as a practical man the perfect fitness of lead” as a substitute for
bronze, and to recommend the _cire perdu_ method of casting, at that
time discontinued in England; the process being to model the statue in
wax on a solid core, to cast in plaster the finished wax model, and then
to melt out the wax from this plaster mould, the space which it occupied
being refilled with lead. Of course only one cast can be obtained in
this way, whereas the old decorative statues spoken of later were cast
in a piece mould and reproduced again and again.
“The addition (still quoting) of about five per cent. of antimony will
give it not only greater hardness but enhance its capability to run into
the most delicate details ... it is in every sense as durable as bronze
when subject simply to atmospheric action.”
We shall see that an addition of block tin was made to the lead by the
old figure founders. Type metal, which is so much harder than lead, is
an alloy of lead and ¼ to ⅓ of antimony, or of two parts of lead to
one of tin and one of antimony.
In the courtyard of Houghton Tower, Lancashire, there is a statue of
William III. brought from the dismantled Walton-le-Dale in 1834.
The statues decorating the parapets of the large “classic” country
houses are at times of lead; there are five of these at Lyme in
Cheshire. Over the portico of the Clarendon at Oxford there are four of
these statues representing the sciences. Until recently there was a
figure of King James high up in a niche at the Bodleian.
The figures of the good little boy and girl common at charity schools
are also often of lead. The great Percy lion that surmounted old
Northumberland House at Charing Cross (destroyed twenty years ago) is
now on the river front of Syon House; it weighs about three tons, and it
was placed in its original position in 1749. The lion on the bridge at
Alnwick is also of lead, as the little boy found to his cost who climbed
out on its tail.
There are a series of lead busts in oval panels on the front of Ham
House, Petersham, Surrey, 1610 being the date of its erection.
Before passing into the garden a word on the practical details of
casting as traditionally followed may be added. The casting of lead
statues is much the same process as founding in bronze, but it is
simpler from the much lower temperature at which lead flows, and the
ease with which limbs can be cast separately and joined to the body. The
technical details may be found in a text-book of modelling and
casting--_Mouler en Plâtre, Plomb_, &c. (Lebrun, Paris, 1860). The
course followed is to cut up the model in such parts as is determined,
to mould these in loam, the cores are then cast in plaster after the
thickness that will be occupied by the lead has been first applied to
the moulds in sand (terre). The cores are then removed and dried and
baked, for in this as in all founding everything depends on the
absolute dryness of the mould. After the first mould had been added to,
for the casting of the core, a second mould would be prepared from the
original figure and the core supported in that by irons. The castings
are then made, and the portions reunited and finished on the surface.
Large works have to be sufficiently supported with internal irons. All
the mysteries of vents, and false coring when necessary, can only be
understood by practical familiarity with founding.
Modern figures for Dundee were cast from plaster; cast iron also makes
good moulds.
If the roof is the place for those earlier figures formed by repoussé,
the garden is rightly inhabited by cast lead statues. It is a material
in which the designer might well permit himself slightness, caprice, or
even triteness. A statue that would be tame in stone, or contemptible in
marble, may well be a charming decoration if only in lead, set in the
vista of a green walk against a dark yew hedge or broad-leaved fig, or
where the lilac waves its plumes above them and the syringa thrusts its
flowers under their arms and shakes its petals on the pedestal. “How
charming it must be to walk in one’s own garden, and sit on a bench in
the open air with a fountain and a leaden statue and a rolling-stone and
an arbour. Have a care though of sore throat and the _agoe_.[25]”
[25] Gray’s _Letter from Pembroke Coll._, 1769.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Mercury.]
When sculptors learn again that their art is to shape many materials in
various ways for diverse uses, and that a statue is not necessarily of
whitest marble or to be exhibited on the 1st of May, then we may get
back the delight of sculpture in the garden.
Sculptured marble, unless the art is of a high order, does not please us
out of doors by a pond or on a terrace, if it is not weathered down to a
ruin, but lead is homely and ordinary and not too good to receive the
_graffiti_ of lovers’ knots, red letter dates and initials. Here is a
sketch of a Mercury not at all too fine for further decoration of this
sort; it came from a London sale room, the surface was quite white and
exfoliated like old stone. The jaunty messenger has a garden thought
too, for it is honeycomb in his hand.
One of the best known of these garden statues was a group of Cain and
Abel that so recently gave an interest to the great grass quad of
Brasenose College, Oxford. It was given by Dr. Clarke, of All Souls,
“who bought it of some London statuary.” Hearne speaks of it as “some
silly statue”--superiority has always been the greatest enemy to beauty.
Forty or fifty years ago there was a Mercury in Tom Quad which has also
been improved away.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Sun-dial, Temple Gardens.]
Our next example fulfils a purpose. It is the sun-dial formerly in
Clement’s Inn, which was known locally as the “Blackamoor.” It is
strongly, if simply modelled, a piece of art full of character, and we
may be glad that it has been restored to us although now placed in the
gardens of the Inner Temple, instead of before the “Garden House” in
Clement’s Inn.
The negro is the full size of life and bears the stone disc of the dial
on his head with one hand, the other being free. The dial is beautifully
engraved and is signed on the edge of the gnomon _Ben Scott in the
Strand Londini Fecit_. The sides have the initials of the donor, P. I.
P., and the date, 1731. Mr. Hare in his _Walks in London_ states that it
was brought from Italy late in the seventeenth century by Holles Lord
Clare, whose name is preserved in the neighbouring Clare market. This
statement is also found in Thornbury’s _Old and New London_, and the
statue is said to be bronze, which it is not, nor do the initials and
date above agree with Mr. Hare’s statement, who goes on to remark that
“there are similar figures at Knowsley, and at Arley in Cheshire,” but
he does not say if these also were brought from Italy by Lord Clare.
No authority is given by Mr. Hare, but his statement is in the main a
transcript from John Thomas Smith, who also gives the verses quoted by
Mr. Hare, said to have been attached to the statue on one occasion with
a pitying reference to the legal atmosphere the African had to breathe.
That it was brought from Italy is seemingly local gossip added to the
account of Mr. Smith who knew well enough the English workshop, as we
shall see, where these figures were made.
Similar figures are mentioned by this writer in his gossiping
_Antiquarian Rambles in London_ in which he wrote the memories of his
own travels in the streets in the beginning of the present century, and
gives quite a history of this “despicable manufactory.” The founding of
these lead garden statues seems specially to have been an industry of
the eighteenth century; with the dreary opening of the nineteenth “a
purer taste,” so we are assured, banished these and most other charms of
an old-fashioned garden. “In Piccadilly, on the site of the houses east
of the Poulteney Hotel including that, now No. 102, stood the original
leaden figure yard, founded by John Van Nost, a Dutch sculptor, who came
to England with King William III. His effects were sold March, 1711.” As
late as 1763 a John Van Nost (supposed descendant of the former) was
following the profession of a statuary in St. Martin’s Lane, on the
left, a little farther up than where the old brick houses now stand in
1893. The original business was taken in 1739 by Mr. John Cheere, who
served his time with his brother, Sir H. Cheere, the statuary who did
several of the Abbey monuments.
“This despicable manufactory must still be within memory, as the
attention of nine persons in ten were arrested by these garden
ornaments. The figures were cast in lead as large as life and frequently
painted with an intention to resemble nature. They consisted of Punch,
Harlequin, Columbine and other pantomimical characters; mowers whetting
their scythes; haymakers resting on their rakes; gamekeepers shooting;
and Roman soldiers with _firelocks_; but above all an African kneeling
with a sundial upon his head found the most extensive sale.
“For these imaginations in lead there were other workshops in
Piccadilly, viz., Dickenson’s, which stood on the site of the Duke of
Gloucester’s house, Manning’s at the corner of White Horse Street, and
Carpenter’s, that stood where Egmont house afterwards stood.
“All the above four figure yards were in high vogue about the year 1740.
They certainly had casts from some of the finest works of art, the
Apollo Belvidere, the Venus de Medici, &c., but these leaden
productions, although they found numerous admirers and purchasers, were
never countenanced by men of taste; for it is well known that when
application was made to the Earl of Burlington for his sanction he
always spoke of them with sovereign contempt, observing that the
uplifted arms of leaden figures, in consequence of the pliability and
weight of the material, would in course of time appear little better
than crooked billets.... There has not been a leaden figure manufactory
in London since the year 1787, when Mr. Cheere died.”
Walpole knew little of these lead-working sculptors, his only notice
occurring under “Carpentier or Charpentiere”--our Carpenter above--“a
statuary much employed by the Duke of Chandos at Canons, was for some
years principal assistant to Van Ost (our Van Nost) an artist of whom I
have found no memorials, and afterwards set up for himself. Towards the
end of his life he kept a manufactory of leaden statues in Piccadilly
and died in 1737, aged above sixty.” The original Van Nost came from
Mechlin, and married in England the widow of another Dutch sculptor.
In the account books of the building of Somerset House the following
entry, which occurs under 1778, is interesting as showing John Cheere
working on particular works, and for giving us the composition of the
metal and the price. “John Cheere, figure maker; to moulding, casting,
and finishing four large sphinxes in a strong substantial manner, lead
and block tin, at each £31.”
It is curious if Lord Burlington gave the critical dictum attributed to
him, that there were so many lead garden statues at his villa at
Chiswick, in 1892 dismantled by the Duke of Devonshire. Doubtless they
belonged to that garden described by Walpole as in the Italian taste,
where “the lavish quantity of urns and sculpture behind the garden
front should be retrenched,” a wish that time accomplishes. There was a
Bacchus, a Venus, an Achilles, a Samson, and Cain and Abel.
In the first quadrangle at Knole there are two good reproductions of the
antique, one being a crouching Venus. In the courtyard of Burton Agnes
in Yorkshire stands a Fighting Gladiator.
Studley Royal, near Ripon, is a fine example of the best effort of
park-gardening, if the phrase be allowed, for the term “landscape
gardening” is degraded to mean productions in the cemetery style, an
affair of wriggling paths, little humps, and nursery specimens, which
might best be described as _cemetery gardening_, and between which and
the manner of Kent there is no parallel. Here lakes in ordered circles
and crescents occupy the grassy flat between hanging woods, and several
groups of lead statuary stand above the water.
In the beautiful old gardens at Melbourne in Derbyshire are a large
number of lead figures, two of which are drawn in _The Formal
Garden_.[26] There are two heroic sized figures of Perseus and Andromeda
beside the great water; a Flying Mercury after Giovanni Bologna; two
slaves, which are painted black, with white drapery, carrying vases on
salvers; and several Cupids in pairs or single. Of these “the single
figures” Mr. Blomfield says “are about two feet high. One has fallen
off his tree, another is flying upward, another shooting, another
shaping his bow with a spoke shave. All of these are painted and some
covered with stone dust to imitate stone, a gratuitous insult to lead
which will turn to a delicate silver grey if left to its own devices.”
[26] Blomfield and Thomas. Macmillan, 1892.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Cymbal Player.]
In the old gardens at Rousham described by Pope are still some Cupids
riding on swans; at Holmerook Hall are statues and other objects in
lead, and at Newton Ferrars in Cornwall are two statues of Mars and
Perseus. At the Mote House, Hersham, are some garden figures.
There are also some figures of lead in the gardens of Castle Hill, Lord
Fortescue’s house in Devonshire. In the two niches of a garden temple
there is a Cymbal Player from the antique and a Venus in the manner of
William and Mary. Amongst the foliage of a wood-path is a terminal
figure of Pan, the pillar being stone and the head and shoulders only of
lead. In the gardens here are also two large couchant lions, four
sphinxes, and some greyhounds. At Nun Moncton in Yorkshire, on a terrace
by the river Ouse are several lead figures on each side of the walk,
these have gilded trappings. At Glemham in Suffolk are figures of the
Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugène at the entrance. In the garden are
two black slaves with sun-dials, and the Seasons: also hounds at the
gateway.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Terminal at Castle Hill.]
In the garden at Canons Ashby is a figure of a shepherd playing a flute.
In a garden at Exeter are four or five figures, amongst which is a
Skater and a Flower Girl, and at Whitchurch is a Quoit Thrower.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Time.]
In the niches of a large circular yew hedge at Hardwick are four
figures, three are playing on musical instruments; pipe, trumpet, and
violin, and the fourth represents Painting. There are also two other
figures in the gardens. At Temple Dinsley near Hitchin is a figure of
Time, hour-glass in hand, of which a sketch is given. The left hand
formerly held a scythe, now lost. At Shrewsbury is a Hercules.
The statues in the grounds at Blarney celebrated in the “Groves of
Blarney” were of lead:--
“There’s statues gracing this noble place in
All heathen Goddesses so fair,
Bold Neptune, Plutarch and Nicodemus
All standing naked in the open air.”
These statues were sold by auction to Sir Thomas Dene who bought the
castle, and pictures:--
“And took off in a cart
(’Twas enough to break my heart)
All the statues made of lead and pictures O!”[27]
[27] _Reliques of Father Prout_, i., 140.
The eighteenth century must have been busy in the “manufacture” of these
garden figures and ornaments, some of the gardens mentioned have as many
as twenty to thirty pieces still. A great number was doubtless absorbed
in the London public gardens and the villas up the Thames. In old
Vauxhall was a statue of Milton by Roubilliac, but it is difficult to
attribute many specimens to individuals. The negro we saw was sold by
Mr. John Cheere in St. Martin’s Lane, but likely enough the model was a
part of the stock of Van Nost, as also the fine vases at Hampton Court.
Many of these statues were destroyed to suit the “purer taste” of this
century, and a great number were exported during the American War to
become bullets, because at that time as “works of art” the lead escaped
the Customs. A large number have been accidentally crushed by the fall
of a tree or otherwise destroyed, and many not adequately supported have
flattened down out of shape.
There was a large display _à la_ Louis Quatorze, of lead casting in the
gorgeous gardens of Versailles; where in the fountains, groups of
statues, and vases, the greatest sculptors of the time worked
indifferently in marble, bronze, or _plomb doré_. François Girardon was
one of these. Born in 1628, at Troyes, he lived to the year 1715,
achieving a reputation that placed him amongst the foremost of French
artists of that time.
The immense structure entirely of lead known as the Fountain of the
Pyramid is his work. From a basin in which sport three man-sized tritons
rises a pedestal, with a circular basin much enriched by gadroons, set
on three classic zoomorphous legs; and above it three other like basins
of diminishing size, each supported from the one below around the rim;
by baby tritons for the lowest, the next with dolphins, and the last
with lobsters. In the last basin is a vase. The whole is a composition
showing great refinement of scholarship, recalling in general form the
great pine cone of bronze in the Vatican gardens, once the fountain in
the atrium of old St. Peter’s. It is exquisitely drawn and engraved by
Rouyer et Darcel[28] together with two vases also of lead from the Basin
of Neptune.
[28] _L’Art Arch. en France_, vol. ii.
Other groups, some of colossal proportions--“France Victorious,” “The
Four Seasons,” and so on--were the work of Thomas Renaudin of Moulins,
J. B. Tubi from Rome, Pierre Mazaline and Gaspard de Marcu; their
individual works, with illustrations, may be distinguished in the volume
of engraved statues of the Versailles gardens by S. Thomassin published
in Paris 1694.
Versailles certainly set the fashion, which we followed and which
influenced the gardens of the most of Europe. In Russia a Swiss gardener
arranged a labyrinth at the summer palace of Peter the Great with animal
groups from Æsop in gilt lead forming fountains. Beckford, writing from
Lisbon in 1789, describes a garden at Bemfica “which eclipses our
Clapham and Islington villas in all the attractions of leaden statues,
Chinese temples, serpentine rivers, and dusty hermitages.”
§ XV. OF LEAD FOUNTAINS.
None of the old English gardens were complete without a fountain, and no
fountain was complete without a figure. Bacon says--“For fountains ...
the ornaments of images, gilt or of marble, which are in use do well.”
Paul Hentzner writes of the sixteenth century garden of Theobalds, the
seat of Lord Treasurer Burleigh--“There was a summer house, in the lower
part of which, built semicircularly, are the twelve Roman emperors in
white marble and a table of touchstone (alabaster) the upper part is set
around with cisterns of lead into which the water is conveyed by pipes
so that fish may be kept in them, and in summer time they are very
convenient for bathing.”
At St. Fagan’s, near Cardiff, in front of the house is a remarkable lead
tank; it is octagonal, ten feet across and nearly four feet high; it is
ornamented round the sides with flowers, and shields in panels, and is
dated 1620.
At Syon House there is a fountain in which a lead figure forms the jet
d’eau.
At Wooton in Staffordshire there is a fountain basin with a lead duck so
suspended as to float on the water spouting water from its bill. The
Swan which seemed to float on the water described by Borrow in
_Lavengro_ must have been of lead. At Sprotborough in Yorkshire are some
lead toads about nine inches long, which also seem to have belonged to a
fountain.
Some of the figures mentioned before stand in the centre of basins, and
occasionally simple groups, as of Neptune in a two-horsed chariot, may
be found, but we have nothing in England to compare to the great
fountain compositions of the Versailles Gardens or to the fountain
called _Le Buffet_ in the Trianon Park, designed by Mansard, and
profusely decorated by the gilt lead sculptures of Van Clève and other
artists.
In Germany some of the earlier town fountains are of lead.
§ XVI. OF VASES AND GATE PIERS.
The vases at Hampton Court mentioned above are particularly fine in
design and well modelled; their height is about 2.3 and the little
sitting figures, slight as they are, are charming in their pose; the
folded arms and prettily arranged hair give us a suggestion of life
which most of these things supposed to be in the classic taste lack. The
inventory taken by the Commission at Hampton Court mentions “Fower large
flower potts of lead.” Similar vases are in the gardens at Windsor, also
larger and later examples with figure plaques in Flaxman’s manner. At
Castle Hill, North Devon, there are ten vases, some with mouldings and
gadroons formed in repoussé, others cast.
At Melbourne in Derbyshire there is an enormous vase some seven or eight
feet high in a very rococo style.[29] There is one at Penshurst, which
comes from Old Leicester House in London; and at Sprotborough are others
of similar design. These vases will not bear comparison with the
beautiful lead Gothic fonts before given.
[29] _The Formal Garden_, Blomfield and Thomas.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Vase, Hampton Court.]
[Illustration: FIG. 48.--From Vase, Hampton Court.]
There are several vases at Wimpole near Cambridge, at Wilton, and at
Wrest. Little square flower boxes with cast or repoussé devices on the
sides were also made; Charles Lamb describes some flower pots for us
from the gardens of Blakesware in Herefordshire, a fine old house,
destroyed even when he wrote--“The owner of it had lately pulled it
down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished.
_How shall they build it up again?_” There was a beautiful fruit garden
and “ampler pleasure garden rising backwards from the house in triple
terraces, with flower pots now of palest lead save that a spot here and
there saved from the elements bespake their pristine state to have been
gilt and glittering.”
[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Vase, Castle Hill.]
At Knole are a pair of circular pots figured on page 120. Circular
baskets of open interlacing work and other forms were also made.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Albert Gate.]
[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Albert Gate.]
Garden seats were also made entirely of lead. There are six lead
seats at Castle Hill, North Devon; they are large square boxes with
heavy “classic” forms, the top and ends imitating the folds of drapery.
At Chiswick similar seats in every way were sculptured in stone. These
show how lead should not be used.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--Vase on Gate Pier, Knole.]
At Castle Hill are also several greyhounds; they are particularly lively
and well modelled and suitable for their purpose as guards to the gates.
Gate piers are most inviting pedestals for leaden imagery. At Albert
Gate, Hyde Park, there are two beautiful lead stags--another pair of
them are at Loughton in Essex; no more appropriate English park gate
could well be thought of. At Carshalton, Surrey, where a park was
enclosed by Thomas Scawen, the great gate pillars of the entrance have
large boldly modelled statues of Diana and Actæon, the date 1726. The
little Cupids that stand out of the ivy that covers the piers at Temple
Dinsley are sketched in Fig. 53.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--Temple Dinsley.]
Perhaps the finest gate pier groups are those to the Flower Pot Gate at
Hampton Court, where Cupids uphold a basket of flowers. These able
pieces of work are not generally known for lead, because, like so many
figures and vases, they have been painted and sanded to imitate stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--Syon House.]
In 1744 the then member for Southampton presented two lions for the Bar
Gate in that town. These not very beautiful creatures still remain.
Syon House, on the Thames, has besides the great lion, a lesser lion set
over Adam’s “lace gateway,” weighing a ton and half, it is unfortunately
newly _painted and sanded_ to look like stone, and as the tail sticks
out in a way utterly impossible for anything but metal it makes it
entirely absurd. There is a plague of paint over old leadwork, which
should be gilt or let alone.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.--Syon House.]
On the park wall facing the road there are fine sphinxes, about five
feet long, in every way different to the lion, well designed exercises
in the “classic taste.” Well modelled, with impressive heads, in the
dark and dinted metal, they are pleasant both in colour and texture.
They are quite “Adam’s” in character but not at all petty like some of
his work and very different to a pair of sphinxes also of lead, on the
gates of Chiswick House.
§ XVII. OF FINIALS AND CRESTINGS.