Lot 67: CIRCLE OF MICHAEL RYSBRACK (1694-1770)

HERCULES RESTING

22.5 by 49cm., 8¾ by 19¼in.

white marble with a green crystalline stone background

English, 18th century

Sculpture from the David Daniels Collection, Minneapolis Institute of Art, 26 October 1979-13 January 1980, no. 36

The Arcade Gallery, London, 1967
David Daniels Collection, New York

A variant appeared as part of a chimneypiece with reputed Scottish provenance at Sotheby's New York on 26 April 2008 (lot 134). Christie's King Street sold a similar relief on 9 July of this year attributed to the workshop of Michael Rysbrack (lot 54). Compositionally, the present relief echoes the frieze of a chimney piece executed by Michael Rysbrack for Hopetoun House in Scotland and a design for such a surround in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Rysbrack's treatment of the same theme in the round can be seen in Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum (no. M.1-1816) and parallels the treatment of the proper right hand in his statuette of Sir Peter Paul Rubens. The inclusion of a coloured stone background is, however, common in chimneypieces by Henry Cheere and William Collins, as noted by Trusted.

RELATED LITERATURE
K. Eustace, 'Robert Adam, Charles-Louis Clérisseau, Michael Rysbrack and the Hopetoun chimneypiece', The Burlington Magazine, November 1997, pp. 747 and 751, figs. 24 and 30; K. Eustace, Michael Rysbrack Sculptor 1694-1770, ex. cat. City of Bristol Museum, 1982, p. 141, no. 55; D. Bilbey and M. Trusted, British sculpture 1470 to 2000. A concise catalogue of the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2002, pp. 68-9, no. 9