TOMASSO BROTHERS FINE ART

JOSEPH GOTT (1785-1860)

ROME, before 1841

Boy with a Basket Playing with a Greyhound

White marble

88 cm (34 ½ in.) high

SIGNED “J. GOTT Ft”

PROVENANCE Probably in the collection of John Gott and his wife, where “A boy with a basket playing with a greyhound” is recorded by 1841

LITERATURE I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M. G. Sullivan, A biographical dictionary of sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, New Haven and London, 2009, p. 546, under no. 97

Joseph Gott (1785 – 1860) is considered to have been amongst the finest British sculptors working in the first half of the nineteenth century. He achieved international renown, yet had strong links to the English county of Yorkshire in that his most important patrons included the family (and circle) of his second-cousin, the Leeds-based industrialist Benjamin Gott (1762 – 1840), who had made his fortune in the wool-trade and became Mayor of the city in 1799. After moving to Rome in 1822, Joseph Gott became part of a vibrant British artistic community working in the city, which included eminent names such as Charles Eastlake (1793 - 1865), John Gibson (1790 - 1866), Richard James Wyatt (1795 – 1850), Seymour Kirkup (1788 - 1880) and Joseph Severn (1793–1879). These compatriots provided a vital network of mutual support, and strong ties developed between them whilst in Italy. For example, Gott’s housemate, the painter Joseph Severn (1793–1879), wrote to his father that “Mrs Gott prepares all the meals in the house and we all eat together – this is like being at home to me – we have an English pudding every day – this young Man has a very wonderful talent” (London Metropolitan Archive: Keats House Papers, Severn’s correspondence with his parents and siblings, in S. Brown, Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship, Oxford, 2009, p. 147). Gott had entered London’s Royal Academy in 1805, after having trained under the sculptor John Flaxman between 1798 and 1802. The Academy’s then president, the eminent painter Sir Thomas Lawrence, awarded Gott a pension for his travels in 1822, complete with a personal letter of introduction to Europe’s greatest living sculptor, Antonio Canova (1757 – 1822). Gott remained in Rome for the rest of his life and built a studio that became a central attraction to English tourists, as his obituary in The Athenaeum made clear: “Every visitor to Rome, this half century past, has looked in at the studio of M.Gott…” (The Athenaeum, 28 January 1860, p.139, in T. Friedman and T. Stevens, Joseph Gott, 1786-1860, Sculptor, exh. cat., Leeds and Liverpool, 1972, p. 56).

His artistic practice had significant classical foundations. These took the shape of a deep reverence for the finest examples of sculpture surviving from antiquity, and dedicated academic study of the male and female nude. Indeed, Lawrence requested in the letter of recommendation he wrote for Gott to Canova, that the great Italian “perhaps extend to him [Gott] your generous assistance in his study of any fine Works of Antiquity that may not be within the reach of common observations” (Canova Archives, Museo Civico, Bassano, Letter from Sir Thomas Lawrence, V.550 / 3601). These activities were in accordance with the pedagogical zeitgeist of the European Academies of the period, but what sets Joseph Gott apart from his peers at this time was the particular strain of classicism he developed. It was infused with a sensitivity, sensuality and romanticism not seen in the work of his compatriots in Rome, such as Richard James Wyatt (1795 – 1850) and John Gibson (1790 - 1866). They, like many, had fallen under the spell of Canova and Thorvaldsen’s comparably austere, ‘neo-Greek’ iteration of the Neoclassical idiom (T. Friedman and T. Stevens, Joseph Gott, 1786-1860, Sculptor, exh. cat., Leeds and Liverpool, 1972, p. 41). However, Gott’s works concerned rather more heart-warming subjects than the deeds of other-worldly Olympians. They were often depictions of playful or loving children and animals, modelled in either terracotta or, as in the present case, the finest white marble.

The painter Thomas Unwins wrote eloquently of Gott’s talents to Sir Thomas Lawrence from Naples in 1825 (LAW/4/341, p.103):

“He is a man of first-rate genius. His works have been distinguished by the most fertile invention; powerful conception of expression; a high feeling of the beauty of female form; a fine taste and correct judgement - and the whole mingled together by that quality peculiar to genius, which I think Lord Verulam calls ‘Felicity’ – everything he does seems a creation of his own mind. You do not think it beautiful because it is like this or like that amongst the admired works of other men and other ages but because it rises up before you in its own individual character, and appeals at once to the sympathies and associations common to humanity…”

This charming group of a boy holding a woven basket, as a greyhound playfully tries to pull it from his hands, exemplifies Gott’s unique Neoclassicism. The child is wearing a short toga of the type associated with ancient Rome, the weight of his body rests on a tree stump similar to those modelled to support marble figures since antiquity, and the slender greyhound echoes the dogs that centuries earlier adorned the residences of Roman patricians (one such example is the pair of Celtic hounds - found among the ruins of Antoninus Pius' Laurentine Villa at Torre Paterno around 1795-6, and acquired by Thomas Hope between 1795-1803 to display in the sculpture gallery of his London house on Duchess Street - currently in the collection of Tomasso Brothers Fine Art). Within the framework of these classical references, Gott captured the playful complicity and innocence of the interaction between the boy and the animal. The child smiles while the greyhound tamely looks up at him, pulling at the basket without the slightest hint of forcefulness. A consummate sculptor, Gott also paid close attention to the rendering of every surface, from the richly textured curls of the child’s hair to the soft folds of his toga, and from the short and thickly set fur of the hound to the rugged, porous surface of the tree bark.

A marble statue of “A boy with a basket playing with a greyhound” is recorded in the collection of the sculptor’s relative John Gott and his wife by 1841, with no later mention. A second version of this composition, dated 1853, was in the collection of “J.E. Duboys”, from where it entered the Musée des Beaux Arts in Angers in 1882. This suggests that the present marble is most likely the one formerly in John Gott’s collection.

RELATED LITERATURE London Metropolitan Archive: Keats House Papers, Severn’s correspondence with his parents and siblings, in S. Brown, Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship, Oxford, 2009, p.147 T.F. Friedman, ‘Aspects of Nineteenth Century Sculpture in Leeds. I. The Northern Society Exhibitions’, Leeds Arts Calendar, no. 69, 1971, pp. 22–28 T.F. Friedman, ‘Aspects of Nineteeth Century Sculpture in Leeds. II. Patronage of the Benjamin Gott Family’, Leeds Arts Calendar, no. 70, 1972, pp. 18–25 T. Friedman and T. Stevens, Joseph Gott, 1786-1860, Sculptor, exh. cat., Leeds and Liverpool, 1972 H. Honour, ‘Sir Thomas Lawrence and Benjamin Gott’, Leeds Arts Calendar, vol. 7, no. 25, Spring 1954, pp. 13–24 V.M.E. Lovell, ‘Benjamin Gott of Armley House, Leeds, 1762-1840; Patron of the Arts’, Miscellany, vol 18, part 2 A.Wells-Cole, ‘John Flaxman and Benjamin Gott of Armley House, Leeds’, Leeds Arts Calendar, no. 63, 1968, pp. 21– 24 Canova Archives, Museo Civico, Bassano. Letter from Sir Thomas Lawrence V.550 / 3601 Transactions of the Society Instituted at London for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce London: 1783-1851, RSA, PR.GE/112/13/11-67, vol 26, 1808, 18 The Athenaeum, 28 January 1860, p.139, in T. Friedman and T. Stevens, Joseph Gott, 1786-1860, Sculptor, exh. cat. (Leeds and Liverpool: 1972), p. 56 Lawrence Papers, Royal Academy of Arts, ‘Thomas Unwins to Sir Thomas Lawrence’, LAW/4/341, p.103