East Riding Museums

This item is in the Burton Constable Hall collections and is included on this database by kind permission of the Burton Constable Foundation. John Cheere was possibly the first sculptor to popularise the art of ‘bronzing’ plaster figures in an attempt to imitate the translucent quality of bronze. In their seminal work on John Cheere, Terry Friedman and Timothy Clifford present an account of the ‘bronzing’ technique:There are two sorts of compositions used for this purpose, the red and the yellow; the latter is made of the finest copper dust, and to the former is added a small quantity of red ochre, well pulverized. Both are applied with a varnish, and the work is dried over a chasing-dish as soon as bronzed. Located in the Great Hall.