Spencer Perceval
Joseph Nollekens, RA (London 1737 – London 1823)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1813 (signed and dated)
Materials
Carrara marble on turned marble socle
Measurements
630 x 410 x 190 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436768
Summary
Carrara marble on turned marble socle, The Right Hon. Spencer Perceval MP (1762-1812) by Joseph Nollekens, RA (1737–1823), signed ‘Nollekens 1813’. A marble portrait bust of Spencer Perceval, former prime minister of Great Britain, with head turned to proper left, wearing cloak draped across proper left shoulder.
Full description
Spencer Perceval was elected prime minister in 1809. He served until 1812 when, on 11 May, he was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons. He remains the only British prime minister to have been killed in office. That day the sculptor Joseph Nollekens was called to Perceval's rooms at the Treasury to cast a death mask from which a bust in marble was carved. By November 1812 Nollekens had ‘orders for fifteen busts of Mr. Perceval’, each copy priced at his standard rate for a bust in marble: ‘one hundred and fifty guineas’ (Smith 1829, II, p.70). One of these was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1813 (Graves, vol.V, p.382, no.919) and one was acquired by John Cust (1779-1853), the 1st Earl Brownlow for his collection at Belton. Payment is recorded in the 1814 annual account. A few years earlier Cust had bought a copy of Nollekens' bust of William Pitt whom Perceval supported and greatly admired (NT 436765). Alice Rylance-Watson October 2018
Provenance
Acquired 1813 by John Cust (1779-1853), 1st Earl Brownlow; purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984.
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1994)
Marks and inscriptions
Truncation, rear: Nollekens Ft 1813
Makers and roles
Joseph Nollekens, RA (London 1737 – London 1823), sculptor
References
Smith 1829: John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and His Times[...], Second Edition, In Two Volumes, London 1829, vol.II, p.70 Graves 1906: Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904, vol. V, London 1906, p.382, no.919