Foster 8

Symbolical group illustrating the commercial wealth of Britain, 1729-30. Britannia, seated on a globe under a rock by the sea shore is looking towards the east. Her right hand leans on a Union shield and her left holds a trident. She wears a naval crown. Before her stand three female figures; India offering a casket, Asia leading a camel and Africa a lion. On the left two putti pour out treasures from a cornucopia. On the right, Father Thames in the form of a reed-crowned river-god leans on the rudder of a ship. In the background mercantile labour and commerce are symbolised by ships and a man cording a bale. Marble bas-relief above mantlepiece with bearded caryatids supporting the mantle shelf and a lion’s pelt draped between them. The whole ensemble was removed to the Council Chamber of the India Office.

46 by 62 ins (117 by 157 cms)

Inscribed on rock below Father Thames: ‘M Rysbrack’

Commissioned by the East India Company, 1728

Rysbrack signed an agreement with the Company on 21 November 1728 for ‘performing several Pieces of Sculpture in Statuary Marble therein Specified’ (Court Minutes, 27 November, 1728). The Company were at first displeased with the design and approached Arthur Pond, a pupil of the painter Vanderbanks, for an alternative design which he submitted 'on a half sheet of paper-heightened’. However Rysbrack was eventually given the commission and paid £100 on 22 April 1730 for 'a piece of statuary marble over the Chimney in the Court Room.' There is a reference to the controversy in Add.MS.23,076, f.25r, of 1729: ‘the marble is intirely finisht very beautiful & masterly done admired by all artists & lovers of art’.

Literature: 'The Notebooks of George Vertue, vol. 3, ‘The Walpole Society’, XXII, 1933-34, 37; M.I. Webb, ‘Michael Rysbrack, Sculptor’ (London, 1954), 131, pl.64; M. Archer, ‘The East India Company and British Art’, ‘Apollo’, November 1965, 401-409; K. Eustace, ‘Michael Rysbrack: Sculptor 1694-1770’ (Bristol, 1982). This last catalogue includes an essay by Malcolm Baker, ‘Sculpture for Palladian Interiors: Rysbrack’s reliefs and their setting’ in which he emphasises the influence of the Flemish tradition on Rysbrack especially the work of Artus Quellien. Rysbrack’s sale catalogues show that he owned not only engravings of Quellien’s reliefs, but also terracotta casts of a number of them. The Chimneypiece for the East India Company owes much to Quellien’s ‘Four Continents’ relief on the back pediment of the Amsterdam Town Hall.