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拍品專文
Offered in the present lot is a highly sensitive and doubtlessly personal representation of a dog, which is generally thought to be of the Bichon Frisé breed. Its attribution to the controversial, but highly gifted sculptress, Anne Seymour Damer, is based on stylistic comparisons to two similar compositions; a marble group of Sleeping Dogs carved in 1784 for Damer's brother in-law, the 3rd Duke of Richmond for Goodwood, Sussex and a terracotta Shag Dog at Chillington Hall, Staffordshire.
Damer was the granddaughter of the 4th Duke of Argyll, and the wife of the eldest son of Lord Milton, later Lord Dorchester. After her husband's suicide in 1776 she was taken in by her cousin (and godfather), Horace Walpole, from whom she later inherited his beloved home, Strawberry Hill. Walpole fervently supported Anne's pursuit for excellence in the art of sculpture, so much so that he openly compared her skills to those of Praxitiles and Bernini, indeed, in a letter of 1781 to Sir Horace Mann, Walpole wrote '...in Italy she will be a prodigy, She models like Bernini, and has excelled the moderns in the similitudes of her busts'.
As a female member of late Georgian aristocracy, Damer was highly unusual in her pursuit of a career in the world of sculpture. And while Walpole's praise for her yielded much criticism - she being considered as nothing more than a competent amateur - she became an 'honorary exhibitor' of 32 works at the Royal Academy (1784-1818) and the author of numerous public monuments throughout Britain.
As an 'amateur' in her art she was fortunate enough not to have been affected by the demands of the market, allowing her, therefore, to sculpt according to her own inclinations. This is perhaps what motivated her to carve her highly sensitive, albeit sentimental, portraits of animals.
As mentioned above, the attribution of the present lot to Damer is based on compelling stylistic similarities between the two groups in Goodwood and Chillington. The latter, a similarly sized terracotta model of a single dog, is perhaps closest in its technical approach. Firstly, it is a portrait of the same breed of dog, but beyond that, it is exemplary of the interest the artist had in the deeply carved, overlapping, locks of fur. In relation to the Goodwood pair of Spaniels (?), however, Damer approached the composition in a much more playful and emotive fashion. The pair are carved with less attention to the sharpness of the details, but with greater expression and humour. Furthermore, while the Chillington terracotta represents the dog in an adoring, upward, gaze, the Goodwood marble (and the present lot) are represented in a casual every-day pose.
Although Percy Noble (op. cit.) pieced together a relatively complete inventory of Damer's works in 1908, her dying wish to destroy all her personal documents has resulted in an academic void regarding the artist's life. Of the six sculptures of dogs that Damer exhibited at the Royal Academy, three are known to have been terracottas, one the Goodwood group and another, a lost portrait of her whippet, Fidele. This leaves one tantalisingly ambiguous entry from 1800 of A Lap-dog. A second possibility lies in a reference Noble makes to another unaccounted for marble (op. cit., p. 81). He relates that Damer had presented Queen Charlotte with a marble dog, which, on her death passed into the collection of her eldest daughter Elizabeth. After Elizabeth's death in 1840, her possessions were bequeathed to her siblings and friends in England. The whereabouts of that dog also remain unknown.
Damer was the granddaughter of the 4th Duke of Argyll, and the wife of the eldest son of Lord Milton, later Lord Dorchester. After her husband's suicide in 1776 she was taken in by her cousin (and godfather), Horace Walpole, from whom she later inherited his beloved home, Strawberry Hill. Walpole fervently supported Anne's pursuit for excellence in the art of sculpture, so much so that he openly compared her skills to those of Praxitiles and Bernini, indeed, in a letter of 1781 to Sir Horace Mann, Walpole wrote '...in Italy she will be a prodigy, She models like Bernini, and has excelled the moderns in the similitudes of her busts'.
As a female member of late Georgian aristocracy, Damer was highly unusual in her pursuit of a career in the world of sculpture. And while Walpole's praise for her yielded much criticism - she being considered as nothing more than a competent amateur - she became an 'honorary exhibitor' of 32 works at the Royal Academy (1784-1818) and the author of numerous public monuments throughout Britain.
As an 'amateur' in her art she was fortunate enough not to have been affected by the demands of the market, allowing her, therefore, to sculpt according to her own inclinations. This is perhaps what motivated her to carve her highly sensitive, albeit sentimental, portraits of animals.
As mentioned above, the attribution of the present lot to Damer is based on compelling stylistic similarities between the two groups in Goodwood and Chillington. The latter, a similarly sized terracotta model of a single dog, is perhaps closest in its technical approach. Firstly, it is a portrait of the same breed of dog, but beyond that, it is exemplary of the interest the artist had in the deeply carved, overlapping, locks of fur. In relation to the Goodwood pair of Spaniels (?), however, Damer approached the composition in a much more playful and emotive fashion. The pair are carved with less attention to the sharpness of the details, but with greater expression and humour. Furthermore, while the Chillington terracotta represents the dog in an adoring, upward, gaze, the Goodwood marble (and the present lot) are represented in a casual every-day pose.
Although Percy Noble (op. cit.) pieced together a relatively complete inventory of Damer's works in 1908, her dying wish to destroy all her personal documents has resulted in an academic void regarding the artist's life. Of the six sculptures of dogs that Damer exhibited at the Royal Academy, three are known to have been terracottas, one the Goodwood group and another, a lost portrait of her whippet, Fidele. This leaves one tantalisingly ambiguous entry from 1800 of A Lap-dog. A second possibility lies in a reference Noble makes to another unaccounted for marble (op. cit., p. 81). He relates that Damer had presented Queen Charlotte with a marble dog, which, on her death passed into the collection of her eldest daughter Elizabeth. After Elizabeth's death in 1840, her possessions were bequeathed to her siblings and friends in England. The whereabouts of that dog also remain unknown.