Notes
As the only known sculpture in Blue John, this Recumbent Lion is
extraordinary for its quality, provenance and rarity. It would appear to
have been commissioned by George Greville, second Earl of Warwick, who
mentions it in his inventory of 1806 as ‘a Lyon of Derbyshire Spar
on a pedestal’. It is recorded again in a 1924 inventory of
‘articles of national or historical interest’ where it is
described as a ‘Lion in Blue John on white and black marble base’
situated in The Great Hall of Warwick Castle. The Warwick Castle
Collection also included the famous Warwick Vase, which had been
discovered during an excavation of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli. The
Warwick Vase was acquired by George Greville’s uncle, Sir William
Hamilton, whose wife Emma was the mistress of Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Blue John is a rare natural variety of calcium fluorite. It was first
recorded in the Castleton area of Derbyshire, England, in the late
seventeenth century, which today remains the only discovered quarry of
the stone. Long before the appreciation of Blue John as a valuable
material for architectural ornaments and decorative objects in the 18th
century, the ancient Romans prized its shimmering qualities. Pliny the
Elder described a soft rock with a range of colours, naming it ‘murrhine’.
A legendary tale from this time records how Petronius, author of the
Satyricon, on recognising that death was inevitable severed his own
veins, but only after breaking his prized murrhine dipper in order that
his nemesis Nero could not enjoy it after him. Emperor Augustus, too, is
recorded to have treasured murrhine above all else, selecting to keep
only one murrhine vase above all of his golden vessels (Suetonius 2.71).
Just two significant objects in Roman Blue John survive as testament to
ancient appreciation of the stone: both drinking vessels and both on
show in the Roman Empire room at the British Museum (inv. nos. GR
1971.4-19.1 and GR 2003.12-2.1).
Blue John is extremely difficult to carve and cannot be chiselled due to
its brittle nature. The present sculpture with its sensitive detail
defining the lion’s form would have taken weeks, possibly even
months, to complete by a laborious process of hand-grinding using bits
of abrasive stone. A particularly remarkable addition to this process is
the apparent inclusion of ancient fragments in the present lion. Dr Ian
Jenkins, Senior Curator of the British Museum, Department of Greek and
Roman Antiquities, after close inspection of the darker elements of the
lion’s paws, concluded that this was indeed possible. Precedence
for this can be found in Franzoni’s animal sculptures, in the Sala
degli Animali in the Museo Pio Clementino in the Vatican, many of which
also incorporate ancient fragments (González-Palacios, op. cit. p. 249).
The lion has long been used in religious and stately iconography as a
symbol of nobility and strength; Sotheby’s London has a
representation of Sekhmet, a lioness deity, adorning its front entrance.
It is in the visual vocabulary of Ancient Egypt where the crouching lion
is particularly preeminent. The grand Egyptian lions at the foot of the
Capitoline Hill in Rome, made of basalt and over two thousand years old,
bear striking similarity to the present work in their recumbent pose and
unyielding forward gaze.
Eminent patron, collector, designer and writer, Thomas Hope, revived
ancient iconography in his designs which would become the seminal
aesthetics of Regency England. During his Grand Tour of Europe, from
1787 to 1795, Thomas Hope was exposed to the exotic colours and objects
of Italy, Egypt and the Near East. When he acquired a palatial house in
London, he modelled the decor on the traditional forms that he had seen
abroad, and revolutionised interior design forever; ‘interior
decoration’ was in fact as a phrase introduced to the English
language by Thomas Hope in his book Household Furniture and Interior
Decoration. Two particular settees, designed by Hope, are adorned on
their four edges by recumbent lions. One settee is now held in the
Farringdon Collection and the other can be found at the Powerhouse
Museum in Sydney. These settees were placed in Thomas Hope’s
Egyptian room, where he kept his Egyptian works and those with Egyptian
motifs. Hope’s lions all share with the present Recumbent Lion the
same lithe bodies and twisting tails, geometric manes and imposing ears.
Noteworthy is the suggestion that the castings for the Farringdon
Collection settee were executed by Giuseppe Boschi, whose study of the
ancient Egyptian basalt lions on the Capitoline Hill is today in the
Victoria and Albert Museum (op. cit. pp. 392).
The present sculpture is an especially fine example of the tastes of
Regency England, in tune with the enlightened originality of Thomas
Hope, who innovated by virtue of the antique and the Oriental. Its
distinctively British quality is in its material, the rare and brilliant
Blue John. This Recumbent Lion is cut from a block of the Old Tor vein
of Blue John, carefully selected for its intrinsic rich colouration
which simulates the lion’s textured fur and mane. The sculpture’s
history in the distinguished Warwick Castle Collection, reflects the
enduring regard for the most accomplished of Regency style works of fine
art. It would make an extraordinary addition to both public and private
collections on account of its uniqueness and quality: it is a remarkable
sculpture to be offered to the art market.
RELATED LITERATURE
D. Watkin and P. Hewat-Jaboor (eds.), Thomas Hope. Regency Designer,
exh. cat. The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts,
Design, and Culture, Annandale-on-Hudson, and Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, 2008, pp. 392-7, no. 76; A. González-Palacios, Il
serraglio di pietra. La sala degli animali in Vaticano, Rome, 2013, p.
249, no. 105; T.D. Ford, Derbyshire Blue John, Ashbourne, 2005
