Lot 114: ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN MICHAEL RYSBRACK (1694-1770), ENGLISH, SECOND QUARTER 18TH CENTURY

ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN MICHAEL RYSBRACK (1694-1770), ENGLISH, SECOND QUARTER 18TH CENTURY TERRACOTTA MAQUETTE FOR A BUST OF GEORGE II terracotta 21.5cm., 8 3/8 in.

Sotheby's, 8 July 1993, lot 190

The loose modelling of this small but arresting herm bust suggests that this may be an early working model for Rysbrack's busts of King George II. This notion is clearly underpinned by the nonchalant inclusion of the large thumbprint at its base.

Rysbrack produced two life-size busts of the King in 1738. The monarch had recently passed on and it is thought that these busts were ordered to commemorate him. Both are kept in the Royal Collection at Windsor together with a third unsigned marble. A further version in the Victoria and Albert Museum (A.10-1932), signed and dated 1760, is generally regarded to have originated in the workshop. Only the present terracotta shows the King with undraped shoulders and short hair suggesting that Rysbrack possibly envisaged a more classicising bust early on.

RELATED LITERATURE
D. Bilbey and M. Trusted, British Sculpture 1470 to 2000. A concise catalogue of the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2002, p. 141, no. 194; M. Webb, Michael Rysbrack Sculptor, London, 1954, pp. 155-56 and 216