Description
MICHAEL RYSBRACK (1694-1770), ENGLISH, DATING TO 1736
PROPERTY REMOVED FROM WARWICK CASTLE
A MARBLE BUST OF EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE
measurements note
overall: 84cm., 33in.
PROVENANCE
HRH Frederick Prince of Wales;
Warwick Castle, Warwickshire
LITERATURE
MS Accounts at Duchy of Cornwall
M.I.Webb, Michael Rysbrack. Sculptor, London 1954, p.214
NOTE
This superb work is one of a group of historicising busts by the Flemish émigré sculptor Michael Rysbrack, dating from the late 1720s and early 1730s. The Black Prince is included in the list of Rysbrack's portrait busts drawn up by George Vertue in 1732. A version by Peter Scheemakers was included in the Temple of British Worthies for the gardens of Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, at Stowe in 1735. In that year Queen Caroline commissioned a series of Kings and Queens of England, for her new Library at St James's designed by William Kent, for which some of the terracotta models survive at Windsor Castle. In an age of patriot politics Rysbrack introduced images of national figures that were at once innovatory, imaginative and remarkably accurate.
Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine (1330-1376) was the eldest son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault. At the age of 16 he played a courageous part at the Battle of Crécy, in which the French were vanquished. It was at Poitiers in 1356, when the French king Jean II was taken prisoner, that Edward demonstrated the qualities of leadership that earned him a place in the pantheon of national heroes. It is no coincidence in this context that one of his closest military companions was Thomas Beauchamp, 11th Earl of Warwick (1313-1369).
Rysbrack's bust of the Black Prince is first recorded at Warwick Castle, in the State Bedroom, in an inventory of 1800. It may either have been commissioned by Francis Greville, Earl of Warwick (1719-73), Canaletto's patron, or come through his wife, Elizabeth. Her mother, Lady Archibald Hamilton (d.1753), had played a series of important roles in the Household of Frederick, Prince of Wales. At first possibly the Prince's mistress and adviser, Lady Archibald later became Mistress of the Robes and Keeper of the Privy Purse to Augusta, Princess of Wales. If Elizabeth was the source, it would suggest this is the version commissioned by Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707-51) in 1735 for the Octagon in the garden of Carlton House, Pall Mall. A voucher exists among the Duchy of Cornwall papers dated 1736, for:
Work done by Michael Rysbrack for His Royal Highness
The Prince of Wales
2 bustows of King Alfred and the Black Prince £105
2 pedestals £7
2 tables statuary marble £3.2.
plain work £2.17.3
Drawing 420 letters in D[itt]o tables 12.9
Coting, stopping, writing and gilding £2 10 0.
This suggests that some kind of presentation of these semi-mythic figures from British history was intended. The Prince's commission was, perhaps, an overt gesture in support of Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, who had been deprived of his regiment by George II's Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, tantamount in chivalric terms to being forbidden to bear arms.
A third possibility is a provenance to Adderbury, Oxfordshire, the house rebuilt for John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll and 1st Duke of Greenwich. Argyll was a career soldier who had fought under Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had been victorious against the Scots at Sheriffmuir in 1715. He became the first ever Field Marshal. In the gallery at Adderbury, built in 1731, a version of the Black Prince was one of six busts by Michael Rysbrack in a programme of military heroes ancient and modern. It was probably sold from Adderbury in the 1770s.
What is impressive about Rysbrack's representation of the Black Prince is the accuracy of informed historical observation. The gilt bronze effigy on the Black Prince's tomb at Canterbury has three distinguishing features: the Lion Crest, technically a leopard, the coronet encircling the basinet with alternate trefoils and fleur-de-lis, and the moustache. Rysbrack's helmet is a tolerable attempt at an early fifteenth century basinet, the coronet a replica of that on the alabaster effigy of the Black Prince's uncle, John of Eltham, Earl of Cornwall (d.1336), son of Edward II, in Westminster Abbey. The moustache, not an eighteenth century fashion item, is, however, ubiquitous on tomb figures of the fourteenth century, notably on the alabaster effigy of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (d.1369) in the Beauchamp Chapel, St Mary's Collegiate Church, Warwick.
Lion or leopard masks on shoulder defences were not uncommon in the fourteenth century. By the sixteenth century lion pauldrons had acquired classical connotations emblematic of Hercules and his strength in combat. By the seventeenth century the association was with royalty, as in busts of Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur. Rysbrack, with characteristic attention to detail, would appear to have observed the ornament of the shoulder inlets and the damascening of the breast plate of the Lion Armour (Royal Armouries, Leeds), a suit made in Italy c.1550, possibly for Henri II of France. This may have been brought to England by Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton at the end of the sixteenth century. Later the Lion armour appears to have become a studio prop in the possession of the miniaturist Samuel Cooper and others, and to have acquired a politically emblematic significance of its own. By the nineteenth century the suit was thought, ironically, to have belonged to the Black Prince.
In this fine bust Rysbrack established a national icon that was immediately recognisable then and now, one whose gothic manner had a veracity of its own. This is so much the case that one might be forgiven for thinking it is a nineteenth century medievalising representation of Prince Albert.
We are grateful to Katharine Eustace for cataloguing this lot.
