Lot Essay
The present figure entitled Huntress with a Leveret and Greyhound is the original marble sent by Richard Wyatt from his Rome studio to the Royal Academy and exhibited there in 1850, the year of his premature death. The piece was purchased by the 5th Earl Fitzwilliam and added to the substantial collection of marble statuary at Wentworth Woodhouse, formed for the most part during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (d.1782) and his nephew and heir, William, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam (d.1833). A second figure of the Huntress, commissioned by Queen Victoria for Osbourne House, but unfinished on Wyatt's death, was completed by British sculptors and friends John Gibson and Benjamin Spence before being sent from Rome.
Richard Wyatt began his career in Rome in 1821, working in the studio of Antonio Canova until the latter's death the following year and then under Thorwaldesen, before setting up on his own account. Recognition, although slow in coming, was great when it arrived and Wyatt could soon count among his patrons men such as the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Charles Townsend, the Earl de Grey and Lord Grosvenor and later carrying out commissions for Queen Victoria. Becoming one of the most sought-after sculptors in Rome, Wyatt was not only tremendously popular with the public, and contemporary critics, but with his fellow sculptors alike. In a tribute following his friend's death, John Gibson said of Wyatt: "he acquired the purest style and his statues were highly finished. Female figures were his forte and he was clever in composition and the harmony of lines. No sculptor in England has produced female statues to be compared to those by Wyatt" (Lady Eastlake's Life of Gibson, p. 130). Another commentator, writing in the Gentleman's Magazine (1850, p. 99) considered him to have "surpassed all living artists in representing the true and delicate beauty of the female form." In his portrayal of the Huntress, a perfect example of the mid-nineteenth century Ideal Works drawn from mythology and literature, the talent to which these critics allude is clearly visible in Wyatt's sensitive handling of his subject: the delicately chiselled folds of drapery showing the graceful forms of the flesh beneath, together with the realistic treatment of the animal fur, combine to produce a work of real beauty and one which must be rated highly among Wyatt's oeuvre.
Richard Wyatt began his career in Rome in 1821, working in the studio of Antonio Canova until the latter's death the following year and then under Thorwaldesen, before setting up on his own account. Recognition, although slow in coming, was great when it arrived and Wyatt could soon count among his patrons men such as the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Charles Townsend, the Earl de Grey and Lord Grosvenor and later carrying out commissions for Queen Victoria. Becoming one of the most sought-after sculptors in Rome, Wyatt was not only tremendously popular with the public, and contemporary critics, but with his fellow sculptors alike. In a tribute following his friend's death, John Gibson said of Wyatt: "he acquired the purest style and his statues were highly finished. Female figures were his forte and he was clever in composition and the harmony of lines. No sculptor in England has produced female statues to be compared to those by Wyatt" (Lady Eastlake's Life of Gibson, p. 130). Another commentator, writing in the Gentleman's Magazine (1850, p. 99) considered him to have "surpassed all living artists in representing the true and delicate beauty of the female form." In his portrayal of the Huntress, a perfect example of the mid-nineteenth century Ideal Works drawn from mythology and literature, the talent to which these critics allude is clearly visible in Wyatt's sensitive handling of his subject: the delicately chiselled folds of drapery showing the graceful forms of the flesh beneath, together with the realistic treatment of the animal fur, combine to produce a work of real beauty and one which must be rated highly among Wyatt's oeuvre.