Edmund Spenser

This statuette in bronze represents the English poet Edmund Spenser (1552/-1599) and is perhaps made by John Cheere.

This is one of a series of statuettes of historical figures or Worthies produces in lead by John Cheere. Ten such subjects, represented in the bronzed plasters formerly at Kirkleatham Hall, Yorkshire, and now owned by the Castle Museum, York, include Spenser, Homer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Pope, Newton, Inigo Jones, Locke, Milton and Shakespeare.

Though statuettes of Rubens, Van Dyck and Inigo Jones are inscribed 'Cheere ft 1749', they are in fact identical with models known to have been executed by John Michael Rysbrack. The fact that these statuettes are inscribed Cheere may only signify that he obtained models or moulds, from which he produced plaster versions, and it is therefore also possible that the remaining signed 'Cheere' plasters were also based on models by others.

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The influence of Peter Scheemaker's memorial in Westminster Abbey was such that the pose seen here became almost de rigueur for British poets.

John Cheere (1709-1787) is the younger brother of the sculptor Sir Henry Cheere and was apprenticed to a haberdasher for a period of seven years from 1725, but later joined his brother's studio. He is most noted for the production of lead figures, which he executed at his own studio at Hyde Park Corner from 1737. Cheere seems to have taken over the yard previously occupied by the Nost family. He also produced plaster figures and busts of eminent contemporaries, including those made for the Turner family at Kirkleatham.