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.