A Fitting Resemblance

05 Sep 2011

Two recent posts on this blog have dealt with images of Nevil Maskelyne made during his lifetime or, possibly, made of other people who are now assumed to be Nevil Maskelyne (see Becky's 'Mystery Astronomer' and Richard's 'Ovidian Tribute to Nevil Maskelyne'). This post relates the production of a bust of the Astronomer Royal some twenty years after his death, and the difficulties encountered when trying to match up the new object with previous pictures and memories. The reflections of one contemporary observer of this process have provided intriguing material for the historian about Maskelyne's character and physical appearance, while raising even more possibly unresolvable queries. The letters and some of the images referred to are part of the recently acquired Maskelyne papers that I have been working with during my internship with the ROG this summer.

When Nevil Maskelyne passed away in February 1811, his family had a cast (or death mask) taken of him in order to have a bust made from it at an appropriate time.[1] Though his daughter Margaret described him as looking "most beautiful after death," it did not turn out to be helpful for its appointed task. The bust was made in 1830 by Robert William Sievier who produced more than 50 portrait busts and statues for the Royal Academy during his outstanding career.  Sievier was given two images of Nevil Maskelyne and the cast to work from. But when the Rev John Prowett went to view the bust on behalf of Margaret, though praising Sievier's skill, he declared the pictures and the cast unfit for purpose.[2] In putting his thoughts down in writing, he also provided a very warm description of Maskelyne's character and physical features:

"Mr Sievier is in a difficult situation as to producing a Bust that shall exhibit a just resemblance of Dr Maskelyne. He has two pictures to model after: neither of them affording a good guide. That which represents your father's kind & benevolent, as well as cheerful expression, degrades the resemblance by coarseness of feature and complexion; the other is perhaps more like him, but the expression of it is by no means his, either as to sense or good-nature. The cast is still worse for a model.

"I think Mr Sievier's performance in its present state, gives the idea of a much larger and taller man, than the reality was: if I remember right, Dr Maskelyne's face was round, which together with a certain playfulness of manner, preserved an air of youth to a late period. This is comparatively long: the eyes are too large and the attitude should more correspond with that of the smaller picture. ... if the artist were to give a representation of your father after either of the pictures, refining upon the coarseness of feature & complexion in the first, or giving openness, & strength of expression to the last, he would produce a good resemblance. The cast has no likeness whatever to the living original."[3]

It would have been unlikely for Prowett to emphasise any negative features (of character or physique) of Maskelyne's  when writing to his daughter, but having read through many of Maskelyne's letters I noted an occasional 'certain playfulness of manner' in his tone, and thus tend to support the warmth of Prowett's assessment as more than mere flattery. The assertion of Maskelyne's kind and benevolent nature is a helpful balance to the 'villainous' depiction of him in Dava Sobel's 'Longitude'.

With regard to what Maskelyne actually looked like, the letter raises more questions than it answers. Prowett did not identify for us which two pictures Sievier was using out of the six possible images that were made during Maskelyne's lifetime (or five, if the disputed John Downman 1779 portrait of Maskelyne is indeed of someone different.) So we are left to judge for ourselves which one shows the most kind and cheerful expression, and which one looked more like him even though the expression was not at all his. Though we possess the modern wonders of photoshop, we cannot cut and paste as Prowett suggests to produce a fitting resemblance.

The bust was finished and kept in the family home at Basset Down until at least 1897.[4] It is credited in a short note, probably by Margaret Maskelyne, as "having hit off the eye and eye brow very well." Its current whereabouts, if it still exists, are unknown to me, but I would love to know what it looked like and what happened to it. The cast, or 'death mask' would also be fascinating to see, and we have at least one clue as to what it looked like in this sketch:

RIP Nevil Maskelyne, 9 February 1811

[1] Margaret Maskelyne to her aunt, Lady Booth, 11 February 1811.
[2] Prowett is described as a 'cousin' of Maskelyne's by Thereza Story-Maskelyne in 1897, though having examined the family tree it seems he must have been a very distant cousin, if one at all.
[3] J. Prowett to Mrs Storey (Margaret Maskelyne), 25 April 1830.
[4] Thereza Story-Maskelyne refers to it in her history of the life and work of her eminent grandfather-in-law for the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine  (June 1897), 29, 126-37.