Joseph Nollekens

Probably Nollekens' Estate sale, London, Evan's, 4-5 December 1823, as part of lots 232-262;
probably Mrs Russell (neé Palmer) of Curzon Street, London,
by whom sold, London, Christie's, 20-22 March 1847, as part of lots 212-262;
Three designs:
Oliver Hill, FRIBA, FRSA, FILA, 
by whose widow, Mrs M. Hill, sold, London, Sotheby's, 27 March 1969, lot 273, for £40; lot 274, for £50; lot 272, for £60; all to Brian Sewell;
with the Heim Gallery, London, from whom purchased

Four designs in the present lot are preparatory to Nollekens' celebrated Monument to Three Naval Captains.  The heroes in question were William Bayne, William Blair and Lord Robert Manners: all mortally wounded in Lord Admiral George Rodney's victory over the French at the Battle of Les Saintes in the West Indies on 12 April 1782.  To commemorate their bravery, the English government ordered a monument to be erected in the north transept of Westminster Abbey and Nollekens was appointed as the sculptor. 

The first design for the monument (for which this lot has studies for the front and side views, inv. nos. 80.6.208 and 80.7.2) was for a free-standing structure, 18 feet in height, with figures larger than life-size.  That of Neptune is close to Bernini's marble sculpture of the same figure in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which Nollekens must have studied when it was in the VIlla Negroni, Rome.  The cost of this version, estimated by Nollekens to be £4,500, was deemed too high, so more designs were produced.  The finished monument is of a very different form to Nollekens' original plans, but the other related sheets in this lot (80.7.3  and 80.7.4) reveal its evolution to the monument as it stands today.

The other significant design in the present lot (80.6.209) is for the monument to naval heroes, Captains John Harvey and John Hutt, both mortally wounded in 1794, during the first major naval battle of the French Revolutionary Wars (1793-1802).  As with the previous project, Parliament called for a monument to the men to be erected in Westminster Abbey, the first of a series of monuments to British heroes from the French Revolutionary Wars in the Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral.  Nollekens' design for a free-standing structure, with its medallions and the figure of Neptune defeating England's enemies, clearly refers to his first, rejected design for the Monument to Three Naval Captains.  However, his submission was not chosen for the project, and the monument was made instead by John Bacon Junior, in 1804.