Thursday 28 February 2019

The Busts of Oliver Cromwell Part 11. An Anonymous bust of Oliver Cromwell in the Collection of the Duke of Grafton -



Oliver Cromwell.
an Engraving of an Anonymous Bust.

 in the Collection of the Duke of Grafton in the Late 18th Century. 





Oliver Cromwell

by John Keyse Sherwin (1751 - 1790).

Stipple engraving, 
late 18th century
7 in. x 5 3/8 in. (177 mm x 138 mm) paper size.


National Portrait Gallery.


There is a letter from Horace Walpole to the Earl of Hartford - 5 October 1764, mentioning a bust of Cromwell at the Duke of Grafton, which possibly refers to this bust.


___________________


Update

This bust is a version of the plaster in ther Bargello Florence







The Head of Oliver Cromwell.
Terracotta with Glass Eyes.in the Bargello Museum, Florence.


Parliamentary Archives: GB-061
Catalogue Reference:
HC/LB/1/111/14/10
Former Archival Reference:
House of Commons Library Ms 111, Box 14, Photograph 10
http://digitalarchive.parliament.uk/HC/LB/1/111/14/10


https://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2019/02/marble-bust-of-oliver-cromwell-by.html

Tuesday 26 February 2019

The Busts of Oliver Cromwell Part 10. Francis Harwood. A Brief Sketch of the Life and Works of Francis Harwood


Oliver Cromwell. 

The Marble Bust.

by Francis Harwood (1726/27 - 1783).

1757.

Some notes. 

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.

The Paul Mellon photographic Archive has only recently been posted online


.................................................
















__________________________________


The Bust of Oliver Cromwell.

Sold Christie's King Street, Lot 69. 4 December 2018.

 Signed and dated F. Harwood Fecit 1757, and inscribed OR: CROMWELL.







 Signed and dated F. Harwood Fecit 1757, and inscribed OR: CROMWELL

51.4 cms.

Sold Christie's King Street, Lot 69. 4 December 2018.

Information below lifted entirely from Christie's catalogue entry.

Provenance -

Formerly the property of The Earls of Granard, Castle Forbes, Newtownforbes, County Longford, Ireland.

The bust was probably commissioned by, but certainly acquired in Florence by Francis Hastings, 10th Earl of Huntingdon (1729-1789) and was recorded by Horace Walpole at Donnington Hall in 1768.

The bust later passed by descent and then by marriage to George Forbes, later 8th Earl of Granard, and then by descent to the present owner.


Literature.

I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G. Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, New Haven and Yale, 2009, pp. 585, no, 12 [incorrectly dated 1759].

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:

J. Fleming and H. Honour, ‘An English Sculptor in XVIII Century Florence,’ Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, Berlin, 1968, pp. 510-516.

N. Penny, Catalogue of European Sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum 1540-Present day, vol. III British, Oxford, 1992, no. 558, pp. 142-3.

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.
A. Dawson, Portrait Sculpture, A catalogue of the British Museum Collection c.1675-1975, 1999, p. 77.


Christie's Lot Essay.

This exceptional marble bust was carved by Francis Harwood, a leading British sculptor who spent the majority of his career working in Florence. Depicting Oliver Cromwell, a principal military and political figure of the preceding century, the provenance of the bust is particularly illustrious having come from the historic collections of the Earls of Granard at Castle Forbes, Ireland.

The present bust is the earliest of four known portraits of Cromwell in marble that are signed or attributable to Harwood. Dated 1757, the present bust is one of the sculptor’s earliest known works in marble and is likely to be the prime version of Harwood's busts of this subject.

The three other known versions are:

one signed and dated F. Harwood fecit 1759 previously in the collection of Lord Brabourne, sold at Christie’s, London, 15 July 1986, lot 73 and again from the Cyril Humphries Collection, Sotheby’s, New York, 10 January 1995, lot 66;

another version, unsigned, was sold at Sotheby’s, London, 2 July 1997, lot 264, attributed to Harwood and with an Italian identification of Cromwell on the shallow plinth;

and the fourth known version, also unsigned, is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford





Of the four versions? the present bust is seemingly the liveliest and finest in the details. Harwood’s portrait of Cromwell shows the great historical figure full of vigour and in thoughtful and controlled contemplation. The Lord Protector is shown looking slightly to his left, with thick curls of hair magisterially drilled and undercut in places. A wart is clearly defined over his thick right eyebrow, a reference to Cromwell’s alleged instruction to either Peter Lely or Samuel Cooper; ‘I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me.’ Cromwell was intensely religious and a puritan, opposed to all forms of personal vanity, and versed in this history Harwood followed a tradition of depicting Cromwell as a serious man, not inclined to cover up signs of approaching old age, as can be seen in the slightly sagging skin and receding hair of Harwood's bust.

The emergence of this bust and its dating of 1757 sheds an important light on Harwood’s life, and suggests that these early years in Florence were the most enterprising and energetic of his career. Harwood spent most of his life in Italy, arriving in Rome in 1752 before settling in Florence the year after, where he worked in the studio of Giovanni Battista Piamontini, and then took charge of this studio after the latter’s death in 1762. The sculptor won the attention and admiration of the visiting British Grand Tourists after he was awarded the public commission for a statue of Equity to surmount the new Porta San Gallo in Florence. Most prominent amongst his patrons were Robert and James Adam, who commissioned Harwood to create a lifesize Apollo for the dining room at Syon House, and he won the praise of the British envoy Horace Mann.


Later in his career Harwood attracted some criticism, most noticeably from fellow sculptor Joseph Nollekens who in a letter dated 1769 referred 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).

This portrait of Cromwell appears to have been an invention of Harwood's and not copied from an earlier model.

A terracotta head of Cromwell, now in the Bargello, was mentioned in the Medici inventories in 1704 and again in 1769 in the inventories of the Uffizi and it is probably from this that Harwood got his likeness. Harwood spent most of his career copying antique statues and busts for Grand Tourists, so the present bust would be a rare example of Harwood creating an original model for a sculpture.

(see the Bargello head below)

In discussing the bust in the Ashmolean Museum, Penny argued that Harwood did not have the requisite talent to invent a bust of this character and accredited the creation of the model to Joseph Nollekens (Penny, loc. cit.). But this attribution was questioned by Baker, who asserted Harwood's authorship of both the model and bust (M. Baker, review of Penny, 1992, in Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXXVI, no. 1101, Dec. 1994, p. 581).

The discovery of the present signed bust, with the earliest dating of the known versions, is further evidence towards Harwood's authorship of the model, particularly as Nollekens was only 20 in 1757 and had not yet visited Rome.


























Images above courtesy Christie's.

With thanks to James Graham Stewart.






_____________________






Signed and dated F. Harwood fecit 1759.


Previously in the collection of Lord Brabourne, sold at Christie’s, London, 15 July 1986, lot 73 and sold again from the Cyril Humphries Collection, Sotheby’s, New York, 10 January 1995, lot 66.

The entry for Harwood's bust of Cromwell in the usually excellent Biographical Dictionary of British Sculptors... pub Yale 2009 should be disregarded



Poor quality web photograph from Artnet.com

see:



__________________





Oliver Cromwell.  
Francis Harwood 
Marble bust. 

not signed or dated.

Sotheby’s, London, 2 July 1997, lot 264.


poor quality image from Artnet.com



___________________








Oliver Cromwell.
attributed Francis Harwood.

Terracotta.

Offered for sale 8 July 2003.

Poor quality image from Artnet.com .

information from:




Not located - it would be very interesting to find this bust and compare it with the marbles.


___________________



Oliver Cromwell.

Francis Harwood.

Ashmolian Museum, Oxford.













One of Nolleken's busts of Cromwell by Harwood was acquired by Sir William Knatchbull whose family had been Royalists (Coutu).


Presumably the bust above was once that belonging to Sir Wyndham Knatchbull.


Joan Coutu notes that the Harwood Cromwell busts could have been based on a death mask in the Bargello in Florence. There currently exists over twenty copies of the original death mask but Ms Coutu is misinformed about the Bargello 'head' (see below).

The mask in the Bargello is not a death mask.

see - Then and Now: Collecting and Classicism in Eighteenth-Century England, By Joan Coutu, 2015.



_____________________





The Head of Oliver Cromwell.

Terracotta with Glass Eyes.in the Bargello Museum, Florence.


Parliamentary Archives: GB-061

Catalogue Reference: HC/LB/1/111/14/10
Former Archival Reference:
House of Commons Library Ms 111, Box 14, Photograph 10








Illustration above from

THE CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS OF OLIVER CROMWELL

by David Piper, Walpole Soc. Journal 1952 - 54.

_________________________








Oliver Cromwell.

by John Keyse Sherwin (1751 - 1790).

Stipple engraving, 

late 18th century.

7 in. x 5 3/8 in. (177 mm x 138 mm) paper size.


National Portrait Gallery.


There is a letter from Horace Walpole to the Earl of Hartford - 5 October 1764, mentioning a bust of Cromwell at the Duke of Grafton, which possibly refers to this bust.





_______________________

Oliver Cromwell.

Here attributed to Francis Harwood.

National Portrait Gallery.




Oliver Cromwell.

Terracotta Bust.

Here attributed to Francis Harwood.


They say -  after a bust by Edward Pearce/ or Nollekens.

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.


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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


see also for a rather verbose article on the two busts:

http://pdf.britishartstudies.ac.uk/Issues/issue-1.pdf


































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".

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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.


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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




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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. 



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For several interesting articles on these two busts see:








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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.

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Marine Venus
Plaster??
Francis Harwood
1765
Anonymous sale 11 Oct 1993.
Info from Artnet.


Whereabouts currently unknown.

Probably the statue originally at Gordon Castle.


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Funerary Monument, to William, 2nd Earl Cowper (1764). 
 St Mary's Church, Hertingfordbury, Herts.

1770.

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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.

























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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. 



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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.



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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).


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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.

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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.


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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