Graves, Hon. Henry
Designs for the sculptured compartments of a font for the parish church of Binstead, in the Isle of Wight.
(No publisher or printer named), 1843.
Full Description
8vo. Chromolitho title leaf, litho dedication leaf, 10 tinted litho plates including perspective view of Binstead church. Original cloth, spine neatly repaired. A stain at inner blank bottom corner.
A very rare publication recording designs by the Hon.Henry Graves (1818-1882), younger son of a peer, for nine sculptured panels for the sides of a font to be erected in the parish church at Binstead in the Isle of Wight, in 1843 in the process of restoration by the local architect Thomas Hellyer. What is slightly unexpected for the date is that Graves’s designs are not in a Gothic Revival style but in a sentimental Italianate style with naked and half-naked figures of Eve before and after the Fall; it is difficult to judge their artistic context, for Graves was an amateur artist who does not feature in Rupert Gunnis’s Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, and more research seems called for. No copy reported to NUC.