<< YCBA Home Yale Center for British Art Yale Center for British Art << YCBA Home

YCBA Collections Search

 
IIIF Actions
Creator:
Joseph Nollekens, 1737–1823
Title:

William Le Marchant Porret

Former Title(s):

William Le Marchant

Date:
ca. 1800
Medium:
Marble
Dimensions:
Overall: 24 x 14 1/4 x 7 inches (61 x 36.2 x 17.8 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Chiseled on supporting column on back of bust: "London."

Signed by chisel on supporting column on back of bust: "Nollekens Ft."

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1979.36.2
Classification:
Sculptures
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
boy | portrait
Access:
Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:1485
Export:
XML
IIIF Manifest:
JSON

This touching posthumous memorial was commissioned from Joseph Nollekens by the grieving parents of a fifteen-year-old schoolboy who "died at an Academy on Wandsworth Common," presumably as the result of an accident. In these circumstances, by no means rare, sculptors were confronted with the problem of how to create a plausible likeness. Siblings were often recruited as substitute sitters, with modifications, but rarely if ever did an image of the dead child exist from which to extrapolate a three-dimensional portrait. For almost a century in England, from the 1730s until the 1820s, average life expectancy steadily improved, but poor life expectancy at birth still made infancy the most perilous time of life, and childhood mortality remained shockingly high.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005

John Kenworthy - Browne, Inscriptions: a document from the studio of Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823), Sculpture Journal, vol. 19, 2010, p. 114, NB1 S39 (HAAS) [ORBIS]

Ingrid Roscoe, A biographical dictionary of sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009, p. 907, no. 243, NB496 B56 2009 (YCBA) (Wall Shelf 3) Yale electronic resource also available online: Orbis [YCBA]

Angus Trumble, The Marble Bust, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2004, no. 7, V 1304 (YCBA) [YCBA]

David Wilson, The Boy in the Temple, Joseph Nollekens' last portrait bust of Bob St John , British Art Journal, vol. 2, Spring/Summer 2006, pp. 22-23, N6761 B747 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]


If you have information about this object that may be of assistance please contact us.