Overall: 18 x 16 1/2 x 9 inches (45.7 x 41.9 x 22.9 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Incised on back of collar: "Modelled by | F. L. Chantrey | [...]"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1977.14.2
Classification:
Sculptures
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
philologist | man | portrait
Currently On View:
Not on view
Gallery Label:
John Horne Tooke was a noted clergyman, political reformist, and radical, who, as a young man, had attached himself to the Whig opposition to George III. He detested Charles James Fox, however, and by the 1790s had put his support behind the administration of William Pitt the Younger. Francis Leggatt Chantrey’s bust of the elderly Tooke, modeled and exhibited in a plaster version at the Royal Academy in 1810, helped make the sculptor’s reputation with its informality and remarkably lifelike qualities. Tooke’s biographer thought it was “fearfully like,” and Chantrey himself estimated that it had earned him more than £12,000 in commissions for portrait busts. The exact history of this plaster version is disputed, but it might be the version exhibited in 1810. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016