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Lot description
Lorenzo Bartolini (Italian, 1777-1850), a carved white marble bust of Charles James Fox after Joseph Nollekens, signed to the reverse 'BARTOLINI', 30cm wide 30cm deep 48cm high Provenance: Sotheby's, European Sculpture and Works of Art 900-1900, 28 October, 2003 lot 85; The property of a gentleman. Lorenzo Bartolini rose from modest origins to become one of the most celebrated Italian sculptors following Canova. In 1797, he moved to Paris and retrained in the Studio of Jacques-Louis David. He became a favoured sculptor for Napoléon, who sent him to Carrara in 1807 to direct the Academy of Sculpture and to set up a workshop dedicated to the production of portraits of the Bonaparte family. After the fall of Napoléon, Bartolini relocated to Florence where his grand tour patrons included Thomas Hope and the 6th Duke of Devonshire. This particular work of art depicts Charles James Fox (1749-1806), a leading British Whig politician, whose parliamentary career lasted thirty-eight years during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It has been noted by John Kenworthy-Browne (a leading authority on the work of Lorenzo Bartolini) that Henry Matthews wrote in his ‘Travel Diary’, that ‘casts have been imported from London of the busts of the King, Fox, Pitt, Nelson, Perceval, and many others. Bartolini reproduces these in marble and sends them back to London...Notably, two busts of Fox by Bartolini are documented, one of which is housed at Ickworth’.