Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Hawksmoor
Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) [1]
Architect; son of a Nottinghamshire farmer; when about eighteen taken into service by Wren, employed as supervisor at Winchester Palace and Chelsea Hospital; appointed clerk of the works, Kensington Palace, 1689, and Greenwich Hospital, 1698; made many designs for St Paul's, 1691-1712; by 1702 at Castle Howard with Vanbrugh and later at Blenheim where he superseded him; at Oxford designs included Queen's College, not executed in entirety, Worcester College and parts of All Souls, including Codrington Library; as joint surveyor of Queen Anne's new churches, 1716, designed numerous London churches; surveyor general, Westminster Abbey, 1723.
4261 Modern cast after a bust attributed to Sir Henry Cheere, 1736
Bronze, 21 ½ in. (546 mm) high; pupils incised, mouth drawn down, protruding lower lip, short wavy hair, receding; toga over open shirt. Hollow cast; a strengthening bar stamped CAST BY/ MORRIS SINGER CO/ LONDON S. W.8.
NPG 4261 was cast in 1962 from the plaster at All Souls, attributed to Cheere.
Condition: good.
Collections: given 1962, by the Warden and Fellows of All Souls, Oxford.
Literature: M.S. Webb, 'Henry Cheere, Sculptor', Burlington Magazine, C, 1958.
Iconography
The only known portrait is the original inscribed Nich Hawksmoor/ Architect at All Souls where there is another of Bennett inscribed Colin Bennett/ Manciple 1736, also in plaster and painted black, and evidently by the same hand. Mrs Webb suggests that both date from 1736 and are almost certainly by Henry Cheere, who was paid for work at All Souls about then. [2]