Lot 20: Alfred-Guillaume-Gabriel, Comte d'Orsay , French 1801-1852 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), Field Marshall and Prime Minister bronze, gray-green patina on obsidian, bronze-mounted base

bronze inscribed: PRESENTED TO LADY ELIZABETH MARCHIONESS OF DOURO ON THE 18TH JUNE 1852 BY FIELD MARSHAL ARTHUR DUKE OF WELLINGTON bronze, gray-green patina on obsidian, bronze-mounted base

90cm., 35 1/2 in.

Lady Elizabeth, Marchioness of Douro; Private Collection, UK

Comte d'Orsay belonged to a mid 19th-century coterie of aristocratic artists. He came to London from Paris in 1823 and soon struck up a friendship with the Earl and Countess of Blessington, joining them on an extended European tour. D'Orsay returned to London with Lady Blessington in 1831 and exhibited at the Royal Academy throughout the 1840s until he fell into debt and the couple fled back to Paris in 1849. Primarily a painter, he was best-known for his portraits of public figures to whom he had access through his personal credentials.

His painted portrait of Arthur Wellesley was one of the Duke's favourites and it now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. D'Orsay also turned his hand to sculpture and produced both a bust of the Duke for reproduction in Parian ware and a bronze equestrian figure, of which the present cast is a fine example. D'Orsay was extremely pleased with this statuette and wrote of its success in a letter to his friend Henry Bulwer dated 1833:

...I have just made a statuette of the Duke of Wellington on horseback, which is almost causing a revolution here. The Duke declares it is the finest thing he has ever seen and the only portrait by which he would wish to be known to posterity. He comes here continually to admire himself.

In his memoirs, Henry Vizetelly claimed that the boastful count was partially indebted to the work of other modellers for his popular statuette. These modellers included T. H. Nicholson of The Illustrated Times who was a skilled plaster modeller and the sculptor William Behnes who sculpted faces for D'Orsay before he became a famous sculptor in his own right. To what extent D'Orsay collaborated with others on the project is left to conjecture. The sculptor-count was certainly one of the most colourful characters in London during the period, and he provoked both admiration and hostility.

However, the statuette remains one of the portraits most favoured by its sitter and this cast, together with the fascinating early provenance, presents an exceptional opportunity at auction.

RELATED LITERATURE
Bénézit, vol. 10, pp. 412-3; English Sporting Sculpture 1850-1940, p. 9; Wellesley & Steegman, pp. 8-10