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Creator:
Louis François Roubiliac, 1702–1762
Title:

Alexander Pope

Date:
1741
Medium:
Marble
Dimensions:
Overall: 24 3/4 x 17 x 9 inches (62.9 x 43.2 x 22.9 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Signed and dated by chisel under sitter's shoulder, proper right: "Anno Dom. | MDCCXLI. | L.F. Roubiliac | Scit. Ad vivum"

Inscribed, chiseled on front of socle: 'POPE'; on proper left under sitter's shoulder: 'ALEX. POPE. Nats. LONDINI, | die 8o. junii anno MDCLXXXVIII. | Obiit in vico Twickenham prope | Urbem, die 8o. maii MDCCXLIV"; on front of twentieth century pedestal: "GIFT OF PAUL MELLON | IN MEMORY OF | BASIL TAYLOR | BRITISH ART HISTORIAN | 1922-1975 | FRIEND, MENTOR | AND GENEROUS SOURCE | OF WISE ADVICE | IN THE COURSE OF ASSEMBLING | THIS COLLECTION OF | BRITISH ART"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Paul Mellon in memory of the British art historian Basil Taylor (1922–1975)
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1993.27
Classification:
Sculptures
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
Enlightenment | poet | portrait
Associated People:
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), poet
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:1517
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Alexander Pope (1688–1744), a satirist, poet, and man of letters, was one of the most celebrated literary figures of his time. The French-born sculptor Louis François Roubiliac modeled a terracotta bust of Pope in around 1738, from which he made several marble versions over the next few years. This version, signed and dated 1741, was made for Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke, and is inscribed “ad vivum” (from life) to indicate that the original model was based on direct observation of Pope himself. At some point after Pope died, Bolingbroke had it additionally inscribed with the dates of the poet’s birth and death. In the nineteenth century it was owned by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, whose friend John Wilson Crocker called it “the finest bit of marble I ever saw.”

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016


The English satirist, wit, poet, man of letters, translator of Homer, and editor of Shakespeare Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment in England. Largely self-educated, Pope was also one of the first English poets to generate a comfortable income from nondramatic writing. He was a Catholic, a friend of Jonathan Swift, a keen gardener, and a neighbor at Twickenham of the traveler and diarist Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he addressed his poem "Eloisa to Abelard" (1716). This is one of the finest of Roubiliac's several busts of Pope, for which the terracotta modello (1738) is in the Barber Institute of Arts at the University of Birmingham. It was probably commissioned by the author, Whig politician, and diplomat Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751).

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2008


The English satirist, wit, poet, man of letters, translator of Homer, and editor of Shakespeare Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment in England. Largely self-educated, Pope was also one of the first English poets to generate a comfortable income from nondramatic writing. He was a Catholic, a friend of Jonathan Swift, a keen gardener, and a neighbor at Twickenham of the traveler and diarist Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he addressed his poem "Eloisa to Abelard" (1716). This is one of the finest of Roubiliac's several busts of Pope, for which the terracotta modello (1738) is in the Barber Institute of Arts at the University of Birmingham. It was probably commissioned by the author, Whig politician, and diplomat Viscount Bolingbroke.

Gallery label for Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29)
The English poet, man of letters, satirist, wit, translator of Homer, and editor of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was one of the greatest figures of the Enlightenment. Largely self-educated, Pope was also one of the first English poets to generate a comfortable income from nondramatic writing. His brilliance was such that he came to dominate the world of English poetry and letters in the first half of the eighteenth century in a manner to which no subsequent poet could reasonably aspire or possibly emulate. The fluency and elegance of his poetic writing were matched by the originality and sharpness of his intellect. Pope was a Catholic, a friend of Jonathan Swift, a keen gardener, and a neighbor, at Twickenham, of the traveler and diarist Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Pope’s fame was such that he was also one of the most frequently portrayed men of the age. Wimsatt catalogued more than sixty portraits, many of which exist in multiple versions, and still others reappear from time to time. There are portraits of Pope by Godfrey Kneller, Jonathan Richardson the elder, Jervas, Hoare of Bath, and Van Loo. And there are busts by Michael Rysbrack and four marble versions of the present work, which in due course spawned sets of four successfully marketed library busts of Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, based on the original terracotta modello (1738, Barber Institute of Arts at the University of Birmingham) by Louis-François Roubiliac.

This fine version, which was given to the Center by Paul Mellon, was possibly commissioned by the author, Tory politician, and diplomat Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751) and was subsequently owned by two prime ministers. It is not clear whether it was one of the two marble busts of Pope that were listed as “marble head” and “marble bust” in the sculptor’s studio sale of 1762. The socle is modern. The other three versions are at Temple Newsam House, Leeds; the Fitzwilliam collection at Minton, Peterborough; and the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead. George Vertue thought Roubiliac’s busts of “Mr. Pope more like than any other sculptor has done I think” (Vertue, “Note Books”), and Reynolds told Malone that the sculptor had described Pope’s appearance during the sittings “as that of a person who had been much afflicted with the headache, and that he should have known the fact from the contracted appearance of the skin above the eyebrows, though he had not otherwise been apprized of it” (Wimsatt, 1965, p. 229).

Angus Trumble

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. 10, 247-248, no. 15, fig. 9, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)

Fame and Friendship : Pope , Roubiliac , and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait Bust (Waddesdon (NT), 2014-06-18 - 2014-10-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Fame and Friendship : Pope , Roubiliac , and the Eighteenth-Century Portrait Bust (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-02-20 - 2014-05-19) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Mrs Delany & Her Circle (Yale Center for British Art, 2009-09-24 - 2010-01-03) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Royal Academy of Arts, 2007-10-20 - 2008-01-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

An American's Passion for British Art - Paul Mellon's Legacy (Yale Center for British Art, 2007-04-18 - 2007-07-29) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Acquisition of the Year, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection : 775 paintings purchased by the Spanish Government , Apollo, 139, London, December 1993, pp. 358-359, fig. 5, N1 A54 138:2 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Baker, The making of portrait busts in the mid-eighteenth century, Roubiliac, Scheemakers and Trinity College, Dublin , Burlington Magazine, vol. 137, December 1995, pp. 822-823, 826-827, 829, 830, pl. 40, fig. 48,49, N1 B87 137:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Baker, The marble index : Roubiliac and sculptural portraiture in eighteenth-century Britain, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 69, 70, 172, 196, 1197, 200, 206, 208-09, 267, 268, 269-70, 273-74, figs. 68, 218, 229, 233, 287, NB466 .B355 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, pp. 10, 247-248, no. 15, fig. 9, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Busts and friendship : the identity and context of William Murray's version of Roubiliac's bust of Alexander Pope, v. 22, no. 2, Public Monuments and Sculpture Association, London, pp. 65-76, NB1 S39 (HAAS) [ORBIS]

Calendar, USA and Canada , Burlington Magazine, 136, The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd., London, February 1994, p. 143, no. 73, N1 B87 136:1 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Lorna Clymer, Ritual, routine and regime, repetition in early modern British and European cultures , University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2006, pp. 12-13, 225-227, 232-236, fig. 10.1, 10.3, BH301.R46 R58X 2006 (SML) [ORBIS]

Walter Cupperi, Multiples in pre-modern art, Diaphanes, Zurich, 2014, pp. 278, 278, fig. 7, NB60 .M85 2014 [ORBIS]

Alan Phipps Darr, Virtuoso carvings, Three Eigtheenth-century British portrait sculptures by Le Marchand, Roubiliac, and Chaffers , Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, vol. 83, 2009, p. 45, V 2189 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Aileen Dawson, Portrait Sculpture, A catalogue of the British Museum collection c. 1675-1975 , British Museum Press, London, 1999, pp. 165-166, no. 64, fig. 46, NB1305 G7 D28 1999 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Martina Droth, Britain in the world: Highlights from the Yale Center for British Art in honor of Amy Meyers, Yale University Press, New Haven, London, p. 36, N6761 .Y33 2019 (LC) (YCBA) [YCBA]

Lindsay Duguid, The Recollected Works, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 5458, November 8, 2007, p. 17, Available Online : TLS Archive Also Available on microfilm : Film S748 (SML) [ORBIS]

Katherine Ada McDowall Esdaile, The life and works of Louis François Roubiliac, Oxford University Press, London, 1928, pp. 2, 47-49, 103-105, 107, 178-179, 185, NJ18 R764 E83 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Fame & friendship, Pope, Roubiliac, and the portrait bust in eighteenth-century Britain , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 2014, cover,pp. 5 9, 15, 17, 21, 23, , V 2515 (YCBA) [YCBA]

A. J. Finberg, Vertue Note Books, Oxford, U.K., p. 105, N12.W35 A1+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

Mark Hallett, Reynolds : portraiture in action, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, 2014, pp. 303, 304, fig. no. 292, NJ18.R36 H35 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Roger Hinks, Le Bicentenaire de Louis François Roubiliac, Etudes Anglaises, vol. 15, January/March 1962, p. 3, Available online at British Periodicals I [ORBIS]

Muriel Julius, Rococo, The Art of Frivolity , Contemporary Review, vol. 245, London ; New York, NY, August 1984, p. 99, Available online at British Periodicals I [ORBIS]

Kenwood House, Eighteenth Century Portrait Busts, Exhibition at the Iveagh Bequest Kenwood : June to September 1959 , London County Council, London, June to September 1959, pp. 22-23, no. 21, NB1309 L65 (YCBA) [YCBA]

John F. Kerslake, Early Georgian portraits, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1977, p.218, N1090 A591 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Madeleine Mainstone, Roubiliac's Handel, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1976, pl. 7, V 2279 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Tessa Violet Murdoch, Europe divided : Huguenot refugee art & culture, V&A Publishing, pp. 264-265, DA125.H84 M87 2021+ (YCBA) [YCBA]

Robinson & Fisher Sale Catalogue :The Peel Heirlooms including fine engravings , clocks , candelabra , decorative furniture , China , curios , sculpture ... :May 10-11 1900, Robinson & Fisher, Robinson & Fisher, London, May 10 - 11, 1900, p. 13, lot no. 142, Available on line : Art Sales Catalogues Online Lugt 58170 [ORBIS]

Ingrid Roscoe, A biographical dictionary of sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009, pp. 1063, 1067, no. 69, NB496 B56 2009 (YCBA) (Wall Shelf 3) Yale electronic resource also available online: Orbis [YCBA]

Sotheby's sale catalogue : European Works of Art and Sculpture including ... an English Marble Bust of Alexander Pope by Louis-Francois Roubiliac signed and dated 1741 : 5 July 1990, , Sotheby's, Sotheby's, London, July 5, 1990, pp. 32-36, lot 57, Auction Catalogues (YCBA) Unbound catalogue [YCBA]

The Yale Center for British Art, An Anniversary Celebration of Paul Mellon's Great Legacy , Apollo, April 2007, front cover, N5220 M552 A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA) Appeared as April 2007 issue of Apollo;; all of the articles may also be found in bound Apollo Volume [N1 A54 165:2 +] [YCBA]

Angus Trumble, The Marble Bust, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2004, no. 12, V 1304 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Blakey Vermeule, The party of humanity, writing moral psychology in eighteenth-century Britain , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2000, pp. 64-65, fig. 2, PR448 P75 V47 2000 (SML) [ORBIS]

Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., p. 113, PQ2086 L4 E5 1999 [ORBIS]

Giles Waterfield, Mr. Mellon, RA : the magazine for the Friends of the Royal Academy, No. 96, Autumn 2007, p. 71, V 1905 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Marjorie Isabel Webb, Michael Rysbrack, sculptor., Country Life Limited, London, 1954, pp. 77-78, NJ18 R973 W43 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Margaret Whinney, English Sculpture 1720-1830, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1971, front cover, pp. 80-82, no. 21, NB1305 G7 W45 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Margaret Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 1530-1830, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, England, 1988, pp/ 201-03, 545 n. 16, fig. 139, NB464 W5 1988 (YCBA) [YCBA]

David Wilson, Michael Rysback's Antique Head on Modern Shoulders, Georgian Group Journal, vol. 21, Georgian Group, 2013, P. 17, Fig. 2, NA966 G46 (YCBA) [YCBA]

William K. Wimsatt, The Portraits of Alexander Pope, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1965, pp. 227-229, 244-246, 248-249, no. 61.1, , PR3633 W55 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale Center for British Art, Fame & friendship : Pope, Roubiliac, and the portrait bust in eighteenth-century Britain., New Haven, CT, V 2515 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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