Henry Cheere was born in London in 1703 and was of French descent. He was apprenticed in 1718 to the mason Robert Harsthorne and by 1726 had established his own sculptor’s yard near St Margaret’s, Westminster, working in marble, bronze, stone and lead. He worked initially with Henry Scheemakers (d. 1748) on the vast Monument to the 1st Duke of Ancaster (c. 1728; Edenham, Lincolnsire), in which the life-size figure of the Duke clad in Roman armour is set against a marble niche flanked by Corinthian columns. Cheere was responsible for the production of a wide range of busts, figures, chimneypieces, and – above all – funerary monuments. During the 1730s Cheere executed the statues of Queen Caroline for Queen’s College, Oxford, and that of Christopher Codrington for All Souls, Oxford. His Monument to Lord Chief Justice Raymond at Abbot’s Langley, Hertfordshire depicted its subject accepting his coronet from a putto. The artist’s use of small forms is characteristic of the Rococo. In 1743 he was appointed ‘carver’ to Westminster Abbey by the Dean and Chapter, leading to at least nine commissions for monuments there. He would appear to have had good naval connections, as he was commissioned to execute the marble wall monument to the memory of that great sailor Captain Philip de Saumarez, RN in the north aisle of Westminster Abbey. His conception takes the form of a draped oval portrait unveiled by a cherub, another is weeping. Beneath it is the relief of naval action depicting the NOTTINGHAM, YARMOUTH and EAGLE in pursuit of the INTREPIDE and the TONNANT. He also executed the monument to Vice-Admiral Henry Medley in York Minster which features a lively sea battle in high relief. Cheere carved the magnificent memorial to the architect Thomas Archer in St Mary’s Church, Hale. He is also known to have executed a number of bronze busts for All Souls College, Oxford and that of the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor may be found in Room 10 of the National Portrait Gallery in London – as may the painted plaster bust of the dramatist Colley Cibber which is attributed to Cheere’s workshop. Cheere’s marble statue of Christopher Codrington (1734) may be found in the library of All Souls. Working with Peter Scheemakers, Cheere sculpted the lead statue of William Shakespeare (1769) on the exterior of the town hall at Stratford-upon-Avon. His lead and bronze equestrian statuette of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland may be seen in the National Army Museum at Chelsea. He is also recorded as having executed a substantial quantity of interior decoration such as plastered rooms and fireplaces in grand country houses. Good examples of his work may be found at Picton Castle, Haverfordwest. Sir Henry is known to have taught both Robert Taylor and Richard Hayward their craft. He retired from business and sold the contents of his workshop in March 1770 and died on 15 January 1781. Cheere would be ignored as a sculptor of merit by art historians George Vertue, Horace Walpole and others, but was rehabilitated by Rupert Gunnis in his masterful standard work of reference Dictionary of British Sculptors. In 2003 Cheere was back in the news, when Minister of State for the Arts Tessa Blackstone placed a bar on the export of his full-length life-size statue marble statue of Sir George Cooke of Belhamond. The statue and its pedestal are of considerable importance in the history of English funerary and commemorative sculpture. They reflect the ‘take up’ and development of a particular symbolic pose and the influence of Roubiliac. Perhaps more importantly, they were not intended for a church, but for a specially created grove close to Sir George’s house on his estate and the work projects a powerful political message. The relaxed attitude and dress – especially the crumpled stockings and the right heel coming away from the slipper – recall Roubiliac’s statue of Handel, completed in 1738, while the two reliefs of putti on the pedestal have actually been attributed to Roubiliac himself. These reliefs depict two putti with a statue of Justice (alluding to Sir George’s legal career and his pursuit of justice) and another pair of putti in a library with five classical busts. The latter is either a view of Sir George’s own library or – more likely – an imaginative reference to his learning and connoisseurship.