Beschreibung:

A lead shepherd boy by John Cheere
mid 18th century on stone base 132cm.; 52ins high and on associated gritstone pedestal, 220cm.; 87ins high overall John Cheere was first in partnership with his brother Sir Henry Cheere but took over John Nost~s yard and his moulds for lead figures in about 1739. Until his death in 1787 he was the leading producer of lead statuary as well as working in plaster. Contemporary accounts of his yard, which was situated on Hyde Park Corner indicate that his oeuvre was very varied and included rustic figures as well as classical statues and busts from antiquity. During the 18th Century, masked balls or fete champetres set in Arcadian settings of country houses or in London~s Ranelagh and Vauxhall pleasure gardens, were immensely popular. These were attended by fashionable society dressed as milkmaids, fruit and flower girls or in the costume of the commedia dell~arte. Most popular of all, however, were the costumes of a shepherd or shepherdess. Numerous contemporary references to their popularity remain. The Spectator of 1711 recounts: | There is not a girl in town but let her have her will in going to a masque and she shall dress as a shepherdess.| J.T. Smith in his | Life of Nollekens| tells of a visit he paid with Nollekens and his wife to an old lady, |quite the old school,| who lived near Hamstead Heath . | Her evergreens were cut into the shapes of various birds, and Cheere~s leaden painted figures of a shepherd and Sheperdess were objects of as much admiration with her neighbours as they were with my Lord Ogleby, who thus accosts his friend in the second scene of the popular current comedy ~Clandestine Marriage~: ~Great improvements, indeed Mr Stirling, Wonderful Improvements! .......You have as many figures as the man at Hyde Park Corner| This fascination with Arcadia was reflected in many art forms - for instance porcelain figures, but also in lead statuary in which numerous models were produced. Unlike porcelain however, the depredations of the weather and the intrinsic value of the material have resulted in very few period lead figures from the 18th Century surviving.