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Model for the monument to Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne Church, Derbyshire
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Model for the monument to Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne Church, Derbyshire
Plaster
Width: 114.3cm
Museum number: M44
On display: Museum Corridor - outside the Picture Room
All spaces are in No. 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields unless identified as in No. 12, Soane's first house.
For tours https://www.soane.org/your-visit
Curatorial note
Original plaster model for the figure of Penelope Boothby, daughter of Sir Brooke Boothby (1744-1824) and his wife Susanna Bristow, on her marble monument in Ashbourne church in Derbyshire. Penelope was born on 12 April 1785 and was their only and adored child: her portrait by Joshua Reynolds, painted when she was four and known as 'The Mob Cap' (private collection) became a model for subsequent portraits of children.
When Penelope died on 13 March 1791, aged six, her parents were left distraught and her grieving father commissioned a life-size monument from the sculptor Thomas Banks. Banks' daughter, Lavinia Forster, recorded, 'Sir Booke used to come almost dialy to watch its [the statue's] progress and often wept as he stood beside my father while he was employed on it: for it was one of is productions on which he bestowed much of his own labour, finishing almost every part of it with his own hands' (quoted by E. Hughes). Two years later, this model was exhibited at Somerset House where it was much admired: Queen Charlotte and her daughters were among those who were moved to tears by this simple figure, drenched with sentimentality’ as an eminent authority later put it, the child ‘not dead but sleeping’, in which ‘the theme of Innocence is exploited to the full’. If anything the plaster is even more touching than the marble figure on the finished monument. The model was presented to Soane by the sculptor’s daughter, Mrs Lavinia Forster in 1830. She wrote to a friend on 13 April that ‘in a few days the Model of the Child of sir B[rook] Boothby will be in the gallery of Soane’.
When Penelope died on 13 March 1791, aged six, her parents were left distraught and her grieving father commissioned a life-size monument from the sculptor Thomas Banks. Banks' daughter, Lavinia Forster, recorded, 'Sir Booke used to come almost dialy to watch its [the statue's] progress and often wept as he stood beside my father while he was employed on it: for it was one of is productions on which he bestowed much of his own labour, finishing almost every part of it with his own hands' (quoted by E. Hughes). Two years later, this model was exhibited at Somerset House where it was much admired: Queen Charlotte and her daughters were among those who were moved to tears by this simple figure, drenched with sentimentality’ as an eminent authority later put it, the child ‘not dead but sleeping’, in which ‘the theme of Innocence is exploited to the full’. If anything the plaster is even more touching than the marble figure on the finished monument. The model was presented to Soane by the sculptor’s daughter, Mrs Lavinia Forster in 1830. She wrote to a friend on 13 April that ‘in a few days the Model of the Child of sir B[rook] Boothby will be in the gallery of Soane’.
Literature
Peter Thornton and Helen Dorey, A Miscellany of objects from Sir John Soane's Museum, 1992.
Julius Bryant, Thomas Banks: Britain's first modern sculptor (exhibition catalogue), Sir John Soane's Museum, 2007
Quoted by E. Hughes, 'Smoke and marble: Thomas Banks' monument to Captain George Blagdon Wescott' in Sarah Burnage and Jason Edward (eds), The British School of Sculpture c.1760-1832, 2017, p.184.
Clive J. Easter, 'The monument to Penelope Boothby in St. Oswald's, Ashbourne', The British Art Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Autumn 2023, pp.67-70
Julius Bryant, Thomas Banks: Britain's first modern sculptor (exhibition catalogue), Sir John Soane's Museum, 2007
Quoted by E. Hughes, 'Smoke and marble: Thomas Banks' monument to Captain George Blagdon Wescott' in Sarah Burnage and Jason Edward (eds), The British School of Sculpture c.1760-1832, 2017, p.184.
Clive J. Easter, 'The monument to Penelope Boothby in St. Oswald's, Ashbourne', The British Art Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Autumn 2023, pp.67-70
Exhibition history
Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, The Courtauld Gallery, London, 17 October 2001 - 20 January 2002
Thomas Banks 1735-1805: Britain's First Modern Sculptor, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 21 January - 9 April 2005
Thomas Banks 1735-1805: Britain's First Modern Sculptor, Sir John Soane's Museum, London, 21 January - 9 April 2005
Associated items
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