PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE BRITISH COLLECTION: THEIR COLLECTION OF JEWELS

The different strands, the different families, whose individual collecting taste informs the Lloyd-Baker collection are unusually diverse. The earliest is probably that of John Sharp, Archbishop of York (1645-1714) who assembled one of the greatest collections of coins and historical curios towards the end of the 17th century. His descendant Dr John Sharp (1723-98) was the patron of both Gainsborough and Zoffany and his brother Granville’s literary output was one of the determining factors in bringing about the abolition of slavery in this country.

In the 19th century Sharp’s son-in-law was the natural scientist and collector Thomas Lloyd Baker (1777-1841) and his son Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker (1807-1886) was an avid and encyclopedic collector of prints.

It was during the 19th century that these collections came together at the family’s seat in Gloucestershire, which to some extent blurred their individual backgrounds; a situation which was compounded by the lack of any early inventories. Indeed the earliest that appears to survive is that taken shortly before the death of Granville Edwin Lloyd-Baker in 1923.which included the items offered in this sale It seems reasonable to suppose that the ‘Parker Pieces’ (lots 1-3) were collected by Archbishop Sharp. The first mention of these in the collection appeared in Way’s article in the Archeological Journal in 1862. The first mention of the parures and associated cameos appears in the 1923 inventory. It was clearly known by then that they had belonged to the Empress Josephine and that by tradition the cameos were given to her by her sister-in-law Caroline Bonaparte. Sometime later they were lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum with this provenance and have been displayed as such ever since.

How did these magnificent items come into this family’s collection? The lack of documentary evidence means that it must remain a matter of conjecture. The likeliest source would appear to be through Catherine Lascelles (c 1840-1890), the wife of Granville Edwin Lloyd-Baker. She was the granddaughter of Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood and perhaps more relevantly the grand-niece of his elder brother Edward ‘Beau’ Lascelles (c.1764-1814). (There was also a further connection as G.E..Lloyd Baker’s mother and the Countess of Harewood were sisters).

That ‘Beau’ Lascelles might have acquired such pieces makes perfect sense. He was one of the principal buyers of French works of art (including the magnificent Sevres now at Harewood House in Yorkshire)) in the wake of the French Revolution. In this he was often a competitor with The Prince Regent and the story goes the latter rushed round to his townhouse in Hanover Square immediately on hearing of Lascelles’ death to see what might be available, such was the significance of the pieces he had collected. One of the firms that had useful connections in Paris and who supplied Lascelles was Vulliamy & Sons in Pall Mall. It might well have been through them that these works of art arrived in this country. This must remain speculation but the quality and provenance of these pieces certainly accords with the entry in Thomas Raikes’ Journal. In recalling Lascelles he wrote ‘ His house though not large was a museum of curiosities collected with the greatest of taste and judgement..... His life was luxurious but short as he died at the age of fifty,’

Few objects embody the Neoclassical fashion for engraved gems as well as this extraordinary choker. The necklace is composed of a series of nine beautiful cameos and ten carnelian cameos set on cloth and embellished with enamelled gold mounts. The choker is part of the group of jewels thought to have been assembled by Empress Joséphine, wife of Emperor Napoleon I, and later acquired by the Earls of Harewood. As has been eloquently outlined by Diana Scarisbrick FSA, the Empress was an obsessive collector of the glyptics. This thirst for the finest engraved gems led her husband the Emperor Napoleon, in 1808, to remove a selection of glyptics from the Cabinet des médailles, the celebrated gem cabinet of the Kings of France (which today survives in the Bnf, Paris), so that they could be set within an elaborate parure, which proved too heavy for the Empress to wear.

The present choker has been carefully conceived in order to display a series of mythological heads and scenes, as well as portrait heads, which are complementary but tell the story of glyptic art from the Italian Renaissance to the age of Neoclassicism. The cameos include an Italian 18th-century group with Venus seated amongst cupids and fishing for the ‘genius of charm’, the model for which is recorded in the Paoletti collection of glass moulds for impressions recently published by Lucia Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli (op.cit., tome I, 5, no. 287; ‘Li geni delli piaceri pescati da Venera coll’Amo dela bellezza, e delli vezzi’). The necklace is mounted with a late 18th-century cameo with Medusa, one of the archetypal images of ancient gem engraving. Roman examples, distinguished by a haunted expression imbued with pathos, are found in the greatest gem collections, including a 3rd-century AD example in the Royal Collection (inv. no. RCIN 65605).

These mythical scenes are interspersed with portrait heads of unknown ancient worthies, which compare with examples such as the 17th/ 18th century head of a balding man in the Beverley Collection of Gems at Alnwick Castle, published by Scarisbrick, Boardman and Wagner (op. cit., p. 79, no. 71). The cameo with a bust of Minerva derives from a model which has been widely described as 17th-century (and often with different attributes and thus identifications); compare with the 17th-century jugate portrait of Alexander (the present model) and Olympias in the Royal Collection (inv. no. RCIN 65237). The Cameo with Venus at the bath before an urn is derived from ancient prototypes such as the two 1st-century AD cameos with similar compositions at Alnwick (cf Scarisbrick et al, op. cit., pp. 48-49, nos. 41, 42). The characterful head of Hercules follows a model seen in Raspe-Tassie (no. 5589) which probably has its roots in the head of the Hercules Farnese today in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples. For the cameo with a satyr, compare with the circa 1800 example sold in these rooms on 9 July 2020, lot 39. Both derive from ancient prototypes: see, for example, the possibly 1st-century sardonyx cameo with a faun in the Beverley Collection of Gems at Alnwick Castle (illustrated in Scarisbrick, et al, op. cit., p. 47, no. 40).

RELATED LITERATURE

R. E. Raspe and W. Tassie, A Descriptive Catalogue of a General Collection of Ancient and Modern Engraved Gems Cameos as well as Intaglios, London, 1791; K. Aschengreen Piacenti and J. Boardman, Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London, 2008; L. Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli, La collezione Paoletti, Stampi in vetro per impronte di intagli e cammei, Rome, 2013; D. Scarisbrick, C. Wagner and J. Boardman, The Beverley Collection of Gems at Alnwick Castle, London and New York, 2017.