John Michael Rysbrack (1694-1770), the son of Pieter Rysbrack, the landscape painter, was born at Antwerp, where he trained as a sculptor under Michel van der Voort. None of his work in Flanders survives but he was already a fully-developed artist when he moved to London in 1720. There he rapidly became the leading sculptor in England, a position which he maintained through one of the golden ages of British sculpture until his retirement in 1764, executing portrait busts, statues, decorative sculpture and monuments. Rysbrack is depicted in the present picture with the terracotta model for the large marble Hercules which was regarded as his masterpiece. Both the statuette, executed in 1744 and retained by the artist until his death, and the marble, begun in 1747, largely complete in August 1752 and finally finished in 1756, are now at Stourhead (see, for instance, the catalogue of the exhibition, Michael Rysbrack, City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, 1982, pp.160-2, both illustrated). It is not surprising that Rysbrack should have chosen to be identified with this particular commission; in August 1752, presumably around the time that the present picture was painted, the marble was hailed by his friend the diarist George Vertue as 'not to be paralelld. scarcely by any artist hearetofore for the Greatness & nobleness of the style - the Antient Greek or Roman study and tastes - of rare merrit & excellent Skill will be to him a monument of lasting Fame to posterity - ' (Note Books III, The Walpole Society, XXII, 1934, p.162).

A version of the present painting with slight differences, also signed and dated 1753, was sold in these Rooms, 10 April 1970, lot 94, and is now in the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Ingamells, op. cit., 1980, no.56; included in the 1982 Bristol exhibition as no.97, pp.162 and 192, illustrated p.43 and in colour on the cover). A picture also signed and dated 1753 and sold at Sotheby's, 24 June 1970, lot 109, when it was claimed to be from the Charles Fairfax Murray Collection, is apparently a third version (we are grateful to Mr. Brian Sewell for this information).

The pendant to the present picture, depicting Rysbrack's rival Louis François Roubiliac and signed and dated 1751, is in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, to which it was given by Fairfax Murray in 1917 (J. Kerslake, National Portrait Gallery: Early Georgian Portraits, 1977, pl.693; Murray, op. cit., no.603, illustrated; Ingamells, op. cit, 1980, no.50). Ingamells (idem, p.2) points out the contrast in the characterization of the two sculptors, which suggests their differing attitudes to their craft. Since no pendant is known for the other two versions of the present painting, this and the Dulwich picture may be the pair of portraits of the two sculptors sold in these Rooms from the collection of the late Sir Henry Thomas Gott, 24 Feb. 1810, lots 26 and 27. Gott had himself been painted by Soldi in 1756 (idem, p.10, no.32, and pl.7a), as had his father, John Greening, in 1759 (idem, p.11, no.35, and pl.7b); either of these may have been the first owner of the present picture