Nollekens, Joseph
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- Nollekens, Joseph
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(1737 - 1823), sculptor, 2nd s. of Joseph Francis Nollekens, painter, of London; apprentice and assistant to Peter Scheemakers 1750; studied drawing with William Shipley and at the D. of Richmond's Gallery; won prizes at the SA 1759 - 62; exh. FS 1761 - 70, RA 1771 - 1816, BI 1806 - 11; ARA 1771, RA 1772.
1761 - 70 [dep. England summer 1761; Paris] Turin, Milan, Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome (11 Aug. 1761 - Oct. 1770), Genoa [Paris, Dover (24 Dec. 1770)]
Nollekens spent nine years in Rome where, besides making a fair fortune through restoration and dealing, he acquired a reputation as a skillful portraitist. He had set out in 1761 (J.T. Smith mistakenly wrote 1760).1 On 21 May he had received in person the last and greatest of his five prizes from the Society of Arts, and having won in all £123.18s he was able to travel 'to see the works of Michel Angelo, and of other great men'. He must also have had the encouragement of his master Scheemakers to study the antique. Hayward noted his arrival at Rome 'with Jiacomo Freys son' on 11 August 17612 and a droll account of the journey out survives in a copy of a letter written to Thomas Banks.3
James 'Athenian' Stuart looked after Nollekens's interests in London, and must have given him introductions and advice on living and working in Rome. Probably he had always intended to remain several years. In 1764 he was working in the studio of Cavaceppi, where he learnt to restore and counterfeit the antique. Through Gavin Hamilton he came into contact with English tourists, and in particular with a party for whom in 1764 he carved several versions of Cavaceppi's marble group, the Boy on a Dolphin (Hermitage, St Petersburg).4 The finest copy was made for the 9th Earl of Exeter, full-size on a candelabrum base (Burleigh House) and half-size versions were made for Lord Spencer (Althorp) and Viscount Palmerston (Broadlands); David Garrick had one in terracotta (Garrick sale). Not all are documented, and another half-size marble at Ickworth is likely to be by Nollekens.
When sketching in the Vatican in the spring of 1764, Nollekens was recognised by David Garrick, who then commissioned the first portrait head he modelled (marble version, Althorp). Other portraits followed; on 9 July 1764 James Martin saw several, including busts of the Duke of York (Windsor Castle), John Wodehouse and a Mr Richards.5 A few other Rome portraits are known, of Laurence Sterne (terracotta exhibited London 1767, lost; early marble version, NPG); the 5th Earl of Carlisle (1768, Castle Howard) and the excellent head of J.B. Piranesi (Accademia di S.Luca, Rome).6 Other dilettanti collectors whom Nollekens knew at Rome, and who later became his patrons in England, included Lord Holland, Charles Pelham (Lord Yarborough), Sir Watkin Williams Wynn and Charles Townley (a collection of terracottas, which Nollekens bought cheaply at Rome and later sold to Townley, is in the BM).
In August 1764 James Stuart informed Thomas Anson of Shugborough that Nollekens was starting on his marble copy of the San Ildefonso group, Castor and Pollux; the finished work is dated 1767 (VAM). Nollekens told Stuart what antiquities, and so on, were available for Anson to buy,7 and sent drawings, of which some are preserved at the RIBA. He dealt in antiques to an appreciable extent, and he exported antiquities from Rome on five occasions between 1765 and 1770.8 By 1764 he was buying from the Palazzo Barberini.9 In partnership with Thomas Jenkins, he restored the Barberini Venus which was then sold to William Weddell for £1,000 (Newby Hall). Lord Exeter bought a fine Niobe bust (Brocklesby). Nollekens also owned a sacrificial relief, sold to Catherine the Great (Hermitage, St Petersburg) and statues of an Athlete and Hygeia.(10) A copy of the Rondanini Medusa by Nollekens is at Burleigh and terracotta statuettes at Burleigh and Althorp, besides a few antiquities, were apparently supplied by him.
Through Gavin Hamilton, no doubt, Nollekens knew the Villa Albani circle. But, as Smith implies, he was as ignorant of the merits of that company as he was of the history of art, and his Rome reminiscences were few and frivolous. As a Catholic, but neglectful of his duties, he escaped censure through the patronage of the Cardinal. Nollekens pursued an industrious, miserly and squalid way of life. We do not hear much of his friendships with other British artists, except with the perfidious James Barry - though he was evidently close to the landscape painter James Forrester, with whom he shared rooms in the Via Babuino from 1765 until his departure.(11) In 1769 they embarked together on a three-week excursion into the country, with a number of other artists, see Forrester.
In 1768 he won a gold medal in the concorso Balestra with a model of Jupiter, Juno and Io (the four prizewinning sculptors included Vincenzo Pacetti).(12) A half-length oil portrait made at Rome shows Nollekens modelling his Faun (YCBA) and has been (perhaps doubtfully) attributed to Barry;13 the clay faun depicted is the maquette for a Bacchus based on Michelangelo's statue, which was exhibited at the RA 1771 and 1772 and carved in marble for Thomas Anson (untraced). Other works most likely modelled at Rome include two small terracottas, Petus and Arria (Sackler Collection, New York) and Juno Pronuba (VAM).
Nollekens had learnt to draw fluently, and during his nine years abroad he constantly made studies of works of art (as Scheemakers had done earlier), copying ancient and modern sculpture, reliefs and details, and figures from paintings. At his posthumous sale of prints and drawings (Evans, 5 Dec. 1823), a number of sketchbooks and loose sheets were dispersed, citing locations (sometimes inscribed) as the Vatican, Palazzi Giustiniani and Massimi, Villa Borghese, Frascati, Tivoli, Loreto, Mantua and Bologna. The surviving drawings also indicate the Villa Albani and Villa Negroni, and Florence. There are miscellaneous Italian drawings at the VAM and the Soane Museum; some 175 loose drawings in a private collection, New York, and two complete sketchbooks at the Ashmolean Museum. The earlier of these (c.1765 - 8) contains chiefly heads, some drawn at the French Academy, and the second sketchbook has ten original studies for funeral monuments, followed by modern sculpture at Rome and Genoa, and then at Vienna and Paris on the journey home. Also at the Ashmolean Museum there are measured drawings of the Laocoon, Capitoline Antinous, and the Medici Venus (dated June 1770).
In June 1770 he was made a member of the Academy at Florence. On 29 September Father Thorpe wrote that he was going 'next week for London'.14 His baggage was considerable, with antiquities and casts for study or for sale, paintings, books and (probably) some cinquecento terracottas, about which Smith concedes he was quite well informed. He had also acquired a set of the extremely rare engravings by Marcantonio, I Modi, which later his confessor obliged him to destroy.15
His Italian years had confirmed Nollekens in his preference for cinquecento sculpture, particularly for Giovanni Bologna whose style generally he was to imitate in ideal statues. But his lasting reputation was to be in portrait busts, in which his style remained based principally on the antique, which he had learnt with Cavaceppi. His first-hand knowlege of the antique was of considerable value, and his opinion of ancient statues was often sought by collectors such as Charles Townley and Lord Bessborough.
1. See Nollekens, and J. Kenworthy-Browne, CL, 7, 14 Jun. 1979, 184ff, 1930f. 2. Hayward List, 12, 29. 3. Whitley 1821 - 1837, 41. 4. Seymour Howard, Art Bull., 46[1964]:177 - 89.
5. Martin jnl.MSS (9 Jul. 1764). 6. J. Wilton-Ely, Burl.Mag., 118[1976]:593f. 7. Staffs. RO, d615/p(s)1/6/55. 8. Nov. 1765; Jan., Apr. and Oct. 1767; Jun. 1769 and Sep. 1770
(Bertolotti, 2:215, 220, 267 - 8; ASR aba 11, f.284; 12, f.285). 9. Connell 1957, 55f. 10. See VAM, Prints & Drawings, E.4349 - 1920. B. Cavaceppi, Raccolta d'antiche statue, busti
ed teste cognite, 3 [1772]. 11. AVR sa, S.Maria del Popolo. 12. ANSL 52, f.137. 13. D.B. Brown, Burl.Mag., 128[1986]:27 - 31. 14. Thorpe letters MSS *. 15. Nollekens, ch.xiii. L. Lawner, I Modi: The Sixteen Pleasures, [1988].
J. K.-B.