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Lot description
JOSEPH NOLLEKENS (1737-1823): BUST OF WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER (1759-1806) a patinated bronze library bust, English, circa 1820, face modelled slightly turned and raised, draped in a classical cloak, the bust detaching from the waisted socle, on a square marble plinth with bronze laurel border above the base, bronze 23cm high, marble plinth 15cm high 'Oh my country! How I leave my country!..." were apparently William Pitts last words on his deathbed aged forty-six on 23 January 1806. Having successfully guided the nation through the most perilous years of the Napoleonic Wars and notwithstanding Nelsons victory at Trafalgar, the news of Napoleons triumph at Austerlitz is thought to have dealt the already exhausted Prime Minister his death blow. Ironically perhaps, given Pitts refusal to grant the artist a sitting during his lifetime, Nollekens successfully immortalized the statesman posthumously, using his death mask, as well as the portrait by John Hoppner. The prime version, executed in 1806, is held by the Earls of Rosebery at Dalmeny House. In the following years Nollekens studio produced over seventy further versions of the bust in marble, each priced at 120 guineas, additionally selling 600 plaster casts. Busts are sometimes encountered paired with Nollekens' depiction of the other renowned politician of the age, Charles James Fox (1749-1806). Bronze versions were also cast, probably in the following decade, although the bronze founder is, as yet, unidentified, the suggestion being they may have been by Benjamin Vulliamy.