10-11. William Teed the Younger Trentham 1804 – London 1891 RELIEF WITH THE PROFILE OF A MATURE WOMAN Oval terracotta, 30 x 25 cm Inscription beneath the base of the profile: W THEED FECIT / Romae 1843 RELIEF WITH THE PROFILE OF A YOUNG WOMAN Oval terracotta, 28 x 23 cm Inscription beneath the base of the profile: W. THEED FECIT / Roma 1846 t is truly surprising how little is still known today of the long stay in Rome of William Teed the Younger. Te son of a sculptor, he received his early training from his father William Teed the Elder (1764 – 1817), before going on to work in the studio of Ed- Iward Hodges Baily (1788 – 1867); he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools already in 1820, aged barely sixteen. In 1826 he left for Rome where he completed his training under the greatest sculptors of mature Neoclassicism: the 19th-century sources on Teed report that he was active in the workshops of as many as three different masters of the first order, Bertel Tor- valdsen, Pietro Tenerani and John Gibson, to which names we should also add that of Richard James Wyatt.1 Hitherto, however, virtually nothing has emerged on Teed’s apprenticeship in Rome lasting over twenty years: the documents in the Torvaldsen archive, for example, do not mention any sculpture worked on by the young English artist. Tenerani definitively left the workshop of the Danish master, whose favourite student he had been, in 1827,2 and we cannot rule out the possibility that Teed frequented the workshops of both in this period. He must certainly have been in direct contact with Gibson (1790 – 1866), the greatest English sculptor active in Rome at the time and who had trained with Canova and Torvaldsen: on his return to England, the older and more established master recommended Teed to Prince Albert and later, in 1868, Teed in a sense repaid this debt by sculpting a posthumous portrait of his mentor (still in the Royal Academy of Arts in London today).3 But a specific influence of Gibson’s works 1 On the biography and career of Teed cfr. in particular Martin Greenwood, Teed, William, the Younger, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ad vocem, updated on 28 May 2015, available online. 2 Stefano Grandesso, Pietro Tenerani (1789 – 1869), Cinisello Balsamo 2003, p. 252. 3 Anna Frasca-Rath, Gibson and Canova, in John Gibson - a British sculptor in Rome, catalogue of the exhibi- tion (London, Royal Academy of Arts), pp. 30 and 38. 102 104 William Teed the Younger, Bust of Tomas William Helps, Private collection on those of Teed can be seen only in the pieces executed by the younger artist after his return home, since practically nothing survives of the works that he must in any case have sculpted or even simply modelled in the over twenty years he spent in Rome.4 We should mention at least the two statues of Psyche and Narcissus, both signed “OPUS. W. THEED. / ROMA. 1847”, in the British royal collections, sculpted for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, displayed as a pair in their residence at Osborne (the model of the Psyche dated to about 1841 and that of the Nar- cissus was also a few years earlier, of 1845: several versions are known of both inventions).5 Te descriptions of the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts show that in these years Teed sent various busts executed in Italy to London, almost all of which are now untraceable (and for many the identity of the sitter was not even specified).6 Nonetheless, we can mention 4 On the relationship between Gibson and Teed cfr. above all Anna Frasca-Rath, John Gibson & Antonio Canova: Rezeption, Transfer, Inszenierung, Wien - Köln – Weimar 2018, pp. 144-145 and ad indicem. 5 Jonathan Marsden, entries in Victoria and Albert. Art and Love, catalogue of the exhibition (London, Victoria and Albert Museum) ed. by Jonathan Marsden, London 2010, pp. 150-151, cat. nos 82-83. 6 Emma Hardy, Teed, William II, in A biographical dictionary of sculptors in Britain: 1660 – 1851, ed. by Ingrid 105 William Teed the Younger, Female Bust, Private collection at least two busts by the sculptor executed in Rome and that have survived until today, but whose location is currently unknown (both are probably in private collections): the first, signed and dated “W. THEED / FECIT ROMA / 1844” has been identified as a portrait of Tomas Williams Helps;7 the other, also signed and dated with the same formula, “W. THEED / FE- CIT ROMA / 1844”, depicts a woman on whose identity no hypotheses have been advanced.8 Te sources do not attest a production of profile relief portraits on the part of Teed.9 But in this context we should mention here another unpublished female profile portrait, in marble, Roscoe, Emma Hardy, M.G. Sullivan, New Haven 2009, pp. 1240-1241. 7 John Kenworthy-Browne, entry in Te British Face. A View of Portraiture 1625 – 1850, catalogue of the ex- hibition (London, Colnaghi) ed. by Donald Garstang, London 1986, p. 140-141, cat. no. 69; Teed, William II cit, p. 1241. 8 Da mercante a collezionista: cinquant’anni di ricerca per una prestigiosa raccolta, auction catalogue (Florence, Pandolfini), Florence 2017, pp. 234-235, cat. no. 112. 9 Cfr. the catalogue of all the artist’s works, known or untraced, compiled in Hardy, Teed, William II cit., pp. 1238-1243. 106 William Teed the Younger, Relief with the Profile of a Woman, Private collection very similar to that of the young woman under discussion here, partly for the hairstyle; though it lacks an inscription it also seems attributable to Teed. Even after his return to England, the artist continued to execute numerous busts of prominent figures of the time, becoming one of the most representative exponents of English Victorian sculpture, in part with the execution of monumental public works (it is particularly worth mentioning his participation in the major enterprise of the Albert Memorial with the allegorical group in marble representing Africa).10 All of this shows the great importance of the discovery of these two signed and dated profile portraits in terracotta. Te two pieces, which share the same provenance, seem to be a pair, designed to be displayed next to one another with the younger woman facing right and the 10 G. Alex Bremner, Between Civilization and Barbarity: conflicting perceptions of the non-European world in William Tees’s “Africa”, 1864 – 69, in “Te Sculpture Journal”, XVI, 2007, pp. 94-102. In his late maturity Teed, who had trained in Rome in what was still a fully Neoclassical climate, became a great admirer of Michelangelo precisely in opposition to classicist artists, cfr. T.S.R. Boase, English Art 1800-1870, Oxford 1959, p. 268. 107 108 older woman left. In both medallions, the signature is to be found beneath the bust itself, but whilst in that of the young woman the letters were clearly incised in the terracotta, in the other they seem to have been impressed. Furthermore, the two dates do not correspond (the signature to be considered in the artist’s own hand reads ‘1846’, the other ‘1843’). In any case, Teed only left Rome in 1848, a few years after having entered the good graces of Prince Albert thanks, as we have said, to the recommendation of Gibson. Te two terracottas thus date to the very end of the English sculptor’s stay in Rome, when he was already forty. Neither Torvaldsen, nor Tenerani, who nonetheless worked successfully in the relief technique, particularly in narrative pieces, executed significant profile portraits in medallions like those considered here. Naturally this is a typology that, emulating ancient models and especially the reverse of medallions, had already been extremely popular from the early Neoclassical period and was adopted principally in funerary contexts (by Canova, for example, we should mention the portraits of Titian and Maria Christina of Austria, inserted into medallions and intended for the respective funerary monuments in the Frari in Venice and the Augustinekirche in Vienna). Also traditionally as- cribed to Canova is another unidentified portrait, again a profile, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, though some doubts on the attribution persist.11 By Gibson, we should remember the Portrait of William Roscoe (1813; London, British Museum), the great English historian and collector (1753-1831) who was a very close friend of Gibson.12 Both Canova’s medallion and that depicting Roscoe are pieces in which the rigorous dependence on antiquity was also translated into the decision to end the image immediately beneath the neck; in the portrait of Roscoe, in particular, there is no allusion to contemporary dress. Te same can be said for the portrait of a young woman presented here, whilst in the other the woman is dressed in accordance with the fashions of the time. Te two pieces, then, though probably executed in relation to one another, are not perfectly comparable. Both indicate a profound knowledge of the style of Canova, Torvaldsen and Tenerani, in the severe and noble expressive form adopted by Teed. ANDREA BACCHI 11 Giuseppe Pavanello, L’opera completa del Canova, Rizzoli, Milan 1976, p. 95, cat. no. 45. 12 Frasca-Rath, John Gibson & Antonio Canova cit., pp. 25-28 and 259, cat. no. 97. 109.