Tuesday 9 July 2019

Some More Busts of Isaac Newton




Some More Busts of Isaac Newton.
After Louis Francois Roubiliac

see my previous post:


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Isaac Newton

after Roubiliac
They say 19th Century
Marble 
590 mm.
College of Optometrists
Craven Street, London WC2

Purchased 1939. - no further information.



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Isaac Newton
Plaster Bust
Harris Manchester University Oxford


































Isaac Newton
After Roubiliac.

Height 73 cms.


No provenance provided.

Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford
Mansfield Road, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3TD

images courtesy Art UK website.




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For comparison:
The Original Roubiliac terracotta.

The Belchier - Greenwich Observatory Terracotta bust of Isaac Newton
by Louis Francois Roubiliac.

The following text is lifted from Royal Museums Greenwich website:

http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/220530.html


It repeats the same mistakes made by Katherine Esdaile in 'Roubiliac's Work at Trinity College Cambridge'  pub. Cambridge University Press 1924.


"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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Isaac Newton

They say stone? It appears like a cast to me - perhaps composition stone by Austin and Seally.

Possibly from an original plaster by John Cheere

The shape of the eared support on the turned socle would suggest 19th century.

The Fry Gallery Saffron Waldon Essex.

Images courtesy Art UK



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Issac Newton

Plaster Bust

Here suggested as possibly by John Cheere after Roubiliac.

The embroidery on the dress and the shape of the socle would suggest that this is possible although it might be a later pirated cast by one of the many 19th century Italian plaster casters working in the Leather Lane are of London.













Isaac Newton
Here suggested as by John Cheere after Roubiliac
Plaster
Height 50 cms
Bellman's Auctioneers
June 2019, Lot 1437 


The embroidery on the dress is typical of Cheere's busts

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