four nineteenth-century garden ornaments in the oxford botanic garden

The Garden History Society

Four Nineteenth-Century Garden Ornaments in the Oxford Botanic GardenAuthor(s): Joanna MatthewsSource: Garden History, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 274-285Published by: The Garden History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25434182 .

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NOTE

FOUR NINETEENTH-CENTURY GARDEN ORNAMENTS IN THE

OXFORD BOTANIC GARDEN

The Oxford Botanic Garden has had a variety of garden statues and ornaments during its nearly four centuries of existence. This note deals in the

main with four of them, which seem to have been

installed during the early nineteenth century. Three have classical connotations: a Molossian

hound, a Calydonian Boar and a reduced copy

of the Warwick Vase. The fourth is a vase with

classical decoration, referred to in one garden context as a Bacchic Vase. Only the Warwick

Vase and the Bacchic Vase remain in situ. It is

suggested that these ornaments were installed

during the time of Professor Charles Daubeny.

A plan of the Oxford Botanic Garden in 19121

showed two paths named 'Dog' and 'Boar', from

the two statues that at that time were situated, each on a low plinth, at the Magdalen College end of the two paths, which run parallel to the central path. Although the statues were both

removed in the mid-1950s, the slight bulge at the

head of each path, where they were sited, still

remains.

The exact date of installation of the two

statues is unknown, but in 1956 the Boar was

removed, it having been damaged beyond repair

by a combination of frost and a collision with a wheelbarrow. It seems to have been reinforced

with iron, and to have been repaired previously with slate. By November 1958, only the head

remained, and that was in three pieces.2 It is

interesting to note that by 1956 the origins of

these two had been lost, and the then Professor of

Botany, C. D. Darlington, assumed, wrongly as it

turned out, that they had been in the garden since

its inception in 1621. He wrote to the Botanic

Garden in Padua, Italy, which he supposed had

been the seventeenth-century model for the

Oxford Garden, asking for information about

the Boar, with a view to obtaining a replacement. Thomas S. Boase, then President of Magdalen

College, sometime Professor of History of Art

and Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art,

London, immediately identified the Boar as the

Fontana del Porcellino in Florence, which was

made by Pietro Tacea from an original in the

Uffizi Gallery in the city. This was eventually confirmed in correspondence with the Instituto

Italiano di Cultura in London. Various further

inquiries were made about a replacement, but in

the end there was no money to purchase anything.

Requests were made to an Italian firm, the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford (whose students did not

actually study or make sculptures), an artist on

Boars Hill, and the carver attached to Magdalen

College. A replacement for both statues was

estimated at ?600, and this figure was included in the next quinquennial application for 1957 to

1962, but that was the last of it.3 Soon after all this, the Dog was removed,

possibly for safety, to the University Surveyor's

yard, where it remains. Their places were taken

by two sphinxes from the Ashmolean Museum: one a genuine ancient Roman statue, the other an eighteenth-century copy. These, in turn, were

removed and returned to the museum c.1989.4

THE ORIGINS OF THE STATUES: THE DOG

The Dog, known variously as the Dog of

Alcibiades, Jennings' Dog or the Mollossian

hound, has its supposed origins in ancient

Greece.

Robert G?nther, writing about the Botanic

Garden in 1912,5 states that the original statue

was in the Uffizi. There are indeed two copies

there, one of a number of early Roman copies of what was probably an even older Greek

model, thought probably to have been brought to Rome when the Roman General Lucius

Aemilius Paullus sacked the province of Epirus

(in north-west Greece) in 168 BC. There was

then a famous bronze statue of a fierce Molossian

hound, the local breed, which had much patriotic

significance. Paullus seems to have taken the

bronze home with him to Rome, as a trophy to

add to his collection.6 In Rome some years later

the statue became a favourite, and copies were

made for display in the villas of rich citizens. Of

these at least six have survived. The statue is of

a life-size, large dog, which sits on its haunches, with its mouth open, showing its teeth, and with

a very short stump of a tail (Figure 1). One of these stone copies, probably made

in the 2nd century AD, was purchased by an

Englishman on the Grand Tour, Henry Constantine

Jennings, sometime between 1755 and 1760,7 and



GARDEN ORNAMENTS IN THE OXFORD BOTANIC GARDEN 275

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H The Dog f^om the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^E^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H Garden J^^^^^^^^^HBHhHHHHHHHHHHIHHHHH author,

brought back to England. Jennings purchased it from a dealer and restorer in Rome called

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi. It was clearly one of his

favourite acquisitions, and he is reported to have

commented: 'A fine dog it was, and a lucky dog was I to have purchased it'.8 Jennings liked to

call it the Dog of Alcibiades, since part of its tail

is missing. Alcibiades, a Greek politician of the

5th century BC, was said to have cut off his dog's fine tail to give the Athenians something better to talk about than gossiping about Alcibiades

himself. Thus, the dog got a new name, and so

did Jennings, who was known thereafter as 'Dog'

Jennings.

Jennings was an inveterate collector and

gambler, and quite soon had to sell his dog. It was bought in 1778 by Charles Duncombe, 'who

paid the stupendous sum of one thousand guineas

for it'.9 It spent many years at Duncombe Park, North Yorkshire, until it was acquired by the

British Museum in 2001, where it was installed

initially in a temporary position outside the old

Reading Room in the then newly completed glass roofed Great Court.

As in Rome earlier, the dog became a

favourite among English gentlemen who liked to have copies of this antiquity. It was said to

make 'a most noble appearance in a gentleman's hall'.10 By the early nineteenth century, copies in a cement-based medium were being made for

gardens by Austin and Seeley. They were still in

business in 1872.n Circa 1828, Felix Austin, a

nurseryman, acquired a firm called Van Spangen and Powell, which manufactured artificial stone

at Bow, Essex. He moved the firm to a factory at New Road, Regent's Park (now the Euston



276 GARDEN HISTORY 33 : 2

Road), which he then renamed Austin and Seeley. Among its productions the firm included garden ornaments. Some of these were based on classical

prototypes, but Austin also commissioned original

designs from contemporary artists, including

Sidney Smirke and John B. Papworth. In 1835, tiles brought from China by John Reeves, who

was concerned with early plant introductions

from that country, were being made in a 'hard

and durable material'.12 Austin and Seeley were selling copies of the Dog, the Boar, and a

reduced size copy of the Warwick Vase. In the

Botanic Garden was also a large urn, described

elsewhere as a Bacchic Vase, which is illustrated

in Gunther's Oxford Gardens (Oxford, 1912) on

the front end-papers. The Dog also appears to the

left (and covered in snow) on p. xii. In the 1850s

the Dog and the Boar cost 8 guineas each.13 The British Library, London, has a copy of

Austin and Seeley's catalogue of 1844: Specimen Book of Austin and Seeley's Artificial Stone

Manufactory. New Road, London, (corner of Cleveland Street, Marylebone. 1844).14 Page six

shows the reduced-size copy of the Warwick Vase, 'the rim measuring 2ft lOin diameter, and 2ft 4in

high from its foot to the rim'. Page nine shows

both 'The Dog of Alcibiades' and 'The Florence

Boar'; the latter 'Also the reverse Figure to form a

Pair' (Figure 2). Unfortunately, no sizes are given for these. There is also a 'Goat's Head Vase' on

page six, but this does not correspond with the

'Bacchic Vase', except in the general manner of

having goats heads for handles and decorative

bunches of grapes. The Dog in the Botanic Garden was probably

one of these made by Austin and Seeley, as it has

exactly the appearance given in their catalogue, and was almost certainly installed when Daubeny

was Professor of Botany. He was appointed to

this post in 1834.15 It is unknown when or who

paid for it, since many of the records for that

period were later burnt. On his appointment as

Professor of Botany, Daubeny set about raising

money for improvements, and ?3000 or so were

collected, including a donation from Daubeny himself of ?500. Most of this was spent on

the Library, Herbarium and glasshouses.16 It is

possible that some might have been used for the

purchase of ornaments, particularly as these had

classical connotations, although the 'Report to

Subscribers' published about eighteen months

later gives no expenditure on ornaments.17 At

the end of his life, Daubeny was a rich man, and

he may even have made the purchase himself,

although there is no hint in his will that he had

done so.18

Whether the original from which Austin

and Seeley made their copies was Jennings's Dog of Alcibiades or one of the other Roman models

remaining in Italy is impossible to know. It would

seem much more likely that Jennings's Dog, or

one of the many other English copies made, became the model used by Austin and Seeley.

OTHER DOGS

There are a number of pairs of the Dog, with one

the mirror image of the original (as described in

Austin and Seeley's catalogue). At Wrest Park,

Bedfordshire, the pair guarding the steps from the terrace in front of the house seem to be early stone

copies made for William Weddell, of Newby Hall, West Yorkshire, who died in 1792. That estate

passed to Thomas Robinson/Weddell/de Grey, 3rd

Lord Grantham, who had inherited Wrest Park, and transferred them there on refurbishing the

house and garden in 1847. There is another copy elsewhere in the grounds (material unknown).19

There is a single dog at Blickling Hall, Norfolk, also made by Austin and Seeley in 1872;20 and at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, there is a dog

paired with the Calydonian Boar, both installed

C.1845, and made by Austin and Seeley.21 At

Stancombe, Gloucestershire, there is the same

dog sheltering in the entrance to the underground passageway of a part of the garden known as

Hades, and so known as Cerberus.22 The material

of this dog, although clearly a cast, is not the same as the Oxford dog, and it seems to be some

kind of plaster. Chatsworth, Derbyshire, has a

cast pair, but also the original Peter Scheemakers stone carvings of the Calydonian Boar and its

companion, a wolf, brought from Chiswick,

Middlesex, in the mid-nineteenth century by William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (see

below). There are many others,23 including a cast

pair at Great Milton, Oxfordshire, whose source

has not yet been ascertained, but is thought to

have been introduced in the 1950s by the then

owner, Peter Lawrence.24 Basildon Park, near

Goring, Oxfordshire, has another matched pair,

seemingly cast, and said to have been imported

directly from Italy by James Morrison, MP, in

1845-46, 'on the advice of the sculptor Guiseppe Leonardi'.25 These were also used to ornament a

set of terrace steps.26 In the refurbishment of the

house and lodges that Morrison carried out, he

was advised by Papworth, who at that time was

designing statues and ornaments for Felix Austin

of Austin and Seeley. The dogs may indeed have

come from Italy, but they could perhaps have

been made in London.

THE CALYDONIAN BOAR

The Calydonian Boar, another great classical

favourite, was presumably installed at the

same time as the Dog was acquired, as both

were placed prominently and symmetrically in

the Botanic Garden. The Boar's ancestry also

goes back to ancient Greece: to the Kingdom of King Calydon. According to Homer, the

king had failed to sacrifice to Artemis, and the

infuriated goddess sent a fierce boar to ravage the kingdom. It was finally killed by the King's

son, Meleager. The original garden statue, from

which the Oxford copy was probably made, was

commissioned by Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of




AUSXW AND SEELEY, NEW ROAD*

The Qm> Es?tiSH Mastiff.

This ?oe op Az.ciaiA.?ss?, (Antique.)

The ̂ jcorescb Boar, Also the Reverse Figure to form a Pair.

Figure 2. 'The Dog of Alcibiades. (Antique.)' (top) and 'The Florence Boar.' (bottom), which

includes 'Also the Reverse Figure to form a Pair.' (bottom); from the Austin and Seeley

catalogue (1844), p. 9. Courtesy: British Library, London




Burlington, c.1731, and made by Scheemakers, in

London, probably again copied from a classical

antique, presumably the fifth-century original in the Uffizi (Figure 3).27 Scheemakers made

his Boar for Burlington's new villa at Chiswick,

although a century later it was removed to

Chatsworth by William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited the

property. At Chiswick, the companion to the Boar was a wolf, not a dog. The pair are now in the entrance yard to Chatsworth.28 There is also a

boar at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire, but this one is larger, made of white marble and with a

much hairier coat than the Scheemakers version.

It was purchased in Italy in 1768 by Frederick

Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle.29 In size it more

closely resembles the larger plaster version in the

Ashmolean, purchased by Sir Roger Newdigate, 5th Bt, of Arbury, Warwickshire, which seems

to be a copy of the Porcellino, rather than the

Scheemakers version (see below).30 In the 1820s,

the boar was very popular, and Austin and

Seeley were making copies of this in their cement

mixture, just as they did the dog. In fact, it is still a very popular garden ornament, now usually

reproduced in fibreglass-reinforced resin, and one appeared in a prize-winning Chelsea Flower

show garden recently.31 The original pair in the

Uffizi was sketched by Newdigate when on the

Grand Tour (Figure 3).32 He also later purchased a plaster copy and shipped it back to Oxford

(Figure 4). He gave it to Queen's College, because

the college had associations with a medieval wild

boar.33 The boar at Osborne disintegrated in

1918, and there is now a modern replacement.34

THE WARWICK VASE

The vase in the north-east corner of the Botanic

Garden is a replica of the famous Warwick Vase,

approximately half the size of the original. Austin and Seeley, as shown above, manufactured




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^BB^^SS?^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^S^?^s^^^M^^ê^Ssê^êb^^^^^B^B?^^^?'' " ^wBhtpmB?^^ ' ^

reproductions of the Warwick Vase, in a reduced

size; the urn with the broken handles in the Botanic

Garden, near the office, is certainly a copy of the

Warwick Vase, and everything points to it being one of the Austin and Seeley copies. During the

nineteenth century it became a popular source of

inspiration for craftsmen and was reproduced in a variety of materials, including cast iron, and not only as a garden ornament, but for many

sporting trophies as well, particularly after the

Great Exhibition of 1851.35 The story of how it came to England is somewhat complicated, but is

worth recounting. In 1769, Gavin Hamilton, a Scottish painter

and dealer in antiquities resident in Rome, started excavations at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, outside Rome, in partnership with Giovanni

Battista Piranesi. After prolonged negotiations, the so-called Pantanello Lake or Bog was drained and various items found, including the fragments of an antique marble vase. At the time it was

thought they were of a Greek vase. Later scholars

concluded it was second-century Roman, of the

time of Hadrian. It was probably thrown into the

lake to prevent its destruction by the invading

Ostrogoths in AD 545.36 Piranesi was well known as a popularizer of antique designs. He published Vasi3 candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne et ornamenti antichi, 2 vols (Rome, 1778), which

includes designs for the Warwick Vase as well as many other well-known pieces, such as the two candelabra which he sold to Newdigate, now in the Ashmolean. A restoration, or rather

reconstruction, of the vase was achieved: a very

large piece of Carrara marble was hollowed out

and cut into the shape of an ancient vase, guided

by the shape of the fragments. The fragments were then inserted into the appropriate places, at

a total cost of approximately ?300. The leading restorer at this time was Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, and it is most probable he did the work. Hamilton

was not able to finance this undertaking. A

fellow Scot, Sir William Hamilton, did so. He was British Envoy Extraordinary to the Court

of Ferdinand IV of Naples from 1764 to 1800, an inveterate collector, and the most influential

Briton then living in Italy.37 Sir William is chiefly remembered today as

the husband of Emma Hamilton, Admiral Lord

Nelson's mistress, but in his day he enjoyed an

international reputation as a collector of Greek

and Roman antiquities. He probably first saw

the fragments in Rome c.1772 on a journey from

England to Naples, and the work of restoration

took some time, not being completed until 1774 or 1775.38 A purchaser for the newly restored vase was then sought, as Sir William was looking for a profit on his investment. In 1772, two

years earlier, the Trustees of the British Museum

had purchased his entire collection of vases for

?8410, and so he first offered the vase to the

institution. Charles Greville, Hamilton's nephew, acted as his agent in London and tried to interest

the Museum Trustees in it. The Trustees made all sorts of excuses for not purchasing it: it was too

expensive, and they would have to get Parliament




?i"?:4J

Figure 5. The Botanic Garden, Oxford, as shown in a calotype photograph (30 July 1842) taken

by William Henry Fox Talbot. Courtesy: Museum of History of Science, Oxford, No. 31601, with permission

to vote them the money; it was too bulky (it

weighed over 8 tons); and 'in a kind of collection

they did not aspire to' (that is, in marble ? this is

long before Lord Elgin's time). In 1776, Hamilton was still trying to sell it, and in the end it went

to another nephew, George Greville, 2nd Earl of

Warwick, elder brother of Charles.

The vase was first situated in the centre of

the courtyard of Warwick Castle, and a few years later a large new conservatory was constructed

(1786-88) by William Eboral, a local man,39 where the vase remained for two centuries. In

1977, it was sold for over ?250,000 to the Burrell

Collection, Glasgow, and a full-size reproduction of it was placed in the conservatory at Warwick

Castle.40

The vase itself is worth closer examination.

The diameter of the original is 1.95 metres, not

including the protruding handles (the Oxford

copy is less than 1 metre across). It consists of six

sections: a bowl, a stem, a base and a pedestal, which is in three parts, and the whole assembly

Stands nearly 3 metres tall. The base, which is not copied in the Oxford vase, is inscribed in

Latin with a brief history of its discovery and

restoration, and gives the date 1774.

The decoration of the vase is divided into two faces by the extended handles. Each side

shows four heads, two outer and two inner,

placed above a lion's skin, which is in the lower

half of the vase. On both sides the outer heads are

identical and show two bearded faces, probably supporters of Bacchus, who appears himself in

the central pair on both sides. On one side (at the back of the Oxford copy as it presently stands) is Silenus, another god, follower of Bacchus, rural and given over to celebrations. On the front

face this is replaced by a female head, probably Ariadne, wife of Bacchus. This head was not part of the original fragments, and the myth grew

up that it was a portrait of Emma, Sir William's

second wife. However, as they did not meet until at least eight years after the vase was completed, it is probably only a portrait of an anonymous




Roman model. Behind the heads are some small

stick-like wands. On the side with Bacchus and

Silenus there is, on the right, a 'thyrsus', a wand

tipped with a pine cone, an ancient symbol of

fertility; and on the left, a 'pedum', a sort of

sheep crook, a symbol of pastoral life. Behind

Ariadne there is no pedum, but each is a thyrsus. The vase handles are made of two intertwining

grapevine stems, and where they join the upper rim of the vase there are tendrils intertwined with

the tendrils coming from the opposite side. Below

the lion skins is a pattern of acanthus leaves.

The Oxford copy now has broken handles, and much of the fine detail has become blurred

with the passage of time. It was probably

purchased in the 1830s, along with the other

garden ornaments, soon after Daubeny was

appointed as Professor of Botany. Daubeny had

been Professor of Chemistry since 1822, and his

friend, William Henry Fox Talbot, the pioneer of

photography, made a photograph of the vase in

situ in July 1842 as part of a lecture Daubeny was to give on the chemistry of photography. The

original photograph is still in the Museum of the

History of Science, Oxford (Figure 5). It seems

almost certain that this vase too was made by the

London firm of Austin and Seeley. There was a

copy in their later advertisements and catalogue, and it appears to be made of much the same

cement-based material (Figures 6 and 7). The date

of this copy, and all other copies, must be later

than 1813 when Lord Warwick finally consented to allow copies of his famous possession to be

made. That first copy was required by Warwick to be made in silver, and Lord Lonsdale, who was

to pay for it, found that the cost, at ?30,000, was

too much even for him, and although the moulds

for a copy had been made, none was made at that

time. A few years later, two were cast in bronze in

Paris, at that time the only place where such large items could be made. In 1821, one was purchased

by George IV (it is now at Windsor Castle41) and

the other was bought by Hugh Percy, 4th Duke

of Northumberland, and later presented to the

University of Cambridge on his installation there as Chancellor in 1842. It now stands outside the

Senate House in Cambridge. Unfortunately, this

is not actually the exact copy hoped for. There is a small flaw: where there should be a thyrsus and a pedum behind Bacchus and Silenus, they are

both the same: two thyrsi. There were also two

silver-plated copies made as wine-coolers c.1820, which are now at Warwick Castle.42

It may be relevant to note that there is

another similar cement-based Warwick Vase at Nuneham Park, near Oxford, also in poor

condition, which may have been placed there at

a similar time to the Botanic Garden's replica.

Certainly Daubeny knew and worked with Revd

William Harcourt, the son of the Archbishop of

L 0^%r\ . ?'i?

Figure 6. Reduced size Warwick Vase in situ in the Botanic Garden, Oxford. Photo: author, 2003




AUSTIN AND SEELBT, HEW ROAD.

Bouqdex IX? Hut ?m. Bonavn AXtt ?BSXOOH Va*?,

Goat** Hbah Tau.

ntriKannilwtftNIg dlun.

tide liavibg a luw r?li?? n Ta* Warwick Vue. Fxom TitK Vatican.

Figure 7. 'The Warwick Vase.' (bottom), 'The rim measuring 2ft 10 in diam.' (the height from

the rim to the base of the vase is given as 2 feet 4 inches) and 'Goats' Head Vase.' (top); from

the Austin and Seeley catalogue (1844), p. 6. Courtesy: British Library, London

York, Edward Vernon-Harcourt, who inherited

the Nuneham property in 1830. The Archbishop initiated a number of changes in the garden there, and employed William Sawrey Gilpin to that end

from c.1835.

THE BACCHIC VASE

There is a fourth ornament that may belong to

this same group. A large Bacchic Vase, which is

now situated in the outer garden of the Botanic

Garden at a focal point beyond the Autumn

Border, near the Bog Garden. The material is




^H^^^^^^^ra^^^^^^^^^^^^^^J^^^^n^^^H^^^^H Figure 8. Bacchic Vase in ^^^^^M^^Mf^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^K^?^^^^^^^^B^B^m ^()tan'c Garden, Oxford. ^^^^^^S^^^^HHH?HHHHI^^^^^^^^H^HShI? Photo: author, 2003

'some sort of aggregate',43 i.e. a cement-based mixture. It is a large item, about 1 metre in

height, with goat heads for handles, pan-pipes and grapes on the body, and acanthus leaves round the base (Figure 8). Two other identical vases have been identified: one in the Tennessee

Botanical Gardens, Nashville,44 and the other in a no-longer existing garden at Panshanger,

Hertfordshire.45 There are also two such vases on top of the walls at the Wallace Collection in

Manchester Square, London, looking extremely clean, but actually painted to match the facade of the house (as of March 2004). The existence of

several such copies suggests they may also have been from the same, or a similar, source as that at Oxford. As noted above, this exact model does not figure in the Austin and Seeley catalogue of 1844.

THE OXFORD CONTEXT

When Daubeny was appointed as Professor of

Botany in 1834, the University Physic Garden, as it was then called, was in a very poor state.

Almost at once Daubeny set about raising money for its refurbishment, as mentioned above. His efforts were part of a wider movement within

Oxford to establish better scientific education. One of the eventual fruits of this movement was

the construction of the University Museum, which was intended to house all the science departments

in one building. Another was the move to

rehouse the Ashmolean collection to a new site in Beaumont Street, which was finally opened in 1841 in a neo-classical building designed by

Charles R. Cockerell. Here were many plaster casts of famous Greek and Roman statues for art

students to copy. The Calydonian Boar, which had




been presented to Queen's College, was the first of all these. The collection was obviously in the same spirit as the Uffizi Collection in Florence.

There is an illustration of the interior of the

Radcliffe Camera in 1836 with various classical statues displayed in the upper gallery, including a large size Warwick Vase, and Newdigate's candelabra.46 Perhaps this was one of the triggers that caused Charles Daubeny to furnish the

Botanic Garden with the ornaments described in

this note.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks various people for their

assistance in researching this note, particularly the staff of the University Botanic Garden, the

University Surveyor's yard, the British Museum, London, the British Library, London, the

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Michael Symes, and the many others at the various sites where

these ornaments occur who have endured my

questionings.

JOANNA MATTHEWS

7 Church Way, Iffley, Oxford,

Oxfordshire OX4 4DY, UK

REFERENCES 1 Robert W. T. G?nther, Oxford Gardens

(Oxford: Parker &c Son, 1912), pp. 36-7. 2

Oxford Botanic Garden archives. 3

Ibid., correspondence (13 July 1954

3 December 1958). 4

The statues are currently in the public

galleries at the museum, at the entrance to the

Egyptian Galleries. Their display notes read:

(on the right-hand side) 'From the Arundel

Collection, presented by the Dowager Countess

of Pomfret. Michaelis 56'; and opposite (on the

left-hand side): 'Female sphinx, made to pair with the Roman sphinx. Late 17th or early 18th

Century. Also from the Dowager Countess of

Pomfret 1755'. The statues are also illustrated

in John P. S. Davis, Antique Garden Ornament:

300 Years of Creativity: Artists, Manufacturers & Materials (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors

Club, 1991), p. 96, which considers them to

have been the models on which the pair of

sphinxes at Chiswick are based. 5

Ibid., p. 38. 6

Correspondence with the British Museum,

London, 2002. 7

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament, p. 105, states between 1748 and 1756.

8 Correspondence with the British Museum,

London, 2002. 9

Ibid., p. 105, quoting Adolf T. F.

Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, trans, by C. A. M. Fennell (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1882), pp. 294-5. 10

Correspondence with the British Museum,

London, 2002. 11

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament, p. 200. 12

Miles Hadfield, Robert Harling and

Leonie Highton, British Gardeners, A

Biographical Dictionary (London: A. Zwemmer

in association with Cond? Nast, 1980), p. 18; Post Office London Directory 1846, facsimile

edn of Kelly's Directory (Castle Rising: Michael

Winton, 1994). There is no entry under

'Austen' or 'Austin', but on p. 463, a 'John

Seeley, artificial stone mfr. [manufacturer]' was

at 1-4 Keppel Row, New Road.

13 Correspondence with English Heritage,

September 2003. 14

Cleveland Street is just beside Great

Portland Street Underground station. The

catalogue is shelved under the Trade Literature

collection in the Science, Technology and

Innovation Department of the British Library. 15

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: In Association with the British Academy: From

the Earliest Times to the Year 2000, revd edn

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), s.v.;

Daubeny Garden Diary, Oxford University Plant Sciences Library, Sherard MS 264.

16 G?nther, Oxford Gardens, pp. 23-5;

Daubeny Garden Diary; Sandra Raphael,

Of Oxfordshire Gardens (Oxford: Oxford

Polytechnic Press, 1982), p. 12. 17

Daubeny Garden Diary. 18 Daubeny's will of 1867; available from

the Probate Division, First Avenue House, High

Holborn, London. 19

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament, p. 105;

Anon., Wrest Park (London, English Heritage,

n.d.). 20

Michael Symes, Garden Sculpture (Princes

Risborough: Shire, 1996), p. 13. 21

Ken Osborne and Louise Wilson (eds), Osborne House, 7th edn (London: English

Heritage, 2002), pp. 3, 23. 22

Timothy Mowl, The Historic Gardens

of Gloucestershire (Stroud: Tempus, 2002),

description and illustration, p. 137; Anon., Stancombe Park guidebook (n.d.).

23 Symes, Garden Sculpture, p. 55; other

private communications. 24

Private communication, 2004; and a

single dog at Swincombe park; repr. in David

Hicks, David Hicks Garden Design (London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 151. 25

Correspondence with the National Trust,

June 2002. 26

Charles Pugh, Basildon Park, Berkshire

(London: National Trust, 2002), p. 31; but

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament,

pp. 106-7, who illustrated them, states that




the Basildon pair were made by Austin and

Seeley, along with those at Bicton, Chatsworth, Carlton Towers and Shrublands Park. Also

correspondence with the National Trust, June 2002.

27 Ingrid Roscoe, 'Peter Scheemakers and

the Stowe commission', New Arcadian Journal, 43/44 [The Political Temples of Stowe] (1997),

pp. 40-64, cites a payment at Chiswick for a

Portland stone copy, now at Chatsworth; also

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament; Symes, Garden Sculpture. 28

Duchess of Devonshire and Peter

Drew, Explore the Garden at Chatsworth

(Chatsworth: Chatsworth Garden Trust, 2002),

p. 4. 29

Private communication. 30

Dictionary of National Biography, vol.

40, pp. 614-16. 31

One was also installed in the 1840s in

John Claudius Loudon's Derby Arboretum.

It was later destroyed by a German bomb; and a modern replacement caused problems

with the neighbouring Moslem community. There are also Continental versions, e.g. at

the Schlossgarten, Nordkirchen; illus. Charles

Quest-Ritson, Gardens of Germany (London: Mitchell Beazley, 1998), p. 135.

32 Newdigate made two tours and the sketch

is from his first, youthful tour; the purchase is from the second tour in 1774-76; Donna

C. Kurtz, The Reception of Classical Art in

Britain: An Oxford Story of Plaster Casts from the Antique (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000),

pi. 26. The original is at Arbury Hall. 33

The story is that a scholar walking in the Forest of Shotover nearby and reading Aristotle

was confronted by a savage wild boar, and in order to avoid death, he thrust the volume

down the boar's throat, and so escaped. 34 Osborne and Wilson, Osborne House,

p. 3. 35

This also happened in France, e.g.

Barbezat & Cie illustrated catalogue (1858);

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament, Appendix II,

p. 351. 36

Richard Marks and Brian J. R. Blench, The Warwick Vase (Glasgow: Burrell

Collection, Glasgow Museums and Art

Galleries, c.1979). 37

Andrew Wilton and Illaria Bignamini (eds), Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the

Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. (London: T?te

Gallery Publ., 1996). 38

Marks and Blench, Warwick Vase. 39

Anon., Warwick Castle guidebook (Warwick: Warwick Castle, 1986), 34.

40 Marks and Blench, Warwick Vase.

41 Roy Strong, Royal Gardens (London:

BBC/Conran Octopus, 1992), p. 95. 42

Davis, Antique Garden Ornament, p. 145. It seems that when the Frenchman Charles

Crozatier cast the vase, he might have confused

the moulds for the two backgrounds. Wine

coolers, unknown size, illustrated in Warwick

Castle guidebook, p. 48. 43

Private communication, described as such on a recent restoration.

44 Peter R. S. Hunt (ed.), The Book of

Garden Ornament (London: J. M. Dent, 1974), p. 80, but it seems that that garden was only formed in the late nineteenth century, and so the vase must have come from some other

previous source, if it was not new at the time. 45

Gardens in Edwardian England

(Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1985), p. 174. The Hertfordshire Record Office has no identified record of the purchase of this,

although there is a considerable uncatalogued archive of material from that house and garden,

which was sold in the 1950s. 46

Kurtz, Reception of Classical Art in

Britain, pi. 86: a drawing by F. Mackenzie for the University Almanac of 1836; also pi. 62: a

Calydonian Boar in plaster in situ in Queen's College library.



four nineteenth-century garden ornaments in the oxford botanic garden

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