
possibly Hugh Percy, first Duke of Northumberland, English,
1714 - 1786, possibly commissioned by him from the artist, possibly by
inheritance to his son, Hugh Percy.
1786 - 1817:
possibly Hugh Percy, second duke of Northumberland, English,
1742 - 1817, possibly by inheritance to his son, Hugh Percy.
1817 - 1847:
possibly Hugh Percy, third duke of Northumberland, English,
1785 - 1847, possibly by inheritance to his brother, Algernon Percy.
1847 - 1865:
Algernon Percy, fourth duke of Northumberland, English, 1792
- 1865 (Stanwick Hall, Yorkshire, England)
Source: Described in the 1865 after-death inventory of
Stanwick Hall as "a fine bust in black marble - W. Richmond the pugilist -
on Italian Marble Plinth."
1865 - 1922
Percy Family, English (Stanwick Hall, Yorkshire, England)
[sold, Anderson and Garland, Stanwick Hall, Yorkshire, May (no day), 1922, lot
189]
Source: description of lot 189 as "A Carved Black
Marble Bust of a Negro, 27 in. high, by F. Harwood, on circular Sienna marble
plinth and wood pedestal, 4ft, high (in the margin in black inck is indicated
the amount of 2.10 pounds)
Before 1987
Private Collection (England) [sold, Christie's, London,
April 9, 1987, lot 83 to Cyril Humphris]
1987 - 1988
Cyril Humphris, S.A. (London, England), sold to the J. Paul
Getty Museum, 1988.
_______________________
Bust of a Black Man
Studio of ? Francis Harwood.
c. 1758.
Black limestone (pietra di paragone) on a yellow Siena marble socle.
Overall: 28 × 20 × 10 1/2 inches (71.1 × 50.8 × 26.7 cm
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
The centre website is rather vague on the provenance of this remarkable bust.
Before Paul
Mellon bought it in 1967, the Yale bust had been part of the Esterhazy
Collection in Vienna, where it was misattributed to the Renaissance
artist Alessandro Vittoria (1525–1608) and called “The Blackamoor”,
and in 2006 it became part of the Yale Center for British Art collection.
This remarkable bust may be a portrait: details such as the
small scar on the man’s forehead and the subtle depressions in the skin around
his temples, nose, and eyes suggest close study of an individual sitter.
However, the sculptor Francis Harwood, who was based in Italy, specialized in
making copies of classical statues for sale to English Grand Tourists, and so
it is also possible that this is a copy or adaptation of an Antique model.
"A
third possibility is that the bust was made as an allegorical image of
“Africa.” A passage from Joseph Baretti’s "Guide through the Royal
Academy" (London, 1781) suggests that, by 1781, Harwood’s "Bust of a
Man"—or something very similar—had entered the cast and sculpture
collection of the Royal Academy. Though we cannot be sure that Baretti is
referring to the sculpture on display here, his description suggests that works
like it may have been difficult to categorize even in the eighteenth century:
AFRICUS.
"For want of a better, I give this name to a Head of a Blackamoor,
which is in the Niche of this Room.
A Friend of mine would have it called
Boccar, or Boccor, an African King named in one of Juvenal’s Satires. But, as
it has no ensigns of Royalty about it, I imagine it to be a Portrait of some
Slave, if not a fanciful performance intended to characterise the general Look
of the African faces.
Whatever it be, I think it a fine thing of the kind".
In
the nineteenth century, Harwood’s bust was mistakenly believed to be a portrait
of an athlete named Psyche in the service of the first Duke of Northumberland".
Another version of this sculpture, which bears Harwood’s signature and the date
1758, is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Text above lifted from the Yale Centre for British Art website
______________
Photographs of the two busts shown here side by side for comparison.
The details of the ear make it clear that these busts are of the same man.
It would seem fairly obvious to me that the detail of the new scar on the forehead would suggest that the Yale bust is the original and that the Getty bust is a later version.
The scar on the Yale bust clearly shows the stitch marks which have healed over in the Getty bust.
the hair on the Yale bust has much deeper drilling and the curls are much more defined.
The early history and provenance of both of these busts is unclear.
It has been suggested that the date on the Getty bust has been recut but the inscribed signature is close to that on other busts such as the Sotheby's Caracalla.
The date of 1758 on the Getty busts implies that it was sculpted in Italy.
______________________
For several interesting articles on these two busts see:
___________________________
Apollo Belvedere
Francis Harwood
The pedestal is possibly original and also by Harwood - the use of coloured (Sienna) marble would suggest this.
Anglesey Abbey
Formerly at Gordon Castle
Low resolution photographs taken from the not very good National Trust Collection website.
They have disabled the save picture function - quite why is difficult to fathom.
Next time I am at Anglesey Abbey I will take my own photographs, which can only be better than their feeble attempts!
I use a piece of software called Faststone to capture on screen images.
______________________________
Marine Venus
Plaster??
Francis Harwood
1765
Anonymous sale 11 Oct 1993.
Info from Artnet.
Whereabouts currently unknown.
Probably the statue originally at Gordon Castle.
___________________
Funerary Monument, to William, 2nd Earl Cowper (1764).
St Mary's Church, Hertingfordbury, Herts.
1770.
_____________________________
Bust of Vitellius
Attributed to Francis Harwood
46 cms
included in the Sothebys Sale June 2019.
Photographs and catalogue entry from Sotheby,s website
I am not entirely convincedof the Harwood attribution but the arguements presented by Sothebys are well reasoned.
_____________
Catalogue entry:
This unusual and sophisticated bust
of Vitellius is the subject of an expertise by Dottssa. Annamaria Giusti
(2015), who proposes an attribution to Francis Harwood, the Anglo-Florentine
sculptor famed for his copies after the antique and, in particular, for his
work in coloured marbles.
The bust is an exact replica of a known model,
formerly in the Medici collections, exhibited prominently for many years in the
Tribuna degli Uffizi. It is described there in an inventory of 1635, no. 340.
The head is most likely antique, dating to the 1st century, and it is set into
a torso of coloured marble, which must pre-date the 1635 inventory entry. It is
currently on display at the Villa Corsini, outside Florence.
Our bust faithfully reproduces the
marble in the Villa Corsini, with similarly rare and high quality coloured
marbles used for the details of the armour. The facial features are also
carefully replicated. The grey armour, made of Bardiglio marble from Tuscany,
has exactly the same shape as the original, and has the same number of
'scales'. The present bust preserves a mask to the centre of the chest, which
has been lost on the Corsini model. The faithful copying of the model and the
use of specialised coloured marbles points towards a skilled sculptor, who was
experienced in copying antique models, and had a flair for using different
types and coloured marbles. Due to the use of distinctly Tuscan marbles, and
considering its prominence of the original during the heydays of the Grand
Tour, Florence is certainly the most likely origin for its
creation.
From numerous contemporary accounts
it is clear that Harwood would have been eminently placed amongst the late
18th century sculptors in Florence to have had access to the high quality
coloured marble which have been selected to emulate the colourful original.
Antonio Canova, on a visit to Harwood's studio in 1779 notes how the British
sculptor uses 'varie pietre' (quoted in Honour, op. cit. p. 513), and Harwood himself also noted he made
vases of 'all courlerd marbles' (ibid.,
p. 513). Also important to note is the monument to William, 2nd Earl Cowper, in
Hertingfordbury's Parish Church, which Harwood made on commission and which
includes many different types of marble, including Sienese Giallo marble and
Nero di Portovenere. A detailed account of the coloured marbles used for this
monument was published in the Gazzetta Toscana 16 June 1770, which would have contributed to
establising Harwood's reputation for high quality works in coloured marble,
available on commission (the full account is published as an appendix in
Belsey, op.
cit., p. 66). Considering the
Neo-classical preference for white marbles, Harwood was one of few sculptors
actively working with coloured marbles at the time, which supports the attribution
of the present bust.
Although the carving of the hair is
handled differently here than in Harwood’s signed marble bust of Faustina, lot
109 in this sale, this is accounted for by the original model that is
being copied in which the shallowly carved wavy hair is comparable. The
realistic anatomy of the ears and the precise delineation of the eyelids are
all consistent with Harwood’s style. Compare also the treatment of the eye
brows and the lines around the eyes with Harwood's extraordinary black marble Bust of a Man, now in the Getty Museum (inv. no.
88.SA.114). In her expertise, Dottss. Giusti suggests the present bust
must have been created before 1778, when it was removed from the Tribuna and
would have lost some of its prestige. Assuming the present bust to have been
made on commission, it is distinctly plausible that the patron would have
turned to the pre-eminent sculptor of antique models most experienced with
coloured marbles, which at this time was Francis Harwood. In the light of a
fuller appreciation of Harwood as the sculptor of the powerful Getty bust and
the attribution to him of this idiosyncratic coloured marble bust of Vitellius,
Fleming and Honour's faint praise for Harwood as a sculptor of 'such stuff as
footnotes are made on' (op.
cit. p.510), perhaps needs to be
reassessed.
RELATED LITERATURE
J. Fleming and H.
Honour, 'Francis Harwood: An English Sculptor in XVIII Century Florence',
in A. Kosegarten and P. Tigler (eds.), Frestschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, Berlin, 1968, pp. 510-516; H. Belsey, 'A Newly
Discovered Work by Francesco Harwood', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 122, no. 922, Special Issue Devoted to
Sculpture, Jan. 1980, pp.
_______________________________
Francis
Harwood. c. 1727 – 1783; A Brief Biography.
In Rome - 1752.
In Florence –
1753 – d. 1783.
Thomas Patch
caricatured him as a “portly drunken Englishman” (Walpole Corresp.).
Patch would certainly have been familiar with Harwood - both were members of Florentine Academy.
Harwood was elected member 12 January 1755 and remained a member until 1779 (described as pittore Inglese and scultore Inglese in the Academy Accounts (see - British
Architects and the Florentine Academy, 1753-1794. Frank Salmon in Mitteilungen
des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 34. Bd., H.
1/2 (1990), pp. 199-214 (16 pages) Published
by Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut. 1990.
________________
1753 – ‘Franco
Arvol Irghe Sculte 25’ was living in the Palazzo Zuccari on the Strada Felice,
Rome with Joshua Reynold and the sculptor Simon Vierpyl (1725 – 1810) in Easter
1752. (Archivio del
Vicariato - Stati del Anime).
________________
The
following year he travelled to Florence where he met Joseph Wilton, who refers
to Harwood in a surviving notebook and whose bust of the physician, Dr Cocchi,
was later copied by Harwood.
In 1754 he
was working in Florence with Joseph Wilton.
12 January
1755 was admitted to the Florentine Academy as Pittore Inglese, and described
as Scultore in the Matriculation Accounts
Wilton
returned to England in 1755 and Harwood appears to have been working with
Giovanni Batiste Piamontini in a studio near SS Annunziata.
Piamontini
had made copies of the Wrestlers and Listening Slave in 1754 for Joseph Leeson now
in the Nat Gallery Ireland.
In 1758 he
was involved in a notable public commission, the Arch of the Porta San Gallo,
providing a statue of Equity and a trophy. He worked on the edifice with Giovanni
Battista Piamontini, whose studio in the Via della Sapienza near SS Annunziata
Harwood acquired in August 1762 after Piamontini’s death.
The awarding
of a public commission for a statue of Equity to surmount the new Porta San
Gallo underscores Harwood’s burgeoning status as an important sculptor. It was
this commission which brought Harwood to the attention of visiting Grand
Tourists and, in particular, to the British envoy and revered aesthete Horace
Mann, who praised the sculptor’s talent and later gave him the commission for
his own tomb.
This
prestigious commission brought Lord Northampton to him who ordered 7 busts and
two full sized figures (one in plaster) for Castle Ashby
Prominent
patrons included James and Robert Adam, who instructed Harwood to create the
life size Apollo Belvedere for the magnificent dining room at Syon House in
Middlesex.
Piementini
died in 1761 and Harwood took over his studio.
Harwood's
Assistants included his former pupil Pietro Pisani , Pietro Bastianelli, and
Nicolo Kinderman.
He knew the
eccentric English artist Thomas Patch who drew a caricature of him in 1768,
showing him as a shortish middle-aged man with a pendulous belly.
The young Canova
visited his studio in October of 1779 and made lengthy notes in his diary of
numerous assistants many plaster works and his copius use of coloured marbles.
In 1780 Horace
Mann described him as the best of the indifferent sculptors in Florence “a
drunken Englishman whose sole employment was to make chimneypieces for the Palazzo
Pitti and for the undiscerning agents of Catherine the Great”.
Nevertheless
Mann subsequently directed in his will that his funeral monument was to be made
by Harwood - a large sepulchral urn to be erected at Linton in Kent - Harwood died
before it could be executed.
In December 1783 shortly before his death he converted to Catholicism.
___________________
Preliminary List of Known Works.
1. 1770 William,
2nd Earl Cowper (1764). Funerary Monument, Hertingfordbury, Herts.
2. c. 1758. Medici
Venus, Statue. Castle Ashby, Northants,
figures room. (formerly in the great hall). Another version at Spencer House.
3. 1762. Uffizi
Apollo. Statue, Syon Park, Middx (payment of £150). Fleming and Honour.
4. 1765. Apollo
Belvedere. Statue. Anglesey Abbey, Cambs (National Trust). Formerly with the Marine Venus also by Harwood at Gordon Castle.
For the Harwood sculptures at Gordon Castle see - Modern Athens Displayed in a Series of Views: Or
Edinburgh in the ... By John Britton, Thomas Hosmer Shepherd. pub 1829. For Cosmo
Lord Gordon £rd Duke of Gordon, Homer, Caracalla, Marcus Aurelius, Faustina and
a Vestal, Julius Ceaser Cicero and Seneca (and a bust of Cosmo 3rd
Duke of Tuscany) - on Sienna marble columns.
5. 1765. Marine Venus, Gordon CastleStatue. (untraced perhaps the statue illustrated below).
6. 1758. Cicero,
Bust. Castle Ashby, Northants.
7. 1758. Julius
Caesar, Bust. Castle Ashby, Northants.
8. 1758. Marcus
Aurelius, Bust. Castle Ashby, Northants. Another formerly Gordon Castle and
another ex Moore Park, Marquis of Zetland’s Sale Christie's 26 April 1934.
Another with dealer Rainer Zietz.
9. 1758. Sappho,
Bust, Castle Ashby, Northants.
10. 1758. Unidentified
black man in black stone. Bust. Getty Museum, Los Angeles 88.SA.114.
Another
version, unsigned, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven.
11. 1759. Faustina, Bust, Castle Ashby, Northants. Another version
appeared at the Marquis of Zetland’s sale Christie 26 April 1934, perhaps one
of the two following -.
Another Sold
Sotheby's Lot 77 - 8 July 2005.
Another was Lot
101 Christies, Christie's London, Lot 101, 5 December, 2013. Property from the
collection of Jaques and Galila Hollander.
12. 1759. Bust.
Oliver Cromwell .
13. 1759. Seneca.
Bust, Castle Ashby, Northants
14. 1760. Homer.
Bust Castle Ashby, Northants.
15. 1763. Caracalla.
Bust formerly at Finchcox, Kent, signed and dated – bought by dealer Daniel
Katz, Christie’s New York lot 103, 1st June 1994, another version noted
with Daniel Katz New York, in 2004.
16. 1765. Vestal
– Bust (untraced) with Danniel Katz 2004, another ? sold Marquis of Zetland Sale
Christies lot 58, 26 April 1934.
17. Antonio Cocchi
(after Joseph Wilton RA) Bust nd. Private collection Florence.
18. 1767. Four,
lavishly carved Chimneypieces (untraced).
19. 1768 Chimneypiece
- With two terms, a ram’s head and laurel festoons (untraced).
20. 1774 – 1775.
Chimneypiece, Description unavailable (untraced).
21. 1776-1780
Chimneypieces - Several, including one with eagle decoration. Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
22. Chimneypiece
(Description unavailable) nd (untraced).
23. Chimneypiece
(designed by George Dance the Younger) nd (untraced)
24.Polychrome Chimneypiece nd Poggio
Imperiale, Florence.
25.Polychrome marble Chimneypiece nd Fabbrica della
Querce, Florence.
26.Polychrome marble Chimneypiece nd. Casino di San
Marco, Florence.
27. Polychrome marble Chimneypiece nd. Villa di
Poggio, Caiano, Tuscany.
28. 1758. Statue
of Equity, and a trophy. Arch of the Porta San Gallo,
Florence.
29. 1767. Three
lavish polychrome tables and 11 pairs of small alabaster vases, one of Sienna
marble (‘to put on the chimney’). untraced
30. 1768 Two
vases. Architectural Sculpture (untraced).
31. 1768 Vases, 12 pieces of marble shaped like
books, and a marble chequer table. (untraced).
32. 1772. A
garniture of vases for Lord Shelbourne (later Marquess of Lansdown). (untraced).
33. 1772. Pair
of vases and ‘one urn to put between the pair’ with ‘3 pieces of black marble
to put at the foot of the vases and lick them of Lord Spencer’ (untraced).
34. 1772. Vases
Architectural Sculpture. Audley End, Essex for Sir John Griffin Griffin.
35. 1776. Copy
of a monster on the balustrade of the Vasca dell’Isolotto, Boboli Gardens,
Florence. (untraced).
36. 1770-1771
- Unspecified work, possibly chimneypieces. (untraced).
37. c. 1770's Chimneypiece for Catherine the Great for Tsarsko Selo.
___________________
Works consulted for this essay:
Francis
Harwood from A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy 1701 – 1800
– John Ingamells.
A Newly
Discovered Work by Francesco Harwood by Hugh Belsey in The Burlington Magazine.
Vol. 122, No. 922, Special Issue Devoted to Sculpture (Jan., 1980), pp.
58+65-66
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