DISCOVERY 



243 



\ertue justly found them. His projects miscarried ; 

 his one colossal oil painting " of a Triumph," found 

 no purchaser; his very house in Park Lane, "the 

 lane from Piccadilly to Tyburn," remained unfinished. 

 He lost his money in a scheme for bringing coals to 

 London bv sea ; he lost his estate in Kent by a law- 

 suit ; he lost his reason ; his model of the Trojan 

 Horse, a sort of glorified drinking booth, in whose 

 head twelve men could sit, was wrecked by a gale ; 

 and his only consolation was the devotion of his 

 familv, two sons and a daughter, who lived on in the 

 desolate half-finished house and told \'ertue, who 

 had a long interview with them in 1725, and saw with 

 pitv the ruined relics of poor Bushnell's ambitions, 

 that the world was not worthy of their father. 



Some idea of the peculiarities of Bushnell's style 

 mav be gathered from the Charles L and H. which 

 the writer identified last year in niches on the first 

 landing of the Old Bailey, which, with Gibbons' 

 Charles H. in the Royal Exchange, are now the sole 

 survivors of that lost Pantheon of the English Kings, 

 the Royal Exchange of 1667. The Berninesque 

 draperies, the intense unresting vigour of the lines, 

 make them unique among English sculpture, though, 

 like the statues on Temple Bar, they are marred by a 

 certain amateurishness which is even more con- 

 spicuous in other works, and is whollv lacking only 

 in the splendid figure of Viscount Mordaimt at All 

 Saints', Fulham, his undoubted masterpiece. 



If Pierce, on the strength of his portrait busts, may 

 be called the English Bernini, Bushnell is no less 

 unquestionably the most Berninesque of our decora- 

 tive artists. The proud swell and volume of his 

 draperies, the vitalitv and poise of his figures, are 

 unique in English statues; the Charles L would not 

 be out of place on the Bridge of St. .-^ngelo, nor the 

 Mordaunt, a work finer because intended to be seen 

 at closer quarters, in St. Peter's. 



Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721), best known as a 

 woodcarver, is also a considerable sculptor whose 

 two statues of Charles II. at the Royal Exchange 

 and Chelsea Hospital, and the far finer James II. at 

 \\'hitehall, should endear him to all Londoners. He 

 also executed tombs of varying sizes, from the 

 colossal Campden monument at Exton, Rutland, to 

 the miserably defaced slab to William Courten in St. 

 Mary .Abbot's, Kensington; two excellent fonts, those 

 at St. James's, Piccadilly, and St. Margaret Loth- 

 bury ; and much of the stone work at Hampton Court, 

 as well as various portraits of which the most 

 accessible is the charming medallion of Wren at the 

 R.I.B..-\. To enumerate his masterpieces in wood 

 is quite impossible. From St. Paul's to Canterbury, 

 from Petworth to Cambridge, England is full cf 

 them, and ^^■alpole'^ verdict that he " gave to wood 

 the loose and airy lightness of flowers " remains 

 unassailable. Working in bronze, marble, stone. 



wood, and ivory, raising himself from the humble 

 \outh who, as Stone's nephew told Vertue, " had a 

 shop at Deptford " and was there discovered by 

 Evelvn at work upon " that large cartoon (.f 

 Tintoret," which Evelyn found it hard to forgive the 

 Court for ignoring, he subsequently became Master 

 Carver to every English sovereign from Charles II. 

 to George I. But his head was never turned; he 

 inspired his assistants with his own enthusiasm — one 

 i)f them lost his life in a successful attempt at saving 



Fig. 3. 



-FONT I.\" ST. J.\MES'S, PICCADILLY. By Grinling Gib 



the carved room at Petworth — and remained always 

 what Evelvn had found him as a youth, " very civil, 

 sober, and discreet." He died at a good old age in 

 1 72 1, and was buried near his last bust of Sir Peter 

 Lely in St. Paul's, Covent Garden. 



The great artists of the reign of George II., 

 Scheemaker, Rysbrack, and Roubiliac, are men of 

 different calibre. .A.11 came to England when very 

 young, and all lived and worked in their adopted 

 country. Peter Scheemaker (i6qo-i77i ?), a Fleming 

 of great natural gifts, improved his art by sheer hard 

 work in Italy, and was the first of our sculptors to 

 have an historical conscience. He studied his Edward 



