Strength and Serenity

VIEW FULL CATALOGUE     REQUEST A VALUATION     CONTACT A SPECIALIST

Set in the heart of the Essex countryside, Barrington Hall at Hatfield Broad Oak now stands as an imposing example of neo-Jacobean design. Before its Victorian remodelling, however, the house began life quite differently: as an elegant expression of mid-Georgian Palladian taste. Its classical façades and sweeping parkland once formed the setting for a remarkable ensemble of sculpture, conceived around 1740 when John Shales Barrington inherited the estate and embarked on an ambitious rebuilding campaign with the architect Joseph Sanderson. 

Recent research undertaken by our Fine Interiors specialists has shone a light on two important works from the hall’s original scheme: a monumental Farnese Hercules and a reclining River God, both carved in limestone and rich in classical symbolism. Together, they reveal the intellectual and artistic ambitions that underpinned the Hall’s original Palladian design; a vision of moral strength and natural abundance expressed through the language of antiquity.

^{A carved limestone statue after the antique, first half of the 18th century, The Farnese Hercules (£15,000-20,000)}

The Farnese Hercules

The Farnese Hercules at Barrington Hall follows one of the most celebrated sculptures of classical antiquity, a Roman marble of about 200 CE now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples. That ancient statue, itself derived from a 4th-century BCE bronze by Lysippos, depicts the hero resting on his club, draped with the skin of the Nemean lion – an image of exhausted strength and stoic virtue. 

The Barrington example, carved in stone and weathered by long outdoor exposure, was likely commissioned around 1740 as part of the Hall’s original Palladian design. Engravings from 1777 and 1819, together with a surviving architectural drawing by Joseph Sanderson (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum), depict a group of three figures on the south pediment. Parish records describing the Victorian remodelling of the Hall records that these figures – Hercules, Minerva, and Venus – were later moved to pedestals in the surrounding gardens. The central figure, likely to be Hercules, had once crowned the façade before being relocated in the nineteenth century, where it was noted in The Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1882 and subsequently illustrated in photographs of the Hall. 

The choice of Hercules perfectly embodied the ideals of mid-Georgian taste: classical strength, moral virtue, and heroic endurance. Comparable figures adorned the façades and gardens of Stourhead, Wrest Park, and other great English houses of the period. The composition also invites comparison with the work of Peter Scheemakers (1691–1781), whose statuary at Rousham, Oxfordshire – including The Dying Gaul and A Lion Attacking a Horse – embodies the same translation of classical models into the moral and decorative language of the English Palladian garden.

Barrington Hall’s decorative programme also included refined carved mahogany joinery and rococo plasterwork supplied by the sculptor brothers Henry and John Cheere. Both trained alongside each other in the workshops of John Nost II. After Nost’s death, Henry set up business on his own, but in 1739 he and John took the lease on their former boss’s old yard on Piccadilly near Hyde Park Corner, which John was to run for the next 50 years. The brothers were active in the 1730s–1740s and are documented as working on the fireplaces and staircases at Barrington. Their Hyde Park Corner workshop produced numerous cast and carved figures after antique models – including versions of the Farnese Hercules – in lead, plaster, and occasionally stone. William Hogarth’s 1753 print The Analysis of Beauty vividly depicts the interior of Cheere’s studio, crowded with such casts, reflecting the ready availability of classical imagery for discerning patrons.

^{Español: Madrid. Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Hércules Farnesio. | Miguel Hermoso Cuesta | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0}

Henry Cheere’s surviving large-scale stone figures, such as Poetry, Physick, Law, and Caroline, Queen Consort of George II at The Queen’s College, Oxford, show that his workshop could produce monumental stone sculpture for important architectural commissions. The Barrington Hercules fits naturally within this tradition – possibly carved under the Cheeres’ direction or by a mason working from their models. 

A related female allegorical figure attributed to Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781), Prudence – sold at Bonhams in 2020 and likewise believed to have originated from Barrington Hall – shares the same scale, pose, and carving technique. The choice of pediment figures – Hercules flanked by Venus and Minerva – suggests a programmatic reference to The Choice of Hercules, a popular Baroque and Rococo allegory symbolising humankind’s struggle between Vice and Virtue. If so, the so-called Prudence may in fact embody Virtue herself, misidentified by later observers – a confusion entirely plausible for the period. 

^{A carved limestone statue after the antique, first half of the 18th century, a river god (£10,000-15,000)}

The River God 

In contrast to the upright heroism of Hercules, the River God embodies the serenity of nature. The reclining, bearded figure, half-draped and leaning on an overturned urn, follows classical prototypes such as the Tiber and Nile statues of ancient Rome. Also carved from limestone and weathered by centuries outdoors, the sculpture likely served as a garden or terrace ornament, positioned beside a water feature within the Hall’s formal landscape. 

From at least the mid-nineteenth century, local sources record the figure “at the overflow of the lake,” confirming its connection to the estate’s waterways (Essex Record Office, Essex Parish History, “Notes on Barrington Hall, Hatfield Broad Oak,” 1970, ref. T/P 446A/1). Its reclining pose and horizontal format clearly mark it as a piece designed to complement the movement of water rather than to crown an architectural elevation. 

^{River god (Arno). Pio Clementino Museum; Octagonal Court. Vatican museums. © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons /} 

^{CC BY-SA 3.0}

Comparable river-god figures can still be seen in other eighteenth-century gardens – at Rousham in Oxfordshire, where William Kent placed languid river deities beside pools and cascades; at Stowe, Stourhead, and Hampton Court, where similar figures symbolised fertility and the harmony of man and nature. The Barrington example belongs firmly to this Palladian vocabulary of landscape allegory, balancing the moral heroism of Hercules with the pastoral abundance of the English landscape ideal. 

Stylistically, the River God shares the same modelling and handling of drapery as the Hercules, suggesting that both were created during the same building campaign under John Shales Barrington. The association with the Cheere brothers’ workshop — already responsible for the Hall’s interior ornament — lends further weight to the idea of a coordinated decorative programme uniting architecture, sculpture, and landscape.

Strength and Serenity United 

Viewed together, the Hercules and River God from Barrington Hall capture two complementary aspects of eighteenth-century taste: the moral rigour of classical heroism and the contemplative grace of nature. Each served a distinct role within the estate’s design – one crowning the house, the other animating the garden – yet both arose from the same fascination with antiquity that animated Georgian Britain. 

Their survival not only deepens our understanding of Barrington Hall’s original appearance but also sheds new light on the reach of the Cheere brothers’ practice beyond London. These sculptures remind us that the English country house was not merely a home but a stage for ideas – where art, architecture, and landscape came together to express an ideal of virtue, learning, and harmony with the natural world. 

We are very grateful to Dr Matthew Craske for his help in cataloguing these sculptures.

Tuesday 9 & Wednesday 10 December | 10am

fineinteriors@sworder.co.uk | 01279 817778

BROWSE PREVIEW