The Collection of Casts

The casts shown here are part a collection of almost 400 discovered some years ago during the continuous process of upgrading storage of the permanent collection. The casts bore no accession numbers and, therefore, could not readily be associated with museum records. Among the 376 casts, there seem to be two sets (one of 167 casts, one of 122), similar in style and related by evidence that they were once glued to the same fabric. The rest (87) are different and more varied in style.

The differences suggest different sources and at least two are possible. The smaller group may be a donation described as a “Case of plaster medallions” given in 1895 by Fanny Dorothy Snider MacLaren (1854-1921), wife of John Smith MacLaren, who had a reputation in Saint John as a knowledgeable numismatist. The more cohesive other groups were probably the donation to the Mechanics’ Institute reported in the New Brunswick Courier (20 May 1843, p. 1) as “Plaster of Paris Casts from Lady Colebrooke”. It is from the latter putative donation that the “Grand Tour” casts have been selected.

No evidence has yet been discovered that Lady Colebrooke went on the Grand Tour herself, but she lived at the time when it was popular and she was part of the right social class, and it must be considered that they could have been collected by someone else in her circle.

Emma Sophia Colebrooke (about 1802-1851) was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Colebrooke, surveyor-general of Bengal. In 1820 she married her cousin, William MacBean George Colebrooke (1787-1870), who was also the son of a military officer. William (later Sir William) had been serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, stationed in Ceylon, India, Java and Sumatra. After their marriage, Colebrooke went on to service in the Persian Gulf, South Africa, Mauritius, Ceylon and The Bahamas, before being appointed, in 1841, as lieutenant governor of New Brunswick. In 1848 he moved on to a brief posting in British Guiana, then to Barbados, where he served as governor from 1848 to 1856. It was during their sojourn in Barbados that Emma Sophia died in 1851. An obituary in the Barbados Globe (21 April 1851) described her as “the amiable, the elegant, the hospitable, the generous-hearted, the religious, and the benevolent Lady Colebrooke … a pattern to her sex as a wife and mother, and a most liberal and kind benefactress to the indigent and the poor.”