Details of Sculptor

Surname

Cheere

Alternative Surname

First Name

Sir Henry Bt

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

1703

Flourished

Year of Death

1781

Biographical Details

Cheere ran a major business in monuments, statues and chimneypieces, many of them carved by assitants and sub-contractors working under his direction. His public life is perhaps the most unexpected aspect of his career, for he was the first sculptor fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, was knighted and later became a baronet.
He was born in Clapham, Surrey, in 1703, the son of a prosperous merchant, John Cheere, who was probably of Huguenot origins and took an active role in the local community, regularly attending vestry meetings in the parish church. His younger brother was the lead figure maker, John Cheere. Henry appears to have been educated at Westminster School. He married Helen Randall, a woman of limited education, who pre-deceased him, and they had two sons, the Rev William, who inherited his baronetcy, and died without issue in 1808, and Charles (†1799) whose surviving daughter married Charles Madryll, of Papworth Hall, Cambs and took the name and arms of Cheere after William’s death.There were no direct descendants.
Henry was apprenticed to a member of the Hartshorne family, probably Robert I, in December 1718. By 1726 he had acquired two premises in St Margaret’s Lane, Westminster, one of them a ‘shop’. The location was convenient for the transport of stone and finished work by river and also for commissions destined for Westminster Abbey. Within a year he was collaborating on monuments with the Flemish sculptor, Henry Scheemakers, who introduced him to Continental modelling and carving techniques. Their most ambitious work, signed conspicuously by both sculptors, is the memorial to the Duke of Ancaster, which has an elegant life-sized effigy of a Roman general with cropped hair, set in a grand architectural frame (6). The partnership lasted 7 years, ceasing when Scheemakers left England in 1733.
By 1732, Cheere’s business was expanding. He had three premises, two of them workshops or yards in St Margaret’s Lane, and he was beginning to compete for commissions with the most sought-after sculptor in the metropolis, Michael Rysbrack. Rysbrack was in favour with Queen Caroline, and perhaps expected to win the contract for her statue sited at the entrance of the Queen’s College, Oxford, together with figures emblematic of Law, Physic and Poetry. The commission went to Cheere (99), who also won several other orders for statues of patrons and founders of the University (95, 97, 100). Another coup was the statue of William III for the Bank of England (96), which could also have gone to Rysbrack on the strength of his much-publicised image of King William for Bristol. By the late 1730s Cheere had made connections with the Westminster Abbey authorities, he had carved details for the south-west tower (142) and provided the first of a series of major monuments (20). By 1740 he was sufficiently well-established to move into larger premises in Old Palace Yard and in 1743 he was appointed Carver to the Abbey. He was one of several sculptors who in 1744 provided a design and a model for the pediment of the London Mansion House, which he estimated would cost £450. The contract went to [Sir] Robert Taylor.
During the 1740s Cheere became increasingly involved in public affairs, the ladder to gentrification. He became principal vestryman at St Margaret, Westminster, and in 1742 was sworn a juryman for the parish. He served two terms as a director of the Westminster Fire Office in 1745 and 1746 and in 1749 became Controller of Duties for the Free Fish Market of Westminster. Other distinctions followed, including his appointment as a Justice of the Peace and his election to the Antiquaries in 1750.
These appointments gave Cheere valuable contacts and he spent much time in cultivating men of fashion, among them George Bubb Dodington. His larger memorials began to incorporate rococo elements: the Hardy (25) and John Conduitt (26) make use of small, asymmetrical drapery folds. The ambitious monument to the Earl of Kildare (31), sent to Dublin in 1746, was the most dramatic tableau to come out of the workshop. Cheere’s attention was now beginning to focus on the middle-class market and he sent out increasing numbers of formulaic works, carved with delicate garlands, shells and cherubs’ heads, clad in the polychrome marbles which became his trademark. These could be produced at a relatively modest cost by assistants, but they were nonetheless stylistically recognisable and formed an alternative to the mass-produced classicising monuments available from the workshops of Rysbrack and Peter Scheemakers. Despite increased delegation, their quality remained high and though different hands are evident in the carving of surface textures and draperies, a consistency in composition indicates that it was Cheere who usually provided the drawings and that he retained overall control.
He found a market too for pretty chimneypieces carved with bucolic scenes, often taken from Aesop’s Fables and counted Lord Baltimore, an acolyte of Frederick, Prince of Wales, among his clients for these focal points in rococo interiors (129). He was paid on a number of occasions between 1738 and 1742 for chimneypieces at Ditchley Park, Oxon (114-6, 120, 122-4). The payments described him initially as a mason but by 1739 he was identified as a statuary on notes of hand from the 2nd Earl of Lichfield to Frances and Samuel Child. Among the large surviving number of chimneypiece designs are a number of restrained classical compositions, which were appropriated by the architect George Dance the Elder for five rooms on the principal floor of London’s Mansion House, as well as the pretty colour-washed confections favoured by the Leicester House set.
Cheere was not a member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy, but he had associations with leading members of the set who met at Slaughter’s Coffee House, and in 1748, after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, he travelled to Calais with William Hogarth and the painters Thomas Hudson and Francis Hayman. After 4 or 5 weeks spent on the Continent he returned to London. The style of his work was not much affected by his first-hand exposure to French art: the monument to Admiral Medley combines the familiar English formula of a portrait bust on a sarcophagus with rococo garlands of naturalistic shells and irregularly placed trophies (50). The de Sausmarez has a traditional portrait medallion and sarcophagus; the medallion is supported by asymmetrical putti and the inscribed pedestal is bordered by vigorous s-scrolls (36).
Cheere became one of the first artists to join the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, founded in 1754. In 1755 he gave a paper arguing for a national academy of arts, intended to stimulate a demand for work by English artists and so increase national self-esteeem. He recommended associates from several eminent City families, who were also his patrons, for membership of the Society, and took an active part in judging competitions.
In 1760, in his role as a vestryman, Cheere organised the team of craftsmen who assembled a temporary fountain at Westminster in celebration of George III’s coronation. These included William Jelfe and John Cheere. He was knighted by the King that year after presenting the loyal address from the county of Middlesex. Six years later he received a baronetcy, perhaps as a reward for his loyalty to the Westminster political establishment. By then he had virtually retired from the business and in 1770, after completing an equestrian statue of the Duke of Cumberland which drew censure from Sir Joshua Reynolds for its use of modern dress (102), he sold the Westminster yards. Later that year his former apprentice, Richard Hayward, noted the arrival in Rome of Cheere and his two sons.
The names of 7 of his apprentices are recorded in the London Apprenticeship Records, two of whom gained independent reputations. [Sir] Robert Taylor began his indentures in 1732, later became a major country house architect, and like Cheere received a baronetcy in recognition of his contribution in the public sphere. Richard Hayward, who joined the workshop in 1742, clearly took a major role in the workshop, for £1,901 was paid to him from Cheere’s bank account in 1746. The size of these sums suggests that Hayward was purchasing marbles as well as paying assistants and sub-contractors. He was a major purchaser at Cheere’s posthumous auction. William Collins, who was either an apprentice or an assistant, was described by J T Smith as ‘the greatest modeller of chimney-tablets of his day’ and is likely to have been responsible for many of the distinctive chimney-surrounds sent out by the workshop. He was a beneficiary in Cheere’s will. William Powell and William Woodman II were both employed as sub-contractors (11, 16). Cheere is also thought to have employed Louis François Roubiliac during the 1730s and 1740s as an assistant principally engaged in modelling. J T Smith believed it was Cheere who introduced Roubiliac to Jonathan Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and who suggested that, since Tyers wanted a statue emblematic of music, he could not do better than have a statue of Handel in the guise of Apollo.
The sculptor amassed a fortune of over £100,000, partly by taking advantage of the expanding London market for funerary monuments, but also by making large investments in the property market. He left his elder son a number of houses in Parliament Street, Canon Row, Charing Cross, the Strand and Church Court. He died in Clapham on 21 July 1787 and was buried in the family vault at St Paul’s, Clapham, where his brother John and his two sons in due course joined him.
In 1745 George Vertue (whose patriotism matched Cheere’s) named Cheere with Francis Bird, Rysbrack and Roubiliac as practitioners whose output compared with anything being created on the Continent. Cheere’s inclusion in this galaxy confirms that work of a consistently high standard was sent out under his name and endorses his talent for business organisation and quality control.
A considerable number of works have been attributed to Cheere, several of them illustrated in the Conway Library files (C Lib). Only convincingly-argued attributions have been included in the list below.
IR
Literary References: Reynolds, Discourse X, 1780, line 386; Smith 1828, II, 94, 313; Esdaile typescript, nd, 1; Webb 1957 (3), 115-70; Webb 1958 (2), 232-40, 274-8; Carswell and Dralle 1965, passim; Girouard 1966, 188-90, 227; Gunnis 1968, 97-99, 310; Physick 1969, 34; Whinney 1971, 63; Colvin V, 1973-76, 428-30; Friedman and Clifford 1974; Stainton 1983, 13, 20; Rococo 1984, F 10, 278-87; Allan 1984, 204-7; Baker 1986 (2), 143-60; Whinney 1988, 191-7; Craske 1992, 40-81; Jeffery 1993, 159; Baker 1995 (1), 90-108; Bindman and Baker 1995, passim; Craske 2000, 94-113; Baker 2000, passim (with attributions); ODNB (Baker and Craske); Friedman 2004, 96-7; Craske 2007, passim
Archival References: Bank acct, Hoare, 1736 -1737, 1744 -1747; Watch Rates, Old Palace Yard, WCA, E.362-368 (1740-46), E 369-377 (1746-52) E 481 (1777); lease of a tenement in St Margaret, Westminster to Cheere, 18 February 1736, WAM 65639; Ch W, St Margaret, Westminster, 1762, E 136, E 3293/5, 5-10; Dillon DIL I/p/4ai-o (Lichfield to Samuel Child); WFO, GCB, 343/75 (17 Oct 1745, 17 Oct 1746)
Will: PROB 11/1073 fol 95, proved 31 January 1781
Miscellaneous Drawings: Studies and designs for monuments, VAM 8933; chimneypieces and decorative details including chimneypiece designs for the Mansion House, VAM 8934 E28 ; 28 designs for chimneypieces, colour washed, VAM D.715 (1-28)-1887; misc designs by Cheere and others, VAM 4910; design for a wall-monument, VAM E.640-1949; designs for monuments by Cheere and others, VAM 93.H.32. Among these drawings are sketches, highly finished coloured designs and copy or trace drawings.
Auction Catalogues: Cheere 1770