The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]

The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rowlandson caricatures Sir Joseph Nollekens, who sculptures of classical gods and contemporary busts helped popularize Neoclassical taste in Britain. The sculptor’s collection of plaster and terracotta casts and antique fragments, brought back from Rome, crowds his studio. Shown in his sixties, Nollekens needs spectacles to work on a clay model of Venus and Cupid intended for the next Royal Academy exhibition, but his lecherous expression and flushed cheeks suggest his undiminished ability to appreciate the nude who perches amidst the statuary. A large sculpted head of Jupiter, a god notorious for his many affairs, also eyes the model and the image suggests high-minded aesthetic pursuits falter when confronted with the attraction of living beauty.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]The Sculptor [Preparations for the Academy, Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus]

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.