LAWRENCE MACDONALD (1799-1878)BRITISH, CIRCA 1840 | Cupid with a Swan, Allegory of the Genius of Poetry

the artist;
thence by descent, Italian Private Collection

Overall, the condition of the marble is very good with minor dirt and wear to the surface consistent with age. The wings are carved separately and are inserted with two metal struts. There are a few minor chips, including to some of the locks of hair and to the bottom tip of the proper left wing. There are further chips and abrasions to the edges of the greyish marble base. There are a few small naturally occurring inclusions, including to the proper right cheek and to the chest. There is some very minor veining in areas, including to the proper left cheek below the ear. The terrasse is carved in sections and stable original joints are slightly visible. There is a possible small restoration to one of the keys of the lyre. The strings of the lyre appear to be later and one of them is loose at the top. There are a few residues in area such as the swan's tail, the proper left arm and more notably on the terrasse.
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Lawrence Macdonald, born at Bonnyview, Findo-Gask, Perthshire, was a Scottish Neoclassical sculptor who spent most of his life working in Rome. He first moved there in late 1822 and stayed for three years, setting up a sculpture studio and became a founding member of the British Academy of Arts in Rome, focusing on portrait busts. His contemporaries and colleagues included John Gibson and Richard James Wyatt, and together they formed a group of leading British sculptors working in the Neoclassical style. Macdonald immediately attracted the patronage of important Scottish tourists, and commissioning a Macdonald portrait bust was soon thought of as ‘indispensible’ to a visit to the city (Roscoe op. cit. p. 776). Returning to Edinburgh in 1826, he exhibited a number of his busts, together with a statue of a Boy Slinging (1823). In 1829 and 1830, he organised further exhibitions of his work, focussing on ideal statuary and more portrait busts. Although he was thus soon renowned in Scotland and the rest of Britain as one of its preeminent sculptors, Macdonald returned to Rome in 1832 and remained there for the rest of his career. Lawrence Macdonald was closely acquainted with Bertel Thorvaldsen, who was active in Rome until his death in 1844 - Macdonald inherited Thorvaldsen's studio in the Palazzo Barberini. Stories from contemporaries suggest he was a man with an extremely active life - often already out and about by 5.30 in the morning, he is said to have produced nearly 100 portrait busts in the year before his death. Lawrence’s son Alexander Macdonald, born in Rome in 1847, joined his studio at some point in the 1860s as an assistant. He also carved Lawrence’s tombstone after his father's death in 1878, and continued working in the Barberini studio, successfully establishing himself as a sculptor in his own right.

The present lot shows clearly Macdonald’s affinity with ideal statuary, and illustrates the ongoing tradition for ideal sculpture in the Palazzo Barberini studio and amongst Macdonald's Roman contemporaries - compare the Cupid of the present lot to Thorvaldsen’s Cupid with his Bow. It is further likely that the next generation of ideal sculptors, with Alexander Macdonald, was influenced by the present lot - a Venus and Cupid, sold at Christie’s, 19 March 2009, lot 168, shows a idealised Cupid figure, with hair style and a bow carved in a similar manner to the Cupid with a Swan. Whilst the present lot is not recorded in the Dictionary of British Sculptors (op. cit.), the sculpture is fitting for Macdonald’s oeuvre of ideal statuary. Although the iconography of the present lot is slightly unclear, a figure of Cupid or a young boy with a swan or a goose is certainly not unprecedented - a Roman marble copy after a Greek original is in the Louvre (inv. no. Ma 40 -MR 168). Furthermore, Thorvaldsen executed several drawings and reliefs in the 1830s of genii, and a plaster cast for the Genius of Poetry is in the Thorvaldsensmuseum in Copenhagen (inv. no. A532) which may well have served as inspiration for the present lot. 

RELATED LITERATURE
I. Roscoe, E. Hardy and M.G. Sullivan, A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660-1851, pp. 775-781; M. Greenwood, 'Macdonald, Lawrence (1799-1878)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, online edition available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/17445 [page accessed 25/10/2018]; E. Davies and E. Tarizzo (eds.) Canova and his Legacy, exh. cat. Tomasso Brothers Fine Art London, 2017, cat no. 15