BY MICHAEL RYSBRACK (1694-1770), 1743 Depicted with flowing hair and his head turned slightly to dexter, wearing a ruff and open jacket with braiding and tassles over a buttoned shirt; signed on the reverse 'Michl Rysbrack 1743'; on a later, spreading square ormolu-mounted wood pedestal decorated with masks and scrolling ormolu feet 14 3/4 in. (37.5 cm.) high; 20 1/2 in. (52 cm.) high, overall
G. Balderston, 'The Genesis of Edward Salter Aetatis 6', The Georgian Group Journal, 2000, pp. 175-205. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE: M.I. Webb, Michael Rysbrack - Sculptor, London, 1954. K. Eustace, Michael Rysbrack - Sculptor 1694-1770, Bristol, City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, 6 March - 1 May 1982.
Provenance
Bought by the grandmother of the present owner in France in the 1930s. Thence by descent.
Notes
THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
Michael Rysbrack - or Johannes Michel Rysbrack as he was born - trained in his native Antwerp and was a master of the Guild of St. Luke there by 1714-15. In 1720 he moved to London with his brother, also a sculptor, no doubt drawn by the thriving capital and its wealthy merchant and aristocratic inhabitants. Through the patronage of the architect James Gibbs, Rysbrack established himself, and soon became the most sought-after sculptor in London. He is credited with having introduced to England the continental tradition of 'architectural' relief scupture - such as the reliefs by him incorporated into the Stone Hall at Houghton Hall, Norfolk - and for establishing the primacy of sculptural as opposed to painted portraiture in England in the second quarter of the 18th century.
By the 1740s, Rysbrack was facing increasing competition from younger sculptors such as Roubiliac and Peter Scheemackers, but he continued to have a loyal group of friends and patrons who commissioned work from him. One such individual was Thomas Salter, who asked Rysbrack to execute a terracotta portrait of his six year old son and heir, Edward, in 1748. That bust, which was sold by Salter's descendants in 1998 (Sotheby's, London, 8 July 1998, lot 95, £276,500) is now in the Ashmolean Museum, and is directly comparable to the present bust in style, condition and finish.
Rysbrack's portraits were initially modelled in terracotta and (usually) subsequently executed in marble. Certainly the present bust of John Barnerd, although a beautifully finished work of art in its own right, was also used as the model for a version in marble dated 1744 which is today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The only differences between the present terracotta and the marble version are that the latter is embellished with a brocade pattern on the tunic, and there is an integrally carved plinth. There is also a slight puffiness to the features on the New York bust which gives the sitter an air of ill-health. This is in complete contrast to the features of the present bust, which convey a sense of delicate, youthful expectancy. It is the inscription on the New York bust - which includes the name of the sitter - that has allowed us to identify the subject of the present terracotta. Although today we know little about John Barnerd apart from a reference in the notebook of Rysbrack's friend, George Vertue, which mentions a bust of 'A son of Mr Bernard [sic]' (Webb, op. cit., p. 211), it is interesting that both the marble and the terracotta have a French provenance. As has often been noted, 18th century London - particularly among the merchant and artisan classes - included a huge number of continental families, and it may be that the Barnerds had French connections which ultimately drew them back there. Technically, the two busts of John Barnerd and Edward Salter - executed five years apart - are virtually identical. It would appear that in both cases, Rysbrack took a cast of the face of the sitter, for there are fine seam marks around the edges of the faces on each bust. Both were modelled on a wood support attached to a base board which would have supported the clay as it was built up. As the clay dried and contracted around the wooden support, cracks developed, and x-rays taken of the bust of Barnerd show that a number of make-shift metal dowels were inserted after firing to re-inforce the overall structure. The cracks, including one directly through the signature, were then filled with plaster.
When the bust was recently identified as being an important and rare child portrait by Rysbrack, it was covered in a glossy, blackish-brown paint surface which masked much of the detail. Subsequent analysis revealed that there were four different paint treatments, but that the first layer lay directly on the terracotta and plaster surface of the bust with no intervening layer of dirt, suggesting that it was the original paint scheme applied by the artist to cover the firing cracks referred to above. It is known from Rysbrack's own letters that he did often paint the surface of his busts, especially when there was a problem with the surface of the terracotta which needed to be rectified (see his letter to Sir Edward Littleton dated 6 May 1758, transcribed in Webb, op. cit., p. 200), and the bust of Salter had a similar stone-coloured surface. It was therefore decided to remove the three later layers of paint to reveal the original surface one sees again today (the technical analysis and conservation report on the bust are available upon request).
The result is the re-emergence of this charming portrait of John Barnerd as a child of, perhaps, 6 or 7 years of age. Rysbrack has depicted the sitter with his head sticking just slightly forward, giving him a faint air of youthful expectancy. With his loosely curling hair and dressed in the fashion of wealthy London society in the 1740s, this bust of John Barnerd gives an astonishingly immediate glimpse of one young boy who lived in Georgian England.
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