Lot Essay
This affecting bust, for which there is a plaster model in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen (Kai Sass, op. cit., I, p. 349, illustrated), dates from 1817 and was executed in Rome (Kai Sass, op. cit., I, p. 351, illustrated). It represents Harriet Frances (1794-1849), the wife of the Hon., later Sir, Fleetwood Broughton Reynolds Pellew. Married in the previous year, she was the youngest child of Sir Godfrey Webster and Elizabeth Vassall, later and more famously Lady Holland. Her childhood was not without incident, with her mother pretending she had died of measles, dressing her in boy's clothes to conceal the imposture, and then leaving her with a maid for three years. On her re-emergence in June 1799, Lady Holland described her as 'without exception by far the most lovely I ever beheld. She has all the beauties ... Her complexion is fine; she has dimples, fine hair, and thick eyelashes, open chest, flat back'. A more definitive separation was to follow: a year later her father shot himself over a gambling debt, and she was estranged from her mother.
She remained a beauty, and in 1823 her half-brother, Henry Edward Fox, who had not previously met her, described her as 'a pretty, graceful figure', while in 1837 he was reported to be 'much taken by her good looks, charm and cleverness'.
Harriet's husband, subsequently Admiral Sir Fleetwood Pellew, was the second son of the more celebrated Admiral Pellew, first Viscount Exmouth. Having joined the navy before his tenth birthday, he was given command of the H.M.S. Powerful while still in his teens, and was subsequently Commander-in-Chief on the East India and China station. While in Rome in 1817, the couple were both drawn by Ingres, possibly - as Hans Naef has suggested (Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, 5 vols., Bern, 1977-1980, II, pp. 139-146) - through the intermediacy of Pellew's friend Lady Bentinck, whom Ingres had already portrayed on three occasions. In the case of the commission to Thorvaldsen, however, no such explanation is required, since the sculptor had executed a bust of Harriet's father-in-law in 1814.
The comparison between the drawn and the sculptured likenesses is an absorbing one: Ingres captures the innocent freshness of the young bride, her hair tumbling in ringlets about her neck, where Thorwaldsen finds a more ordered, but at the same time more ideal, beauty.
She remained a beauty, and in 1823 her half-brother, Henry Edward Fox, who had not previously met her, described her as 'a pretty, graceful figure', while in 1837 he was reported to be 'much taken by her good looks, charm and cleverness'.
Harriet's husband, subsequently Admiral Sir Fleetwood Pellew, was the second son of the more celebrated Admiral Pellew, first Viscount Exmouth. Having joined the navy before his tenth birthday, he was given command of the H.M.S. Powerful while still in his teens, and was subsequently Commander-in-Chief on the East India and China station. While in Rome in 1817, the couple were both drawn by Ingres, possibly - as Hans Naef has suggested (Die Bildniszeichnungen von J.-A.-D. Ingres, 5 vols., Bern, 1977-1980, II, pp. 139-146) - through the intermediacy of Pellew's friend Lady Bentinck, whom Ingres had already portrayed on three occasions. In the case of the commission to Thorvaldsen, however, no such explanation is required, since the sculptor had executed a bust of Harriet's father-in-law in 1814.
The comparison between the drawn and the sculptured likenesses is an absorbing one: Ingres captures the innocent freshness of the young bride, her hair tumbling in ringlets about her neck, where Thorwaldsen finds a more ordered, but at the same time more ideal, beauty.