LOUIS-FRANÇOIS ROUBILIAC (1702-1762)
and inscribed ‘VNG. GP. SERVERAY’.
32¼ in. (82 cm.) high overall, including socle
Provenance
Henry Herbert, 9th Earl of Pembroke, by descent to his son;
Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke;
Placed on the monument to the 9th Earl of Pembroke in St.Mary’s Church, Wilton, Wiltshire, before 3 July, 1754 (when seen by Dr. Richard Pococke);
The bust and parts of the monument moved to the new Church of St.Mary and St.Nicholas, Wilton, Wiltshire in 1845;
The bust sold (following the grant by the church court of a faculty for removal) by the 17th Earl of Pembroke in 1997 (via Sotheby’s) to;
Professor Ian Craft, by whom sold, 2005, to;
Private collection, London;
By whom sold to a private collection in the UK, 2017.
Exhibitions
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in the Sculpture in Britain Galleries 2005-2017.
Literature
R.Pococke, The Travels through England of Dr.Richard Pococke, ed. J.J.Cartwright, Camden Society, N.S. 44, 1888-89, Vol.II, pp.47-8
K.A.Esdaile, The Life and Works of Louis François Roubiliac, Oxford, 1928, p.91
R.Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851, London, 1953, pp.329-31
M.I.Webb, ‘Roubiliac’s busts at Wilton’, in Country Life, vol.119, no.3092 (19 Apr. 1956), pp.804-5 (illus.) M.Whinney, Sculpture in Britain 1530-1830, London, 1964, pp.102-115, pl.88 (illus.)
J.Lees-Milne, Earls of Creation: Five Great Patrons of Eighteenth-Century Art, revd. ed., London, 1968, p.100
D.Bindman and M.Baker, Roubiliac and the Eighteenth Century Monument: Sculpture as Theatre, New Haven and London, 1995 (hereafter Bindman and Baker), pp.343-4 (illus.)
D.Wilson, ‘Roubiliac, the earl of Pembroke, and the chancellor’s discretion: preservation of the nation’s heritage by the consistory courts of the Church of England’, in Journal of the Church Monuments Society, Vol. XXI [2006] (April 2007), pp.141-184 (illus. and front cover of Journal)
J.Kenworthy-Browne, ‘Designed to instruct or just designed?’, in Apollo, Vol.CLXII, no.532 (June 2006), pp.84-7 (illus.)
R.Campbell-Johnson, ‘Why the stony faces?: Britain’s best sculpture has finally got a home it deserves’, The Times, London, 14 Mar., 2006, pp.17-18
M.Baker, ‘Commemoration ‘in a more durable and grave manner’: portrait busts for the British in early eighteenth-century Rome’, in David Marshall and Karin Wolfe (eds), Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, British School at Rome Papers: Rome and London, 2010, pp.273-83 at p.278 (illus.)
I.Roscoe, E.Hardy and M.G.Sullivan (eds.), A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, London, 2009, pp.1062-69, at p.1065, No.10
National Art Fund, Art Quarterly and Review, Summer 2011, p.96 (illus.)
M.Baker, The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain, New Haven and London, 2015, passim.
M.Baker, ‘Sculptural friends and relations and their marble surfaces: Roubiliac’s busts of Henry, 9th Earl of Pembroke, and his other busts at Wilton House’ in Sculpture Journal, Vol.33, No.3, 2024, pp.383- 399.