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Lot Essay
This majestic bust depicts the great English philosopher and physician John Locke, regarded as one of the most influential figures of the Enlightenment. Locke's theory of the mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, and it is this self-reflective consciousness and empirical outlook that the artist has so successfully captured in marble.
The flowing and soft nature of the carving evident here were hallmarks of Guelfi's finest works, the majority of which were commissions from the aristocracy that came after his move from Rome to London in circa 1714 to work for Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington and creator of Chiswick Villa. The current bust was almost certainly in the 5th Earl of Hardwicke's collection at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. In an inventory of 1881, in the Ante Library, there is a listing which notes a 'A white marble bust of Shakespeare on scagliola bust supports...Ditto ditto Lord John Sommers ditto.' Although it is not known when the bust of Locke was put onto the present - incorrect - socle, it is likely that the 1881 inventory refers to the present bust.
There is a very similar bust of Locke, carved by Guelfi, in the Royal Collection at Kensington Palace, which is part of a set of five busts commissioned by Queen Caroline in the early 1730s. Despite Vertue writing in 1731 that Guelfi had been commissioned to carve these busts, they were long attributed to the Flemish emigre Michael Rysbrack. However Rysbrack himself wrote a letter to his patron Sir Edward Littleton in 1755 in which he states 'I did not make the bust of Dr Clark...it was done by Mr Guelphi an Italian who is dead'. The authorship of the busts was conclusively affirmed by Gordon Balderston in his article on the subject of the commission in 2008 (op. cit.).
The flowing and soft nature of the carving evident here were hallmarks of Guelfi's finest works, the majority of which were commissions from the aristocracy that came after his move from Rome to London in circa 1714 to work for Richard Boyle, the 3rd Earl of Burlington and creator of Chiswick Villa. The current bust was almost certainly in the 5th Earl of Hardwicke's collection at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. In an inventory of 1881, in the Ante Library, there is a listing which notes a 'A white marble bust of Shakespeare on scagliola bust supports...Ditto ditto Lord John Sommers ditto.' Although it is not known when the bust of Locke was put onto the present - incorrect - socle, it is likely that the 1881 inventory refers to the present bust.
There is a very similar bust of Locke, carved by Guelfi, in the Royal Collection at Kensington Palace, which is part of a set of five busts commissioned by Queen Caroline in the early 1730s. Despite Vertue writing in 1731 that Guelfi had been commissioned to carve these busts, they were long attributed to the Flemish emigre Michael Rysbrack. However Rysbrack himself wrote a letter to his patron Sir Edward Littleton in 1755 in which he states 'I did not make the bust of Dr Clark...it was done by Mr Guelphi an Italian who is dead'. The authorship of the busts was conclusively affirmed by Gordon Balderston in his article on the subject of the commission in 2008 (op. cit.).