Joseph Nollekens was born in London on 11 August 1737. His father Joseph Francis Nollekens was a painter from Antwerp. The young Nollekens had no formal education and at the age of 13, entered the studio of the sculpture Peter Scheemakers, from whom he learned to appreciate the works of antiquity. From 1758 onwards, he frequented the private gallery in Whitehall, which was made available to artists for study, by its owner, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond. Having won a number of premiums at the Society of Arts, in 1760, Nollekens travelled to Rome, where he worked in Bartolomeo Cavaceppi’s workshop and restored ancient sculptures as well as terracottas by such artists as Michelangelo and Giambologna. He then earned a living in the Eternal City as an antique dealer, restorer and copier. Grand Tourists who sat for his portrait busts in Rome included the actor David Garrick (1764; Althorp) and the author Laurence Sterne (1766, in the National Portrait Gallery in London). Nollekens’ The Innocent being carried to Heaven (depicting one of the Holy Children slain by King Herod the Great, whilst attempting to kill the infant Jesus Christ), was commissioned by Lord Spencer in Rome in 1764 and is believed to have been displayed in the Painted Room at Spencer House in London, but may now be found at the Spencer family seat at Althorp in Northamptonshire. Nollekens returned to England in 1770 and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1772. He then earned the patronage of King George III and became one of the most fashionable sculptors in the country, demonstrating a particular facility with the portrait bust. Among his most famous likenesses are those of George III, William Pitt the Younger, Charles James Fox, the great Benjamin West and Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. In the 1770s and 1780s Nollekens produced several Neo-classical marbles and developed a brisk trade in church monuments and tombs. He was elected ARA in 1771 and RA in 1772. In 1774 Nollekens married Mary, daughter of Justice Saunders Welch; through her, he met the lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson whose portrait in plaster (1777) may be found in the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum at Lichfield in Staffordshire. It would subsequently be pronounced by no less a figure than Sir Francis Chantrey to be: ‘the finest work Nollekens ever produced.’ His Monument to Earl and Countess Bathurst may be seen in John the Baptist Church at Cirencester, Gloucestershire. Nollekens’ remarkable white marble statues of Venus (1773) Minerva (1775) and Juno (1776) were commissioned by Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquess of Rockingham as a testament to the classical education and taste he developed during his Grand Tour of Italy at the age of 18. The marquess assembled the group and other works in his Neo-classical sculpture gallery in his London house. After 1782 it was taken to his heir’s estate at Woodhouse, near Rotherham in Yorkshire. The Government Art Collection has a number of white marble busts sculpted by Nollekens and these include four different versions of the Whig statesman Charles James Fox, that of agriculturalist Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford (1765-1802), Prince Frederick, Duke of York & Albany (1763-1827 Commander-in-Chief of the British Army), George Child Villiers, 5th Earl of Jersey (1773-1859) and the assassinated Prime Minister Spencer Percival (1762-1812). Many of Nollekens’ works were influenced by ancient Roman busts of the late Republic style and the remarkable unsigned white marble bust of the Duke of Wellington in a toga that was previously attributed to Nollekens, is now believed by the experts to have been sculpted by Peter Turnerelli. Nollekens’ busts of George Aufrere (1777) and Sophia, daughter of George Aufrere may be found in the collection of the Tate. His bust of James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1803) may be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland. Copies of his graceful nude statues Castor and Pollux may be found in the V&A. Nollekens died in London on 3 April 1823 and he left, for that time, the astonishing sum of £200,000. He achieved posthumous notoriety through his pupil John Thomas Smith’s biography Nollekens and his Times, which portrayed the great sculptor as a cheese-paring miser. He had apparently promised Smith a legacy and Nolleken’s wealth would subsequently be messily picked over in the law courts ad infinitum by various interested parties. The white marble portrait bust above is of the and has been identified by experts as having been produced by Nollekens’ workshop.