An Angel and Putto Mourning by an Urn, Joseph Wilton, R.A. 1722-1803

Joseph Wilton, R.A. 1722-1803.

An Angel and Putto Mourning by an Urn.

Pen and black ink and grey washes on laid paper.

39.6 by 22.6 cm., 15 ½ by 8 ¾ inches.

Provenance:

Probably William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough (1704-1793), his Executor’s sale, Christie’s, 7th April 1801, lot 66 (as Francesco Bartolozzi);

With Louis Meier, circa 1955, where bought by Ralph Holland (1917-2012).

Wilton was the son of an ornamental plasterer who trained as a sculptor in France in the 1740s before spending much of the 1750s in Rome and Florence where he learnt to sculpt. On his return to London, he built up a successful practice producing bust and funerary monuments including many in Westminster Abbey.

He was a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1768 and its Keeper from 1790 until his death. A number of similar studies for funerary monuments by Wilton are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The use of the motif of an angel draped over an urn is typical of Wilton’s work in the 1760s – see the tomb to Charlotte St Quintin in St John’s Church, Harpham, the tomb to Mary Okeover in Okeover Church, Staffordshire, and the tomb to Elizabeth Ottley in St John’s, Antigua, all of which date from the mid to late 1760s.

Dimensions

Price on application

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance