Portrait bust of John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey of Ickworth (1696-1743)
after Edmé Bouchardon (Chaumont 1698 - Paris 1762)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1730 - 1750
Materials
White marble
Measurements
70 x 47 cm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 852225
Summary
Sculpture, marble; Portrait bust of John, Lord Hervey (1696-1743); after a model by Edmé Bouchardon (Chaumont 1698 – Paris 1762); London, c. 1730-50. The bust depicts the politician and writer John, 2nd Baron Hervey, who in 1728-29 made a trip to the Continent with his friend Stephen Fox. His portrait was commissioned from the French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon in Rome in 1729. The artist’s terracotta version of the portrait, also at Ickworth, would have served as the basis for the original marble portrait bust, now in a private collection. This portrait in marble is an early copy of that prime version. The concept of the bust derives from Roman portraiture but is at the same time daringly modern, with Lord Hervey shown without a wig and naked, except for a toga-like robe over his left shoulder. The bust is also a celebration of youthful male beauty, reflecting the close personal relationship at this time between Hervey and Fox, who may have commissioned the original portrait bust.
Full description
A portrait bust in marble depicting John, 2nd Baron Hervey (1696-1743), a copy of a bust made in 1729 in Rome by Edmé Bouchardon (1698-1762). The sitter is shown wigless and in bust form, the arms truncated below the shoulders. His torso is naked except for a toga-like garment over his left shoulder, fastened at the shoulder with a circular brooch. Hervey looks slightly upwards and to his left. Mounted on a marble socle with a scrolled name plate. The bust is a copy of the original marble bust in a private collection at Melbury House, in the collection of the descendents of Stephen Fox (Stephen Fox-Strangways, 1st Earl of Ilchester, 1704-1776), who travelled to Rome with John Hervey and may have commissioned his portrait bust from the French sculptor Edmé Bouchardon. Bouchardon’s terracotta version of the portrait, made in preparation for the carving of the marble version, is at Ickworth (NT 852228). For John, Baron Hervey, his friendship with Stephen Fox and their journey to Rome and commissioning of Hervey’s portrait, see NT 852228. The marble bust of John Hervey at Ickworth is a close copy of the original at Melbury, but it lacks the extreme refinement of Edmé Bouchardon’s style and cannot be a replica by him. As well as stylistic considerations, the tablet below the bust is much smaller and quite different in form from those to be seen in Bouchardon’s autograph portraits. The copy was probably made in London, after Fox and Hervey had returned to Britain. It is possible that the marble was made in London, in the workshop of Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770). A satirical poem published in the Grub Street Journal for 20 September 1736 seems to refer to a bust of Lord Hervey being made at that moment in Rysbrack’s workshop (Craske 1992, p. 161; Baker, Harrison, Laing 2000, p. 762). The intention of the poem appears to be to contrast Rysbrack’s approach to classicism with the refinement of Bouchardon’s work. A strolling Fox once chanced to drop Grand connoisseur! in Rysbrack's shop. A noble bust he there beheld Whose beauty all the rest excelled Much he admired the curious craft The sculptor praised - and praising laughed A pretty figure I profess It is Lord Fanny's head I guess How happy Rysbrack are thy pains The life G-d L-d it has no brains. Although a copy, the marble bust was long regarded as the prime version of the portrait at Ickworth, and was twice reproduced as the frontispiece to books, the 'Letters between Lord Hervey and Dr. Middleton concerning the Roman Senate', edited by Thomas Knowles, former chaplain to Lady Hervey, and published in London in 1778, and then in the mid-nineteenth century, John Wilson Croker’s edition of Lord Hervey’s Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, published in London in 1848. Jeremy Warren July 2025
Provenance
Part of the Bristol Collection. Acquired by the National Trust in 1956 under the auspices of the National Land Fund, later the National Heritage Memorial Fund.
Makers and roles
after Edmé Bouchardon (Chaumont 1698 - Paris 1762), sculptor
References
Knowles 1778: Thomas Knowles, ed., Letters between Lord Hervey and Dr. Middleton concerning the Roman Senate, London 1778 Hervey 1848: John, Lord Hervey, ed. John Wilson Croker, Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, London 1848 Craske 1992: Matthew Craske, ‘The London Sculpture Trade and the Development of the Imagery of the Family in Funerary Monuments of the Period’, PhD diss., Westfield College, London 1992 Baker, Harrison and Laing 2000, Malcom Baker, Colin Harrison and Alastair Laing, 'Bouchardon's British sitters: sculptural portraiture in Rome and the classicising bust around 1730', The Burlington Magazine, December 2000, no 1173, vol. CXLII, pp. 752-62 Bowron and Rishel 2000: E. P. Bowron and J. J. Rishel, eds., Art in Rome in the Eighteenth Century, exh cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, March 16-May 28, 2000 and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, June 25-September 17, 2000, Philadelphia 2000 Roscoe 2009: I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G. Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, New Haven and Yale 2009, p. 127, no. 2. Baker 2011: Malcolm Baker, ‘Commemoration “in a more durable and grave manner”: Portrait Busts for the British in early Eighteenth-Century Rome,’ in David Marshall, Susan Russell, Karin Wolfe, Roma Britannica, London 2011, pp. 273-83 Desmas 2012: Anne-Lise Desmas, Le Ciseau et la Tiare. Les Sculpteurs dans la Rome des Papes 1724-1758, Rome 2012 Bouchardon 2016: Edmé Bouchardon: 1698-1762, une idée du beau, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris 2016