Oil painting, 'The Sculptor Joseph Wilton with his Wife and Daughter', Francis Hayman, ca. 1760

Portrait of the scuptor Joseph Wilton (1722-1803) with his wife and daughter. Joseph stands before an easel at the right, his wide Frances seated at the left holding their daughter Frances (born 1758). On the right is his modello for one of the chimneypieces for Northumberland House (now in the V&A)

Purchased, 1985

Historical significance: Brian Allen, Francis Hayman, Published in association with English Heritage (the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood) and Yale Center for British Art by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, p.105-6, cat. no. 28


"28. JOSEPH WILTON AND HIS FAMILY 1760 Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 ½ (76.2 x 102.9)

Prov: Morrison family, Yeo Vale, Devon; by descent to Sir Robert Kirkwood; sale, Sotheby's, March 1985 (43) ; purchased by V & A

Exh: London, Victoria & Albert Museum, English Caricature 1620 to the Present, 1985 (not in catalogue)
Coll : London, Victoria & Albert Museum

This portrait of the prosperous sculptor Joseph Wilton with his wife and young daughter can be dated to 1760 (1). Wilton had returned to England in May 1755 in the company of the Florentine decorative painter Cipriani, the architect William Chambers and the sculptor Capizzoldi after years of study in Flanders, France and Italy.(2) In 1757 he married Frances Lucas and their eldest daughter, also named Frances, who is seen here in the picture as a two-year-old, was born the following year.

By 1760 Hayman had virtually abandoned portrait painting and this is one of only two portraits known at present which post-date the Hallett Family of 1756 (cat. no. 27). Hayman's style and compositional methods had changed remarkably little since the mid- I 740S and he is still inclined to set his portraits in an austere panelled room. In this instance the setting is the sculptor's studio.

Hayman paints Mrs Wilton, on the left in her splendid turquoise silk dress, in a decidedly French style. The sharp diagonal thrust of her pose recalls Boucher portraits like those of Madame de Pompadour which Wilton may well have seen
and admired in Paris.(3). The young Miss Wilton, balanced rather precariously on a stool by her mother, clutches a sprig of cherries, a device used by Hogarth in the National Gallery's The Graham Children of c. 1742. A pair of cherries, with its erotic associations, might be seen to contain a warning against lust, even if the child is unaware of the implications, and the motif is commonly found in portraits of children, particularly in Dutch and French art from the sixteenth century onward.(4)

On the right Joseph Wilton is poised in front of an easel with a modelling tool in his right hand. Mounted on the easel is what appears to be a clay modello for a chimney piece which on closer inspection is revealed as a design for one of two giant telamonic chimney pieces which graced the Gallery of Northumberland House in the Strand until its demolition in 1874.(5) This would clearly suggest that these chimneypieces were designed by Wilton although we know that their execution in marble was entrusted to Benjamin Carter.(6)

It is entirely possible that Hayman played some role in helping Wilton gain this commission, for the painter's close friend, the architectJames Paine, with whom he had worked on several decorative schemes in the north of England (see pp. 55-7), was responsible for the completion of the Northumberland House Gallery between 1753 and 1757.(7) Hayman himself; however, seems to have nurtured a special interest in elaborate marble chimneypieces for fanciful examples, apparently of his own invention, appear regularly in his portraits and book illustrations.

Other enigmatic sculptural puzzles appear in the painting. To the extreme left, in shadow, is a truncated column behind which stands what appears to be an elaborate stone or marble-topped table, surmounted by a piece of has-relief sculpture and a small urn. The relief represents a female head, as yet unidentified. To the right of Wilton, without any apparent relationship to the panelling behind, is a curious term-figure, like those frequently applied to chimney pieces. With its distinctive plaited hairstyle this appears to be adapted, like the bust in the background of the portrait of Sir Edioard Littleton, from the so-called Younger Faustina, now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome (sec notes to cat. no. 22). Wilton presumably made a copy of it, for a bust of , Fa us tine' by him was among the items at the sale of a 'a man of fashion' at Christie's on 2 june 1779.

The dense facture of the paint surface and the coarser drapery painting arc consistent with Hayman's looser style in his later years.

Endnotes:

1) I have written about this portrait at length in 'Joseph Wilton, Francis Hayman and the Chimney-pieces from Northumberland House', Burlington Magazine, CXXV (April (983) pp. 195-202.

2)SeeJ. T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times ... &tc., 2 vols. (London, (829) I1, pp. 164-182.

3) A comparison with Boucher's portrait of Mme de Pompadour in the Jones Collection at the V & A (signed and dated 1758) is instructive (repr. in colour in A. Ananoff & D. Wildenstein, I} Opera Completa di Boucher (Milan, (980) pI. XLVII I.

4) For an interesting discussion of the theme in French and Dutch painting see Ella Snoep-Reitsma, 'Chardin and the Bourgeois Ideals of his Time, 2', Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 24 (1973) pp. 212-217.

5)The chimneypieces fortunately survive: one is in the V & A and the other is at Syon House. For a discussion of the use of modellos, etc., see Malcolm Baker, 'Roubiliac's models and 18th century English sculptors' working practices', Entwurf und Ausfuhrung in der Europaischen Barockplastick (Munich, 1986) pp. 159-184

6. Allen, loc. cit., p. 200, n. 46.

7. See Peter Leach, 'The Life and Work of James Paine', unpublished D. Phil thesis, Oxford University (1975) p. 304."

Painted in England by Francis Hayman RA (born in Exeter, 1708, died in London, 1776)

Object Type
Although traditionally only noblemen and their families had commissioned portraits and conversation pieces of themselves, by the mid-18th century, successful artists and craftsmen began to follow their example.

People
This portrait may show the sculptor Joseph Wilton (1722-1803) with his wife and young daughter, or it might be a portrait of Benjamin Carter (died 1766), also a sculptor, of whom little is known. Wilton had returned to England in May 1755 in the company of the decorative painter G.B. Cipriani (1727-1785), the architect William Chambers (1723-1796) and an unidentified sculptor called 'Capizoldi' (possibly G.B. Capezzuoli), after years of study in Flanders, France and Italy. In 1757 he married Frances Lucas, and she and her daughter, also named Frances, might be those portrayed in this picture. Francis Hayman (1708-1776), who had begun as a decorative painter, started to accept commissions for portraits from a growing middle-class clientele. As well as his fellow artists, Hayman painted portraits of doctors, literary men and actors. His pupils included Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788).

Subjects Depicted
The sculptor is standing in front of an easel containing a modello for a Neo-classical chimney-piece, identified as one of the marble chimney-pieces executed for the Gallery at Northumberland House, built for Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (1714-1786). After the house was demolished in the late 19th century, one of the chimney-pieces was moved to Syon House in south-west London, and another one is at the V&A.

P.7-1985