ATTRIBUTED TO THE WORKSHOP OF JOHN CHEERE, CIRCA 1770

John Cheere (b.1709-d.1787), the younger brother of the sculptor Sir Henry Cheere (b.1703-d.1781), acquired the renown lead workshop or 'yard' near Hyde Park Corner from the celebrated van Nost family in about 1737. He continued their tradition of supplying lead garden statuary and also busts, in lead and plaster, often after other artists, for the decoration of libraries and staircases. His most prolific works were; a gilt equestrian statue of William III for St James' Square, London, in 1739, and in 1751 a marble statue of George II for the market place St Helier, Jersey. David Garrick, the actor, commissioned a life-size lead figure of William Shakespeare for Stratford-upon-Avon and in 1774, Cheere supplied Wedgwood with plaster busts of Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle and Homer for reproduction in black basalt. Figures of Flora and Augustus at Longford Castle, Wiltshire, the River God at Stourhead and perhaps his most outstanding commission, the ninety-eight lead statues purchased by the Portuguese minister in London for the royal palace of Queluz, near Lisbon in 1756.
The 'Uffizi' Faun, also known as: Faun with Clappers, Faun with Crotale, the Medici Faun and Le Petit Faune. It is not known precisely when the ancient marble of the Dancing Faun reached Florence, or indeed where or when it was originally excavated, but it swiftly established itself in the popular imagination, and enjoys a prominent situation in Zoffany's celebrated painting of the Tribuna of the Uffizi in the Royal Collection (Haskell and Penny, loc. cit., and p. 57, fig. 30).