Details of Sculptor

Surname

Buchard

Alternative Surname

First Name

C

Initial of Surname

B

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

1716

Year of Death

Biographical Details

John Timbs, in his Curiosities of London, 1855, wrote of the ‘equestrian metal statue’ of George I, then in Leicester Square, that it was ‘modelled by C Buchard for the Duke of Chandos, and brought from Canons in 1747, when it was purchased by the inhabitants of the square; it was finely gilt and within memory was regilt’ (1) (Timbs 1855, 783).
The statue, which was cast and gilded by John Nost II, is now missing and is probably destroyed. Gunnis supposed that Buchard (whom he calls ‘Burchard’) was a pupil or assistant of Nost and dated the work to c1716. The Canons accounts suggest that it was installed c1723. No other works by Buchard are currently known.
A print of the Canons statue in the Guildhall Library (Pr W2/LE1) shows that the figure and the horse were very similar to equestrian figures produced by the Nost workshop for the Dublin Corporation and at Stowe and Hackwood Park. The horse is clearly a replica of Hubert Le Sueur’s steed carrying Charles I at Charing Cross, which Nost II applied to the Lord Chamberlain for permission to cast in 1719 (TNA LC/5157, p241). Nost was commissioned to reproduce the Canons statue ‘in all and every respect the same and like manner’ (except in the dress and the carvings on the pedestal) for Sir Richard Grosvenor in 1725 (Gatty 1921, 2, 209).
Literary References: N&Q 5th ser, vol 2, Oct 10 1874, 292; Baker 1949, 141; Gunnis 1968, 70