DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68074#0219
X
ROUBILIAC’S SHAKESPEARES, AND SOME
MISCELLANEOUS WORKS
‘ The frenchified head of the “ Sweet Swan of Avon R. B. Wheler in the Gentleman's
Magazine, 1813, i, p. 4.
‘ The circumstances of difficulty enhance the value of a marble.’—Dr. Johnson on Sculpture.
HIMSELF the son of a refugee, Garrick naturally turned to Roubiliac
when, as ‘ Great Shakespeare’s Priest ’1 he required a statue (Plate xxxix a)
for the Shakespeare temple erected in his garden at Hampton in 1756;2 Rey-
nolds was interested enough in the commission to paint a copy of the Chandos
portrait for the sculptor’s use as Kneller before him had copied it for Dryden,
thereby inspiring that Epistle to the Painter whose most famous lines,
Shakespeare, thy gift, I place before my sight;
With awe I ask his blessing ere I write
can hardly have failed to occur both to Reynolds and to Garrick.s
But Reynolds’s copy, instead of being married to immortal verse, was sold
at the Roubiliac sale, with seven other pictures, for ten shillings, and though
subsequently bought by Malone for three guineas and shown by him to Sir
Joshua, who vouched for its authenticity, it is now completely lost.
The copy, nevertheless, did not satisfy Roubiliac, who himselfpainted another,
which was seen by George Steevens before 1794;4 his account of it, however,
is tinged with his dislike of the Chandos portrait, which he was then engaged
in depreciating in favour of the Felton,
‘ A living artist who was apprenticed to
statuary undertook to execute the figure of
picture was borrowed ; but that it was, even
1 A phrase from his epigram to Mrs. Colman
(7 October, 1776) sent with a cup made of the
famous mulberry tree and preserved at the
Garrick Club.
3 Walpole’s Letters, vol. iv, p. 2. ‘John and I
are just going to Garrick’s, with a grove of cypresses
in our hands. He has built a temple to his master
Shakespeare and I am going to adorn the outside,
since his modesty would not let me decorate it
within as I proposed ’, with mottoes, that is.
3 It is worth noting that George Vertue ex-
and need not be taken too literally:
Roubiliac declares, that when that elegant
Shakespeare for Mr. Garrick, the Chandos
then, regarded as a performance of suspicious
pressly states what at least one biographer of
Dryden has doubted, that the famous lines were
actually written on the copy of the portrait given
by Kneller to Dryden. Lord Berkeley showed
Vertue the picture, as he ‘ designed to purchase
it from a relation of Dryden’s ’ (B.M. Add. MS.
23071, f. 13a). For the contrary view see the note
on Dryden’s Epistle to Kneller in the Globe Edition
of Dryden’s Poems.
4 European Magazine, 1794, p. 277, n. 2.
ROUBILIAC’S SHAKESPEARES, AND SOME
MISCELLANEOUS WORKS
‘ The frenchified head of the “ Sweet Swan of Avon R. B. Wheler in the Gentleman's
Magazine, 1813, i, p. 4.
‘ The circumstances of difficulty enhance the value of a marble.’—Dr. Johnson on Sculpture.
HIMSELF the son of a refugee, Garrick naturally turned to Roubiliac
when, as ‘ Great Shakespeare’s Priest ’1 he required a statue (Plate xxxix a)
for the Shakespeare temple erected in his garden at Hampton in 1756;2 Rey-
nolds was interested enough in the commission to paint a copy of the Chandos
portrait for the sculptor’s use as Kneller before him had copied it for Dryden,
thereby inspiring that Epistle to the Painter whose most famous lines,
Shakespeare, thy gift, I place before my sight;
With awe I ask his blessing ere I write
can hardly have failed to occur both to Reynolds and to Garrick.s
But Reynolds’s copy, instead of being married to immortal verse, was sold
at the Roubiliac sale, with seven other pictures, for ten shillings, and though
subsequently bought by Malone for three guineas and shown by him to Sir
Joshua, who vouched for its authenticity, it is now completely lost.
The copy, nevertheless, did not satisfy Roubiliac, who himselfpainted another,
which was seen by George Steevens before 1794;4 his account of it, however,
is tinged with his dislike of the Chandos portrait, which he was then engaged
in depreciating in favour of the Felton,
‘ A living artist who was apprenticed to
statuary undertook to execute the figure of
picture was borrowed ; but that it was, even
1 A phrase from his epigram to Mrs. Colman
(7 October, 1776) sent with a cup made of the
famous mulberry tree and preserved at the
Garrick Club.
3 Walpole’s Letters, vol. iv, p. 2. ‘John and I
are just going to Garrick’s, with a grove of cypresses
in our hands. He has built a temple to his master
Shakespeare and I am going to adorn the outside,
since his modesty would not let me decorate it
within as I proposed ’, with mottoes, that is.
3 It is worth noting that George Vertue ex-
and need not be taken too literally:
Roubiliac declares, that when that elegant
Shakespeare for Mr. Garrick, the Chandos
then, regarded as a performance of suspicious
pressly states what at least one biographer of
Dryden has doubted, that the famous lines were
actually written on the copy of the portrait given
by Kneller to Dryden. Lord Berkeley showed
Vertue the picture, as he ‘ designed to purchase
it from a relation of Dryden’s ’ (B.M. Add. MS.
23071, f. 13a). For the contrary view see the note
on Dryden’s Epistle to Kneller in the Globe Edition
of Dryden’s Poems.
4 European Magazine, 1794, p. 277, n. 2.