Details of Sculptor

Surname

Nadauld

Alternative Surname

First Name

Henri

Initial of Surname

N

Year of Birth/Baptism

1653

Flourished

Year of Death

1724

Biographical Details

He was a Huguenot sculptor and carver, responsible for sophisticated decorative carving and statues at two of the great English baroque houses. Nadauld was born in France, the son of Jacques Nadauld, who was also a sculptor. He married Marie Chaillonneau in September 1669, when the record describes him as a ‘sculpteur.’ By 1685, when his wife became a recusant, he was described as a ‘maitre sculpteur et peintre’ (Recueil de la Commission des Arts 1902-4, 124, 127, 128, information Jean Brushfield). Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes Nadauld fled to England, where he was active from 1698-1710. His son Pierre, born in 1685 in France, was naturalised in 1707 and is described in the records of the Huguenot church in West Street, London, as coming from ‘I'lle de Oléron.’ He became a surgeon and raised a family in Ashford, Derbys.
Nadauld worked at Hampton Court Palace in 1698, where he was paid £50 for plaster work in the Queen’s closet in the water gallery (19).The shed provided for the ‘Frenchman to burne his Plaister in’ and the ‘Squaring and laying two stones’ for him ‘to beat his plaster on’ probably refer to Nadauld although the accounts spell his name 'Nadue’. Again he is almost certainly the ‘Monsieur Noddo’ who was rated on two houses in Portugal Street, Piccadilly, on 20 December 1697. His yard in Portugal Row, Piccadilly, was near to such other statuaries as John Nost I, Edward Hurst and Richard Osgood. He was named ‘Nedos’ in the Castle Howard accounts.
By 1700 Nadauld had moved to Chatsworth where in July the carpenter was paid for making a shed for him and where he worked, inside and out, until 1706. He produced ornamental details for the façades and garden sculpture under the supervision of Monsieur Huet, a Huguenot minister who acted as steward to the 1st Duke of Devonshire. Many of the other craftsmen were also Huguenot refugees. Nadauld worked also on the interior, providing a chimneypiece (18) and figures for niches on the west staircase (10). One of his finest achievements at Chatsworth was a plaster relief of putti on horseback and acanthus foliage, on the coving of the west sub-vestibule. Such ornamental carving was usually supervised by the architect in charge, but six working drawings by Nadauld at Chatsworth indicate that he was responsible for developing his own designs. The design for the frieze on the west front, in black chalk on paper, shows pairs of tritons blowing conch shells and pairs of winged sea horses, their tails entwined or tied with ribbons to three-pronged tridents (20). The drawing also relates to the great frieze on the south front at Castle Howard where Nadauld worked from 1704 (30). His work at Chatsworth was sometimes mundane (21) but he also produced a wealth of mythological and allegorical sculture (2-9). An account of work done in 1703 includes three figures for the inner court in ‘Roach Abbey stone’ (5), a building material considered by Wren to be second only to Portland stone. Nadauld’s bill includes ‘Charges to Roach Abbey’ of 12/-, which suggests that he selected the stone himself. He was still working in the gardens in 1714, but largely on repairs to figures, cleaning statues before their repainting and on carving a pedestall and ‘2 Seafish heads for ye cascade’, which sound as though they were replacements.
Meanwhile he retained his London yard and in 1704 won the commission to provide a mural monument to Lady Eland (grand-daughter of the Huguenot Marquis de la Tour de Gouvernet), in Westminster Abbey. Now dismantled, only the bas-relief survives, representing the deceased reclining on a plinth supported by cushions, with a mourning female figure in her left (1). It is signed ‘Nadaud fecit’.
Nadauld was in Yorkshire working at Castle Howard from 1704-10 (11-13, 25, 27-33), so that his work there overlapped with Chatsworth. Indeed one of his bills to the Earl of Carlisle specifies ‘foure little figures called the foure Sezons made at Chattworths’ (12). Initially he was employed in Lord Carlisle’s private apartments carving wooden architraves, cornices and friezes in the first closet and grand cabinet (25) and in 1710 he provided cornices in the saloon and dining room, now the tapestry and music room (33). He also had a considerable involvement in exterior carving on the south and north fronts (30, 31). Some of his sculpture for the garden has not survived but the figure of Apollo is intact, supported on a pyramidal base with a relief apparently representing a Procession to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi (11).
He retired to Derbyshire, dying at Ashford-in-the-Water, near Bakewell (on the Devonshire estate). He was buried at the Presbyterian Chapel, Cliff End, Ashford, where his epitaph states ‘Here lies the body of Henri Nadauld, Carver, who departed this life July 3rd 1723, aged 70 years.’ His descendants continued to live in Ashford until the late nineteenth-century.
IR (Inf. Stuart Band, Christopher Ridgway, Jean Brushfield)
Literary References: Thompson 1949, passim; Murdoch 1988, 240-1
Archival References: Poor Rates, F 1232 (1697); Castle Howard Building Accts, G2/2/27, 22 Oct 1706; G2/2/28, 22 Oct 1706; G2/2/31-34, nd; Chatsworth Building Accts vol vi, fol 1 (April 28-Aug 28, 1700); fol 16, Dec 1700-April 1701; fol 17, Feb 1701; fol 91 (1703); vol vii, fol 57 (1702); fol 63 (1703); fol 82 (1704); fol 93 (1706); vol C/21, fol 27 (1710-11); fol 40 (1713); fol 41 (1714)