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Lot Essay
Joseph Wilton was commissioned by the Duke of Richmond to record Wolfe’s face with a plaster mask when the general’s remains returned to Spithead in November 1759. Wilton’s original model of the head (which was based on another similar face as Wolfe’s face was too distorted to use) has disappeared. Wilton’s marble, a variant of this plaster, is in the National Gallery of Canada (no 18376), Ottawa. Another variant, in plaster, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG4415). This plaster differs from both, with the sitter looking up.
‘Wilton’s surviving portrait sculptures differ in details. One in the National Portrait Gallery, London, might be the first, as it has what might be the least idealized face of Wolfe. It is a full-size plaster, as is what may have been Wilton’s next portrait of Wolfe, which is known from two eighteenth-century casts. One of them, now in the Canadian War Museum, was once the property of a descendant of the Reverend Richard Board, Vicar of Westerham, and the other was acquired by Governor Simcoe in 1784. Wilton did not have either of these busts cut in marble. He did produce another model, since lost, which was cut in stone [the Ottawa marble].
'Working in the then-current neo-classical style, Wilton presented Wolfe in the guise of a Roman general, with some concessions to contemporary fashion and symbolism such as the gorget, wolf-head epaulettes (a visual pun), and the lion of England in relief on the antique breastplate. The diagonal sweep of the cloak and the balanced arrangement of the head and shoulders are accomplished essays in the eighteenth-century classical idiom. This transformation of the conqueror of Canada of 1759 into a timeless statement is composed with antique grammar finely tuned to contemporary taste.’
A. McNairn, Behold the Hero, General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century, Quebec, 1997, p.64.
Wilton’s marble monument to Wolfe was unveiled in Westminster Abbey in 1773.
‘Wilton’s surviving portrait sculptures differ in details. One in the National Portrait Gallery, London, might be the first, as it has what might be the least idealized face of Wolfe. It is a full-size plaster, as is what may have been Wilton’s next portrait of Wolfe, which is known from two eighteenth-century casts. One of them, now in the Canadian War Museum, was once the property of a descendant of the Reverend Richard Board, Vicar of Westerham, and the other was acquired by Governor Simcoe in 1784. Wilton did not have either of these busts cut in marble. He did produce another model, since lost, which was cut in stone [the Ottawa marble].
'Working in the then-current neo-classical style, Wilton presented Wolfe in the guise of a Roman general, with some concessions to contemporary fashion and symbolism such as the gorget, wolf-head epaulettes (a visual pun), and the lion of England in relief on the antique breastplate. The diagonal sweep of the cloak and the balanced arrangement of the head and shoulders are accomplished essays in the eighteenth-century classical idiom. This transformation of the conqueror of Canada of 1759 into a timeless statement is composed with antique grammar finely tuned to contemporary taste.’
A. McNairn, Behold the Hero, General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century, Quebec, 1997, p.64.
Wilton’s marble monument to Wolfe was unveiled in Westminster Abbey in 1773.