Head-and-shoulders classical-style plaster bust of Admiral Sir John Jervis, on a round socle. The bust is one of a set of four (see also SCU0016, SCU0031, and SCU0085) made in 1809 for the architect Daniel Asher Alexander for the Royal Naval Asylum at Greenwich, which Alexander was then constructing (1807-10) around the Queen's House. The Asylum combined with the Greenwich (later Royal) Hospital School in the 1820s and, after this moved to Suffolk in 1933, the buildings became those of the National Maritime Museum (est. 1934).


Alexander was encouraged to employ Chantrey by James Montgomery, whose portrait Chantrey had just painted. All four busts have usually been presumed to be copies from works by others. The sitter is shown with a toga or robe wrapped high round his shoulders, but with the star of the Order of the Bath rather anachronistically pinned on the left breast.

While the Chantrey set from which this comes are usually thought to be copies from monuments to the sitters in St Paul's Cathedral, it cannot be so in this instance as E. H. Baily's monument to St Vincent was only erected after his death in 1823. The only other bust of St Vincent mentioned by Gunnis is that in his burial place, St Michael's church at Stone, Staffs., which Gunnis states is by William Whitelaw.

As indicated above, Chantrey was a painter before he became a sculptor and this set of plaster busts for the Royal Naval Asylum is one of his earliest sculptural commissions.

This is a monochrome studio photograph, from an existing Museum negative showing the bust before conservation undertaken in 2001-02: it will in due course be replaced by a directly taken digital one. To discuss ordering a high-quality image please contact the Picture Library.