Busts of Oliver Cromwell Part 8. The Lady Lever Art Gallery, The Russell Cotes Museum, and The Museum of Arts, Milwaukee. First notes.

The Three Marble Busts of Oliver Cromwell (1599 - 1658).

at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight

The Russell - Cotes Museum, Bournemouth

and the Museum of Arts, Milwaukee.
Probably 19th Century.

A Marble Bust of Cromwell perhaps by Michael Rysbrack

Oliver Cromwell

Left to Right - Russell Cotes Museum, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Museum of Art Milwaukee.

There are minor differences in these busts - note the rivets on the breastplate on the right proper of the Russell Cotes version and the conformation of the rivets on the breastplate of the other two.


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Oliver Cromwell.

Marble Bust.

Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Port Sunlight.

Inscribed on the back

In the past this bust has been attributed to Rysbrack.

Image from -

http://johntyrrell.blogspot.com/2011/07/william-hesketh-lever-napoleon-of-soap.html

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Oliver Cromwell.

Russell Cotes Museum, Bournemouth.

Marble Bust.

This bust has a spurious Roubiliac inscription.

RUBILIAC Sculpt

I am very grateful to Duncan Walker of the Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum for his input.

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Oliver Cromwell

Marble Bust

Museum of Art Milwaukee.

This bust is inscribed OLIVER CROMWELL. ROUBILIAC

I am extremely grateful to both Rebekah Morin and Catherine Sawinski of the Museum of Art in Milwaukee for corresponding and providing the photographs of this bust.

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Oliver Cromwell

Marble 

Height 63.5 cms.

Lot 356 - 26, January 2012.

Sotheby's, New York.

Provenance: Sue Erpf van Bovenkamp

Sotheby's describe this bust as workshop of Rysbrack.

There is no further information.

It is hard to reconcile this attribution with the known versions of the Rysbrack bust -

see the unsigned or dated Littleton terracotta at the National Maritime Museum, the Queens House, Greenwich. This terracotta bust was presumably the bust Lot 61 sold in the Rysbrack sale of 14 Feb 1767.

see -

https://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.com/2019/01/terracotta-bust-of-oliver-cromwell-by.html

However the attribution to Rysbrack should not be dismissed out of hand, George Vertue mentions a bust of Cromwell in Rysbrack's studio in 1732.

Photographs Courtesy Sotheby's, New York.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/important-old-master-paintings-n08825/lot.356.html#

It appears to have been bought in - its current whereabouts are unknown to me.

This bust would have benefited from a gentle wash and is obviously of good quality.

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Oliver Cromwell

Terracotta Bust


National Portrait Gallery

They say -  after a bust by Edward Pearce

terracotta bust, 19th century?

419 mm high.

Purchased, 1861.

This bust appears to be of very good quality - it is very close to the marble busts by Francis Harwood.

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Update.

I now believe this bust to be either by Harwood or less likely an excellent copy.

see -

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

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