Details of Sculptor

Surname

Quellin

Alternative Surname

First Name

Arnold

Initial of Surname

Q

Year of Birth/Baptism

1653

Flourished

Year of Death

1686

Biographical Details

Artus Quellin was known as Arnold only whilst in England. His career in this country spanned eight years, during which he worked both independently and in partnership with Grinling Gibbons. Quellin is now known to have had a major hand in the commissions in stone executed by Gibbons in the years 1681-83 and 1686.
He was baptised in Antwerp on 13 September 1653, the first of eight children of Artus Quellin II (1625-1700), a distinguished Antwerp sculptor, and Anna Maria, neé Gabron. He was the great-nephew of Artus Quellin I (1609-68), the classicising sculptor responsible for much work at Amsterdam Town Hall. Quellin trained in his father’s workshop, which specialised in church furnishings in stone, marble and oak carved in a decorative baroque style, which were sent out to religious institutions throughout the Spanish Netherlands and also to Denmark. His younger brother Thomas Quellin also became a sculptor and worked briefly in England before settling in Copenhagen. Arnold, who was described by George Vertue as ‘A tall well shaped man [who] wore his own hair’ (Vertue III, 35) married Frances, the daughter of Jan Siberechts of Antwerp, the topographical painter, who was in England some time after 1672 and may have encouraged Quellin to join him.
The first record of Quellin’s presence in England appears in a licence granted on 16 November 1678 to the stone-carver John Vanderstaine, who was permitted to work under Hugh May, the architect at Windsor Castle, and ‘to remaine here wth out molestation together with John Oastes [John Nost I] and Arnold Luellan [Quellin] his servants’ (PRO Domestic Entry Book, Car II, vol LI, 77, quoted in Gunnis 1968, 407). A few months later, on 21 May 1679, the privy council issued another permit granting certain painters and other craftsmen employed at Windsor Castle the right to move freely in London and Westminster. These included Laurens Vandermeulen, Anthony Verhuke and Quellin, all described as ‘servants’ of Grinling Gibbons. Gibbons’s commission at Windsor included an equestrian statue of Charles II on a marble pedestal. Quellin is likely to have carved the relief panels for the pedestal, to designs by Gibbons. The complex composition of martial trophies, musical instruments, crustacea and fruit is carved with a delicacy associated with fruitwood carving, yet here finely realised in a much less tractable material. Gibbons charged £400 for the four panels in 1680 and included charges for a sundial pedestal, probably also Quellin’s work, in the same invoice.
In about 1679 Gibbons accepted his first commission for a church monument and several others followed in 1680. There was a perennial demand for memorials and Gibbons evidently decided to broaden his practice by including work in this field, though it required knowledge of carving materials of which he had limited experience. He turned to Quellin and in 1681 he and Quellin entered a partnership ‘for the undertaking & p’forming of all sort of Carvers works in Stone, joyntly to be undertaken between them’ (Chancery document, Gibbons-Quellin partnership, 25 Oct 1683, PRO C9/415/250; quoted by Beard 1989 (1), 52-3). The two partners were to take equal responsibility for meeting the costs of marbles and stone and to share equally in any losses they might incur. Each would have 7/- a day while either or both of them were working on a contract.
Their most innovative collaborative monument, at Tamworth, Staffs, c1681, commemorates John Ferrers and his son, Sir Humphrey, who had drowned in 1678 (1). The precise role played by each sculptor in the commission is unclear, but Beard’s suggestion that it was designed by Gibbons, and largely or entirely executed by Quellin, carries conviction. The life-sized effigies crouching at either side of the inscription tablet are tense, twisting figures with characterful faces, framed by sumptuous wigs. Above them is a gadrooned sarcophagus, draped with garlands held by cherubs.
The contract for a monument to Archbishop Richard Sterne in York Minster followed about two years later (8). The effigy reclines in a framed recess with looped curtains, his head on one hand. There was a 17th-century precedent for the anachronistic composition in York Minster, the monument to Archbishop Hutton. The deep folds of Sterne’s gown and the band of lace across his chest are delicately rendered and point to Quellin’s hand.
Quellin also took on independent commissions in the early 1680s, for Vertue writes that he ‘made several great & valuable workes. besides Esqr.Thinns Monument Westminster’ (Vertue IV, 35). The monument to Thomas Thynne (4), another tour-de-force, was celebrated in early Westminster Abbey guide books, both for its sensational narrative content and for its crisp execution. Thynne’s semi-draped reclining figure is posed above a pedestal carved with a relief scene of his murder in the London thoroughfare of Pall Mall. A cherub at Thynne’s feet points up to an inscribed reference to the event on a richly draped tablet behind the effigy. James Ralph, a prominent Opposition journalist usually given to acerbic comments, praised the ‘languid dying posture’ of the effigy, ‘the inimitable boy at his feet’, and ‘the execution …equal to the design’ (Ralph 1734, 74-5). The monument evidently pleased the Thynne family for a letter from Quellin to Lord Weymouth and an account book entry in the Thynne archives, both dated October 1685, refer to a later monument for a family member (9). It is possible that the sculptor also provided parapet statues of Boadicea, Alexander the Great, Queen Zenobia and King Henry V for the south front of Longleat.
Gibbons ended his partnership with Quellin acrimoniously in May 1683, and on 25 October he laid his case before the court of chancery, claiming that Quellin had failed to abide by his contractual obligations. A sum of £250 had been owing to the partners since December 1682 and Gibbons maintained that Quellin had collected ‘several great sumes’ of that debt but failed to pass on Gibbons’s share. Furthermore Gibbons had recently been obliged to lay out £220 on marbles, stone and other essentials and Quellin had advanced very little of his agreed half share. Quellin had also proved unreliable in his work, ‘neglecting the p’formance & fineshing’ of contracts. (PRO C9/415/250: Beard 1989 (1), 52-3). The case seems not to have proceeded but the two sculptors went their separate ways.
Quellin’s reputation cannot have been much harmed for he continued to find work without apparent difficulty in the City of London, where there was a considerable demand for statues on new buildings springing up after the Great Fire. His first City associations date from 1682, when he carved a marble statue of Sir John Cutler (10), a generous benefactor and several times master of the Grocers’ Company, for the parlour of their hall. Cutler’s livery company robes, lined in fur and worn over a deep lace collar and buttoned doublet, gave Quellin the opportunity to show his virtuoso skills. A second philanthropic gesture on Cutler’s part, the gift of an anatomical theatre for the new College of Physicians, led the College to order commemorative statues in Portland stone of Cutler and the king from Quellin for niches on the external front of the Theatrum Cutlerianum (11, 12). Cutler is again depicted with assurance in his company robes. The companion statue of Charles II is a less convincing portrait: the king wears a full wig, Roman cuirass and medieval breeches and has an unconvincing contrapposto pose.
One of the most extensive City projects involving sculptors in the 1680s was the new Royal Exchange. In 1683-84, shortly after severing his partnership with Quellin, Gibbons provided a stone statue of Charles II, sponsored by the Merchant Adventurers, for the centre of the piazza. Contemporary commentators voiced no doubt over its authorship, but Vertue, writing 50 years later, alleged that this royal statue was ‘actually the worke of Quelline’ (Vertue IV, 52-53). The statue has been destroyed and no documentation survives but its date makes Quellin’s involvement unlikely. A mayoral precept issued on 11 November 1684 urged the City livery companies each to sponsor a statue for the line of kings, to be sited in niches at first floor level in the piazza of the Exchange. The kings were to be represented ‘in proper habits’ and to be as close as possible in design to their predecessors on the first Exchange, destroyed in 1666 (CLRO, Court of Alderman, Repertory 90, fol 15b). Despite the stricture, London’s leading sculptors John Bushnell, Caius Gabriel Cibber, Edward Pearce, Gibbons and Quellin were all prepared to be involved in the project. Quellin won the largest number of contracts, providing six of the first 14 in the space of two years (13-18). The Tallow-Chandlers considered commissioning from Pearce, Bushnell and Cibber, before fixing on Quellin for the statue of Henry VII (14) and the statue of Edward IV (13), the Ironmongers’ gift, was subcontracted to Quellin by Thomas Cartwright I, the contracting mason for the Exchange. The Grocers’ Company, with whom Quellin already had associations, turned to him for their image of Charles II in garter robes (16). The terracotta model for this statue survives in the Soane Museum and is considered ‘one of the best [portraits] …of the King’s last years’ (Gibson 1997 (2),161).
In December 1685 Quellin signed a contract which shows his workshop was also making lead figures. The Earl of Strathmore ordered four statues of Stuart monarchs for Glamis Castle, cast in ‘hardened’ lead and painted to resemble ‘brass’ (19). The precise garb and height of each was clearly specified. The revealing part of the contract follows. Strathmore also required a portrait bust of himself, ‘in Clay to the Life’, which was to be cast in lead (22). Its dimensions were to be similar to those of a marble statue of Charles II, then in Quellin’s house. This mention of a clay model for the bust makes it clear that it was a bespoke item, but since there is no reference to models for the statues, they were probably stock figures for which Quellin already had moulds. Vertue notes that John Nost I was Quellin’s foreman and since Nost was to become a leading purveyor of lead figures after Quellin’s death, the inference is that garden figures were in production and Nost was either superintending their manufacture and/or learning casting techniques. Lead figure making had the potential to be a lucrative sideline for Quellin: he was able to charge £160 for the Glamis contract, but only earned between £38 and £57 for his time-consuming work on each of the stone Exchange figures. Some time between 1683 and his death three years later, Quellin moved from a house in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields to an ‘old great house in Tower Street <parish of St. Giles’s> near (where is now) the Seaven dyals’ (Vertue IV, 35). The business in lead multiples may well have provided the means to this improved standard of living.
Quellin and Gibbons came together briefly in 1686 for Quellin’s most demanding commission, the altarpiece for the Roman Catholic chapel ordered by James II for the Palace of Whitehall (23). Wren provided the design for a large architectural edifice of several stages framing a painting by Benedetto Gennari. On the upper cornice was a central glory, flanked by four life-sized biblical figures, a pair of cherubs and two life-sized angels. The contract, signed by Gibbons and Quellin, allowed only five and a half months for the work, but it made allowance for 50 or so marblers, sculptors, sawyers, polishers and labourers working under the partners’ control (PRO Works 5/145, fols 184-5). Quellin must have had a major hand in the figures on the upper cornice, particularly the graceful kneeling angels, who twist inwards, looking down towards the altar. The work survived the Whitehall fire of 1694, but was dismantled a year later. The elements were eventually dispersed.
Quellin fell ill before the altarpiece was complete. He made his will on 3 September 1686, but was already so weak that he signed the document with a mark. He left all his leases, goods and chattels, including several figures to his wife, Frances, who carried on the business and acknowleged the final payment for the Glamis commission. She married Quellin’s foreman, John Nost I, and after his death in 1710, went into business with a cousin, Mary Macadam (or Maradam), to whom she left her share of the stock-in-trade. Frances was then in a position to leave bequests totalling over £2,000 to her relatives. Her marble goods and figures housed by her second husband’s cousin, John Nost II, were left to him.
Quellin was a fluent and inventive stone-carver, he had City patrons and he was exploring the new market for lead figures at the time of his death. The success of his workshop must have seemed assured.
IR
Literary References:Vertue IV, 35; Esdaile and Toynbee 1958, 34-43; Gunnis 1968, 313; Apted 1984, 53-8 (repr); Whinney 1988, 118-29; Beard 1989 (1), passim, but esp 51-64, 197; Grove 25, 1996, 813 (Kockelbergh); Gibson 1997 (2), 154-6, 157, 160, 161, 164, 172; Esterly 1998, 45-6,176, 209, Bénezit II, 243
Additional MS Sources: Letter from Quellin to 1st Viscount Weymouth refering to a monument at Longbridge Deverill, Wilts, 8 October 1685, Thynne Papers, XXII, fol 247, (quoted by Gunnis 1968, 313 and Beard 1989 (1), 58); payment for a monument at Longbridge Deverill, Thynne Papers, Account Book 176, 78, 28 October 1685 (quoted by Beard 1989 (1), 58)
Wills: Arnold Quellin, PROB 11/384 fol 332; Frances Nost, proved December 1716, PROB 11/555, fols 195v-196v